If you're not on X (twitter, whatever) you may not be familiar with these new AI Influencers. Basically they're porn bots. The photos are created with AI. They have tens, hundreds of thousands of followers. They clearly state in their bios that they are not real - that they're "AI Influencers," and yet the comments are full of thousands of men posting how hot they are, asking for more photos, offering to pay for more, interacting with them like they're real. It's a sad state of affairs for humanity, yes.
How many of the men consumming AI porn are real and how many are bots prompted up to normalize this. I don't think we are past the event horizon of widescale AI porn consumption, yet. There still something about real people providing these services even if everything else about it is fake. But you are probably right, and not just with porn. Ultimatly whats the diffence betweeen real people creating anything only to win favor by the algorithm and taking that last step to simply automate the creators themselves.
The internet is a hall of mirrors and the only way to navigate it is through authenticity
Fake people followed by fake people? Sounds like a great way to corral and ignore them to me! Not that I am welcome on TwatterX. I am a subversive terrorist, according to the WEF chick calling the shots there.
Ha The thing is that if you desire global domination like our good friends at the WEF anyone real person who isn't under 100 percent mind control is a threat to there mission. So from there twisted perspective we all are subversive terrorist
To get a bit meta- physical its like they are a demon that we can shrink with critical thought and authentic communication. But we feed with our mental laziness and cowardness
But isn't 'authenticity' going to feed the beast? If I understand the term, doesn't authenticity require full disclosure identification attached to everything we read and write anywhere?
For many, that would become a gag. Certain people need anonymity to avoid a jealous rival or ex partner. They might have a job which would be jeopardised by unusual political views. They might have a family which is devoutly religious and they are secretly atheist.....
As far as I can ascertain, us becoming Global Citizens, with internationally traceable and indelible identification, is one of the ambitions of the predator class.
I mean authentic as in honest not in your communication being verified to you. There is a pro-con debate on that one and everyone has to determine the amount of risk
The way I see technology is a mirror that that is going to grow more and more granular We can no more stop that process than any other natural phenomenon. And it is a natural phenomenon the same way beaver dams or birds nest are.
What we decide is what it reflects back to us. Getting distorted in an ideological bubble or consumed in a reactionary loop just feeds the thing that ultimately will kill us. But we can also use these tools to inspire our lives. It's up to us. Either way, we are creating an egregore. I think it's personally safer to just go with popular opinion. But by doing so we create monstrous tendencies.
For all the talk of how risky it is to express yourself freely online (and it is to some degree), it will get a lot worse if we don't normalize dissent ent.
Ultimately I see the problem not with the technology itself or the people who wield it but with people who refuse to recognize their power in all this and make poor choices.
This is all new. I mean it seems like it has been around a while, but there are many people alive (like myself) who remember a different world. It's probably going to take a few generations for people to level up.
Assuming your prediction is right -- that there will be a point where people are fed up with the 'inauthentic' -- I wonder what that implies for live theater?
Unfortunately right now it's a worse woke sewer than Hollywood. Still, live theater is a lot harder to fake than a movie... Let's see.
Great essay. I’m a drummer in my sixties. When the “drum machines” and drum programming hit the music scene decades ago with the promise of ‘precision’ drumming we all felt a little threatened. It turned out to be way less than stellar and thankfully popular to a limited degree with artists who produced vapid pop music. Today it is prevalent in hip hop, the most popular genre of music. To each his own but to a person who appreciates the actual music of a band or artist I find hip hop unlistenable. “But the lyrics...”Okay, but are these artists really musicians? Sure the lyrics might be good or catchy, but the music is rarely inspiring. There is no substitute for a flesh and blood drummer. And good lyrics aren’t a substitute for good music. The onset of the programmed drums era also coincided with the horribly overused synthesizers that were so prevalent in music at the time, and the advent of MTV music videos. It seemed that musicianship and musical creativity became less important than the short film accompanying it. The quality of music has reached such a stage of blandness for this and the reasons you mentioned and I thank my lucky stars to have grown up in an era preceding MTV that produced so much fantastic music still widely played on classic music stations. There are a lot of great creative ‘starving’ artists and musicians today, you’ll just never hear them unless you seek them out on your own.
All this is to say that what we’ve seen in popular music’s trend toward mediocrity I’ll bet AI will go down a similar road. Like drum machine backed music, the boring sterility of it will be too much to bear for a lot of us. I hope so anyway.
