Stop Using AI for Brand and Entertainment Content

Hero Image: Title: Väike Lilli Noarootsist 
Creator: Õunapuu, Ervin (autor)
Date: 1985
Providing institution: Tartu Art Museum
Aggregator: Estonian e-Repository and Conservation of Collections Providing
Country: Estonia CC0 Väike Lilli Noarootsist by Õunapuu, Ervin (autor) - 1985 - Tartu Art Museum, Estonia - CC0

Please don't. Just please don't. 

I get it, Artificial Intelligence is useful. You can pop into ChtGPT or Claude and solve that little problem that's been nagging you for days. I use it often, mostly as a replacement for Google because the search results have worsened to the point of being useless. You can argue this is by design, but it makes sense that a business model built on showing ads in search results has incentive to make those searches a bit more difficult and thus more ad displays. This is where I initially saw the benefit of AI. I can ask the best way cook chicken on the BBQ and I'll just get that answer (no ancestral stories about chicken recipes included). 

Then came image generation. You could write a prompt and it would generate an image for you straight from your imagination. To me, this is where it all went downhill. The problem with image generation is that it looks like image generation. There is a style, there is a look, there is an uncanny valley to every image that's generated. Now our social feeds are slammed with the sloppiest of AI slop, "news" organizations are using AI to generate "article" images, and memes aren't half-baked anymore...they're microwaved with AI. 

Will Smith Backlash

Recently, I was browsing Reddit and a user posted images from a Will Smith concert, screen grabs from a video posted on his Instagram. Sure enough, a bunch of Reddit users dug into those frames and some of them were very clearly the work of generative AI. Snopes has some extensive evidence that many of the concert goers and signs were real, but whoever created the video used AI to animate the still images with very awful results. 

The reaction, including my own, was Level-10 cringe. My immediate thought was "Will. Why would you do this?"  Which then morphed into "this is really embarrassing for you." Which then turned into being irritated that AI was being used at all and that some people believed it was real. News outlets picked up on it, people roasted it, and instead of the Will Smith post being about the July concert, its focus was now the question of AI. 

Most importantly, a very small percentage of people went looking for the real story and the backlash was strong and swift. The reality of this example is much more nuanced, but the damage and the backlash was done. It had and will have a lasting negative effect all because of the use of AI as a content generator/enhancer. 

Guess what?

Another example of AI use turning into a PR disaster: Guess recently ran an ad in Vogue of an AI model. It's convincing, but the model isn't real. A quick study of the photo is all it takes to see the telltale signs of AI. It's a shame because all I could think about was there was a real model out there who didn’t get this job. Who then didn’t pay that commission to their agency. Who then didn’t go out and buy something with the money. Which then didn’t support a business. Who then didn’t contribute to tax revenue. Which then didn’t fund schools or hospitals or police and fire. Which then to end this point, just made our society that much worse. And that’s just the model. I haven’t even touched on the photographer, the graphic designer, the photo editor, the stylist, and the makeup artist that didn't get this gig...it goes on and on and on.

Naturally, the reaction was what you should expect. Backlash. Controversy. They say all press is good press, but I'm not so sure that's true. I'll think twice about buying Guess. 

We know what's real and what isn't

Now comes Sora and any one of the other video generation services...another area where we’re starting to see a growth in AI slop. I understand the use in certain circumstances, but the thing is, as humans we know when something isn’t real. There is something in our genetic makeup that puts us on guard when we see something that just seems "off", the uncanny valley. Even the most seasoned CGI artists, who have mastered the art of CGI for film and television with astronomical budgets still cannot overcome our primitive aversion to things just don't look "right". With AI generated video it’s worse because it moves, and like Will Smith eating spaghetti we just know it's not authentic. Now, it's being used as a tool in brand marketing, social content and even film and television. The problem is we know it when we see it and when we see it, we don't like it. Sure, if someone is re-imagining NFL stadiums for each team the stakes are low. For marketing, entertainment, and content where you need people to buy-in...that's a problem.  Most people are smart enough to realize that if a big corporation uses AI...it came at the cost of someone’s livelihood. That stinks. We all think it stinks. And stink-face is the face we use when you see AI slop or when you find out it was AI for primary content. 

As humans we want human connection, it doesn’t have to be direct connection, we just want that connection. That’s why in the early days message boards and IM chats were popular, even though you weren't in the same room you knew it was a human on the other side. We resonate with film, art, music, and even social content because we know that it came from the passion of a fellow human. What do I feel when I see something that's not labelled or not purposefully AI? Stink face. I know that content didn’t come from someone’s human experience, rather it came from an algorithm or an AI interpretation of an emotion. Worse yet, it says to me and many others they were cheap and lazy. When we look at successful films, television and advertisements all of those things have a purpose...to generate an emotional response. If that emotion doesn’t originate from a human does it carry the same weight? Of course not. It's not genuine and for the most part we know that. 

I recently watched a snippet of Sam Altman from OpenAI say that over time people will get used to it, the notion that over time, we will just accept AI. I could not disagree more. While we may get used to seeing it, we're not going to start liking it. As a society, we're already rolling our eyes at the use of generative AI as primary content and we're pushing back against it because we know the stakes. The more AI replaces people’s livelihoods the worse it’s gonna get. People will push back. If there’s a company out there that’s using AI as their main source of content whether it’s visual, audio, or written...my immediate reaction towards that business or that piece of "art" or that company will be negative. 

The backlash is real and you shouldn't ignore it

I am a very big believer in paying people what they’re worth because when we all live well, we all live well. We're at the precipice of the decline at least in the creative industries. Spotify has been pushing music and artists that are AI generated. So the song that comes up in your Discover Weekly might not be from a human, which means an artist out there didn’t get a play. And another artist didn’t get put onto a playlist. An artist didn’t generate fandom, which prompted them to go on tour, which created a whole economic ecosystem around that tour. There was nothing to trickle down in a world where we are told it will trickle down. All the while Spotify didn't have to pay a fraction of a cent in royalties. 

The benefits of AI are going to change the world for good and for really bad. My emails are probably written a bit better now. I find answers to questions faster. A skill set doesn’t take as long to develop. I can understand something in a shorter period of time and understand it in the way that my brain can process properly. Those are good and there will be so many benefits, heck, maybe we'll solve cancer. 

But the not-so-good is going to catch up to us much faster than we can imagine. I’m not going to go into the debate on what it’s going to do to our society in the near future but in any scenario, I don’t see it positively impacting our society as a whole. People are going to lose their livelihoods. Someone will blindly follow the guidance of an AI chatbot and the results will be tragic. It's already happening. 

Trickle down only works when everybody trickles down. We face a real possibility that trickle dries up and then what?

Backlash is only part of what could go wrong. I think it’s time we think about the broader implications of that image or video you created to save a couple bucks.

( Nothing in this feed post other than the example images was written, conceptualized, reviewed, or altered with AI )