Intrusive AI Thoughts
With so many underemployed English majors in this land willing to write for a pittance, the tech industry has some kind of kink for quashing content produced by real creatives in favor of AI slop
Happy mid-summer! It's not very happy, is it? Not when there's a genocide in Gaza, general Earth death, and the only bright spot in the national news is that an evil child sex trafficker might posthumously make a dent in the emperor's impervious armor.
My actual problems seem small in comparison, but I still want to share with you my most recent freelance writing projects. I was planning to post a happy little link to my work and a cheery "isn't indie media great" plug for a niche podcast magazine. Last year I wrote about indie podcasting for Good Tape. Now the article is available online. Before featuring it in their biweekly newsletter, Good Tape asked me to record some sound bites for social media. And, of course, I was happy to oblige! The task took about an hour, which required me to move my schedule around and postpone a bike ride with one of my kids. But I felt like it was a worthwhile time investment. Plus, I don't have an active podcast going at the moment, so it was fun to get out my microphone and use my audio editing software. I sent them a dozen short clips, exactly as requested, went on with my life, and looked forward to sharing the article with all of you.
Then I got an email from the producer. They decided to record someone else reading my words in a tone that better fit with their social media channel. I have no idea what that's really about. Maybe I sound too Midwestern for a publication based in L.A. and Brooklyn? Here's one of my clips:
That sound bite literally included the phrase "sound like yourself" because the article's all about aural authenticity. So this little vocal switcheroo was kind of ironic-funny, but not entirely, because I performed an hour's worth of labor to Good Tape's exact specifications, for free and on a quick turnaround because I thought it would result in a teeny tiny bit of exposure for my work, and mostly because I really like the magazine.
I listened to the clip they did use, of the voice that appeals to their audience more than mine, so many times that I started to convince myself that it was AI-generated. I drafted an angry email to the producer, which I did not send because I then wasted more time isolating a glitchy portion of the audio clip. I couldn't tell, 100%, if it was AI. But I thought that, if it was a real person, then it was strange that the Good Tape team found the one voiceover artist with the ability to pronounce "television" like an electronic alto.
Over and over, I listened to this, and finally concluded that the brief breath the not-bot takes before the glitchy phrase "film and television experience" proves that there is real life on Good Tape's social media channels. So, they wasted my time but at least not in favor of an AI voice.
It can be hard to tell who/what is creating content, as I pointed out in my recent review of a memoir by Minnesota Star Tribune publisher and CEO Steve Grove. When there are so many underemployed English majors in this land who'd be willing to write for a pittance, it seems like the tech industry has some kind of kink for quashing content produced by real creatives in favor of AI slop. In my review I compared the book's prose to AI prose, which was probably a dumb, bridge-burning move, but fun to write! From the review:
Now, I'm not accusing Grove of using AI to author his book. But I am accusing him of writing like a bot. Grove compliments an event in Minnesota because, “It felt more… human.” He mixes metaphors, poorly: “Trying to chisel into existing social groups in Minnesota seemed like it might be a tough road.” His most original simile describes a trip to Rochester’s Mayo campus that “felt like going to the Google of hospitals.” Grove parenthetically defines the term multigenerational “(families with more than one generation living under the same roof)” because—I’m just guessing here—it’s seven syllables long?
The short version is, I hope Steve Grove doesn't wreck the Star Tribune. At his book launch party, he talked about consumer demand driving publishing decisions and I worry that this subservience to the fallacy that people just want easily digestible, tailor-made headlines delivered to their devices is going to wreck legacy print media. I love print newspapers, especially on Sundays. Last week, the Strib included this beautiful long-form story about wild rice, something I never would have read if I only relied on the algorithm to digitally deliver headlines tailored to my interests. Just one example of why I hope that the next CEO will see the value of straightforward journalism and not try to scale its content into something meaningless.
When I read in Grove’s memoir that he ordered poison ivy seeds online and planted them to indulge his young son’s curiousity, I knew I had to highlight that bonkers approach to gardening in my review. I’m obsessed with the plant. I see it everywhere, when I’m camping, hiking, running, and walking. It’s everywhere, if you know what to look for - in the wilderness and in the city.
AI haunts me, similar to how poison ivy haunts me. Tell me in the comments, how does AI haunt you?
I felt this one *hard*. I have a new director at work who is absolutely enamored with AI. When I voiced my opposition, his main rebuttal was that musicians steal from each other all the time. He saw absolutely no difference between one human being taking the work of another and modifying it, making it their own, putting it through their own personal filter and creating something new, and feeding AI a prompt to write a song. It's disheartening.
At the moment I'm managing to keep him from outright forcing me to utilize AI in any of my day-to-day duties, but I'm concerned that day is creeping ever closer.