I just turned 39 years old in August.
Very much still a young number, at least depending on one's perspective and how much life one has indeed lived.
What'd Indiana Jones say? Oh right: "It's not the years, honey, it's the mileage."
So right off the bat here, I can tell you that I'm not from an older generation and I'm not someone who has to poo-poo things just because they're new or popular.
But what I CAN do is warn people when it's beginning to come off as obvious that certain things are crossing a line that shouldn't be crossed.
And that's exactly what humans are doing with AI, or artificial intelligence.
Now, let me start this off by saying that AI certainly has a place in our world. It's 2024 for crying out loud, so we have to embrace new technologies and advance our evolving world to match and meet the demands that are put on us or we put on ourselves. We're an exploratory species, us humans, and many of our discoveries and creations are nothing short of spectacular.
Or they can be life-changing or even life-saving. After all, even when we set aside unique human creations through AI, such technology is making incredible strides in the health care world, providing people with second chances to live as normal of a life as possible. As well, AI is being used by law enforcement officials of all levels in order to aid in hunting down fugitives and bringing them to justice.
So yes, AI has a place in our world. You'd have to be blind not to see that.
And then we flip the coin to see the other side, and we see that some people are going all in with AI in order to fool people, save money, and try to pull the wool over our eyes with the intended message of, "It's all still real! Just believe! BELIEVE!!!"
Sorry, pal. I still know BS when it's being spoon-fed to me.
Remember the Sports Illustrated debacle of last year? I've talked about it before in this space.
The legendary sports publication's reputation took a critical blow last year when it was discovered that Sports Illustrated was using AI bots to create articles. When they were questioned about several articles that appeared to be created using what's called generative AI, Arena Group (Sports Illustrated's publisher) denied using it and scrubbed their website of all such content, pointing the finger to AdVon, a third-party company hired to produce content.
This soap opera was uncovered after an article on a media website called Futurism explained the process, which saw their reporting staff trace the headshots of Sports Illustrated article authors to a website that sells AI-generated images.
One of the authors in question was one Drew Ortiz over at Sports Illustrated, and on the surface alone, there really wasn't anything to suggest that "he" was anything besides a fellow human being. Ortiz even had an author bio that delved a little bit into his personality and showed readers what kind of things he enjoyed doing for fun and recreation.
Of course, the one and only alarmingly major problem with that brief look into Drew's life is the fact that he doesn't seem to exist. Futurism found no social media presence and no publishing history prior to having a byline with Sports Illustrated. And to follow that up, his profile photo on the company's website was found to be for sale on another website that sells AI-generated headshots, where Drew was described as a "neutral white young-adult male with short brown hair and blue eyes."
Lovely, huh? You gotta love when Sports Illustrated, a sports media giant who used to pay human beings to write articles and tell engaging stories, decides to take the coward's way instead of paying a talented writer *who actually exists in our world* to create their content.
And then there's Coca-Cola.
It's the Christmas season once again, and with that, one of the biggest advertising campaigns on TV comes courtesy of the soft drink kingpin. This year, it was actually openly promoted on social media that their holiday advertising would be handled using strictly AI technology.
In a post on Twitter/X by Chris Barber, who works for Silverside AI, he explained that the company was asked by Coca-Cola to "bring the classic Coca Cola Holidays are Coming ad back through the use of AI", which resulted in a 65-second spot that debuted on November 15.
And the results were very mixed.
AI-created imagery kind of rides that line between knowing it's as close to real as you're going to get, but it still has that air of animation to it where educated people can still spot the differences. Everything's too squeaky clean, too air-brushed.
That's pretty much what you see in this Coke ad, with the animated semis moving along a winter road near some cozy small town, complete with snow littering rooftops, squirrels in trees watching the semis roll by, and there are even a few shots of the classic Coca-Cola polar bears taking a night swim.
If you're a young kid who doesn't know any better, you'd probably be amused by it. But I watched it a number of times, and I just couldn't get over the sheer coldness of it. My exact response to it online was:
"Not a human actor is seen - or paid.
It's essentially an ad cooked up on computers in some production editing office where workers take shifts and others dine on Chinese takeout.
There's no genuinity or soul to it.
This has a cold, machine-like feeling to it."
My number one issue against AI technology is the subtraction of humans from the equation. More specifically, companies choosing not to pay humans for their services in favor of just using software technology. Let's forget about paying actors to be in our holiday advertising campaign and just let the boys in editing whip something together! Or let's use imaginary sports journalists that only exist on paper and just make up a bio for them to pull the wool over everyone's eyes!
There's good use of AI, but when we're forgetting our very humanity in favor of saving the almight dollar and trying to fool everyone into believing someone exists when that person only exists online, then a line has been crossed that should have been avoided.
I'm all for embracing the future, but I'm also all for retaining our humanity along the way.
For this week, that's been the Ruttle Report.