Great article! I think you're right, many people are desperate for authentic voices these days -- but there's no doubt a large chunk of people who will be happy with their make-believe lives of fake relationships with fake women.
More handwringing in the tradition of Livy and Cicero about the degradation of society and the general lousiness of the next generation. The losers of today paying e-thots cash to look at naughty videos are the dorks of yesterday getting all excited over raunchy comic books and Hustler magazine. Normal people still interact in the real 3D meat world.
Dorks have always existed and frankly if the two-sided transaction of sex for cash is to continue, I think it is wonderful that now only one side of that soul-destroying trade exists. The dork being drained of his, er, cash, is still sacrificing his soul and sense of self-worth to do so, but now there is no real human female subjecting herself to degradation by fulfilling video requests from kinky weirdos with mommy issues.
This A.I. prostitution is a step in the right direction to limiting the damage done to girls and women who enter "sex work," as if that is not some horribly denigrating violation and just one more "job."
Bring on the bots to improve women's lives! May the dorks run out of cash and credit and be forced to go get a job in the real world, where they may form real relationships.
Your thinking is very strange. (I have noticed this before.... haven't I?)
You criticise handwringing over degradation, you call normal people losers, dorks and delight in them being scammed for their hard-earned money. Then, inexplicably, you think being robbed will encourage them to 'get a job'.
You assume that females who work in the sex trade do so under duress, risking the destruction of their soul and other unspecified 'damage'.
You demonstrate your asinine superiority and sneering disrespect with every word you write. It is quite shocking.
Here is a scenario for you: A pretty student earns by sleeping with a crippled man who is otherwise unable to form real relationships in the real world. He benefits enormously, she feels good about helping him out. This guy is no dork, neither is he a loser. This girl is not feeling violated and he is certainly not 'just a job' to her.
Get outside the grand casino where they endlessly play shadows on the cave wall for our entertainment - and theirs. There is a new sucker born every minute.
How many of the men consumming AI porn are real and how many are bots prompted up to normalize this. I don't think we are past the event horizon of widescale AI porn consumption, yet. There still something about real people providing these services even if everything else about it is fake. But you are probably right, and not just with porn. Ultimatly whats the diffence betweeen real people creating anything only to win favor by the algorithm and taking that last step to simply automate the creators themselves.
The internet is a hall of mirrors and the only way to navigate it is through authenticity
Impossible to say, but my instinct in reading many of the comments is that they're mostly real.
Fake people followed by fake people? Sounds like a great way to corral and ignore them to me! Not that I am welcome on TwatterX. I am a subversive terrorist, according to the WEF chick calling the shots there.
Ha The thing is that if you desire global domination like our good friends at the WEF anyone real person who isn't under 100 percent mind control is a threat to there mission. So from there twisted perspective we all are subversive terrorist
To get a bit meta- physical its like they are a demon that we can shrink with critical thought and authentic communication. But we feed with our mental laziness and cowardness
But isn't 'authenticity' going to feed the beast? If I understand the term, doesn't authenticity require full disclosure identification attached to everything we read and write anywhere?
For many, that would become a gag. Certain people need anonymity to avoid a jealous rival or ex partner. They might have a job which would be jeopardised by unusual political views. They might have a family which is devoutly religious and they are secretly atheist.....
As far as I can ascertain, us becoming Global Citizens, with internationally traceable and indelible identification, is one of the ambitions of the predator class.
Authentication is that too, isn't it?
I mean authentic as in honest not in your communication being verified to you. There is a pro-con debate on that one and everyone has to determine the amount of risk
The way I see technology is a mirror that that is going to grow more and more granular We can no more stop that process than any other natural phenomenon. And it is a natural phenomenon the same way beaver dams or birds nest are.
What we decide is what it reflects back to us. Getting distorted in an ideological bubble or consumed in a reactionary loop just feeds the thing that ultimately will kill us. But we can also use these tools to inspire our lives. It's up to us. Either way, we are creating an egregore. I think it's personally safer to just go with popular opinion. But by doing so we create monstrous tendencies.
For all the talk of how risky it is to express yourself freely online (and it is to some degree), it will get a lot worse if we don't normalize dissent ent.
Ultimately I see the problem not with the technology itself or the people who wield it but with people who refuse to recognize their power in all this and make poor choices.
This is all new. I mean it seems like it has been around a while, but there are many people alive (like myself) who remember a different world. It's probably going to take a few generations for people to level up.
Great piece Keri. A good take on this new all consuming culture tool as well.🙂👌
Thanks Steven
“You like these moire artifacts? Yeah? My strangely drawn fingers making you shiver? Take these pixels. Take ‘em all.”
LOL ohnooooo
A side thought:
Assuming your prediction is right -- that there will be a point where people are fed up with the 'inauthentic' -- I wonder what that implies for live theater?
Unfortunately right now it's a worse woke sewer than Hollywood. Still, live theater is a lot harder to fake than a movie... Let's see.
I think it may take a few generations but people will start to crave the live arts.
I hope it’s a lot sooner than a few generations. Already the most intelligent are tuning out the dribble. Let’s make it a few months like next summer.
That's just weird and creepy. It's like those dudes who have RealDolls.
They dress them and tote them around from place to place. People like that are nuts.
There's no way I would let some fruitcake with a giant doll watch my kids. 🤣😂
When will people stop making excuses for mental illness -- and just call it what it is?
Great essay. I’m a drummer in my sixties. When the “drum machines” and drum programming hit the music scene decades ago with the promise of ‘precision’ drumming we all felt a little threatened. It turned out to be way less than stellar and thankfully popular to a limited degree with artists who produced vapid pop music. Today it is prevalent in hip hop, the most popular genre of music. To each his own but to a person who appreciates the actual music of a band or artist I find hip hop unlistenable. “But the lyrics...”Okay, but are these artists really musicians? Sure the lyrics might be good or catchy, but the music is rarely inspiring. There is no substitute for a flesh and blood drummer. And good lyrics aren’t a substitute for good music. The onset of the programmed drums era also coincided with the horribly overused synthesizers that were so prevalent in music at the time, and the advent of MTV music videos. It seemed that musicianship and musical creativity became less important than the short film accompanying it. The quality of music has reached such a stage of blandness for this and the reasons you mentioned and I thank my lucky stars to have grown up in an era preceding MTV that produced so much fantastic music still widely played on classic music stations. There are a lot of great creative ‘starving’ artists and musicians today, you’ll just never hear them unless you seek them out on your own.
All this is to say that what we’ve seen in popular music’s trend toward mediocrity I’ll bet AI will go down a similar road. Like drum machine backed music, the boring sterility of it will be too much to bear for a lot of us. I hope so anyway.
Great article! I think you're right, many people are desperate for authentic voices these days -- but there's no doubt a large chunk of people who will be happy with their make-believe lives of fake relationships with fake women.
More handwringing in the tradition of Livy and Cicero about the degradation of society and the general lousiness of the next generation. The losers of today paying e-thots cash to look at naughty videos are the dorks of yesterday getting all excited over raunchy comic books and Hustler magazine. Normal people still interact in the real 3D meat world.
Dorks have always existed and frankly if the two-sided transaction of sex for cash is to continue, I think it is wonderful that now only one side of that soul-destroying trade exists. The dork being drained of his, er, cash, is still sacrificing his soul and sense of self-worth to do so, but now there is no real human female subjecting herself to degradation by fulfilling video requests from kinky weirdos with mommy issues.
This A.I. prostitution is a step in the right direction to limiting the damage done to girls and women who enter "sex work," as if that is not some horribly denigrating violation and just one more "job."
Bring on the bots to improve women's lives! May the dorks run out of cash and credit and be forced to go get a job in the real world, where they may form real relationships.
Win-Win-Win!
Your thinking is very strange. (I have noticed this before.... haven't I?)
You criticise handwringing over degradation, you call normal people losers, dorks and delight in them being scammed for their hard-earned money. Then, inexplicably, you think being robbed will encourage them to 'get a job'.
You assume that females who work in the sex trade do so under duress, risking the destruction of their soul and other unspecified 'damage'.
You demonstrate your asinine superiority and sneering disrespect with every word you write. It is quite shocking.
Here is a scenario for you: A pretty student earns by sleeping with a crippled man who is otherwise unable to form real relationships in the real world. He benefits enormously, she feels good about helping him out. This guy is no dork, neither is he a loser. This girl is not feeling violated and he is certainly not 'just a job' to her.
Get outside the grand casino where they endlessly play shadows on the cave wall for our entertainment - and theirs. There is a new sucker born every minute.
Very well written essay. Thank you for outlining an issue I was unfamiliar with previously. And also the Bradbury and Berry quotes at the end.
“You like these moire artifacts? Yeah? My strangely drawn fingers making you shiver? Take these pixels. Take ‘em all.”