Devaluing content created by AI is lazy and ignores history
- Reference: 1713342553
- News link: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2024/04/17/devaluing_ai_content_is_lazy/
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It isn't, and it won't. What has to pass is how we approach AI-generated content.
To understand why, know that my publisher recently returned from the London Book Fair with a great suggestion: recording an audiobook version of my latest [1]printed work . We had a video call to work through all the specifics. Would I like to record it myself? Yes, very much. When could I get started? Almost immediately. And I had a great idea: I'll use the very cool AI voice synthesis software at [2]Eleven Labs to synthesize unique voices for the Big Three chatbots – ChatGPT, Copilot and Gemini.
[3]
The call went quiet. My publisher looked embarrassed. "Look, Mark, we can't do that."
[4]
[5]
"Why not? It'll sound great!"
"It's not that. Audible won't let us upload anything that's AI-generated."
[6]
An anti-AI policy makes sense where there's a reasonable chance of being swamped by tens of thousands of AI-voiced texts – that's almost certainly Audible's fear. (There's also the issue of putting voice artists out of work – though employers appear [7]rather less concerned about job losses.)
My publisher will obey Audible's rule. But as it becomes increasingly difficult to differentiate between human and synthetic voices, other audiobook creators may adopt a more insouciant approach.
Given how quickly the field of generative AI is improving – [8]Hume.AI 's "empathetic" voice is the latest notable leap forward – this policy looks more like a stopgap than a sustainable solution.
[9]
It may seem like generative AI and the tools it enables have appeared practically overnight. In fact, generating a stream of recommendations is where this all got started – way back in the days of [10]Firefly . Text and images and voices may be what we think of as generative AI, but in reality they're simply the latest and loudest outcomes from nearly three decades of development.
[11]Your PC can probably run inferencing just fine – so it's already an AI PC
[12]It's time we add friction to digital experiences and slow them down
[13]Apple has botched 3D for decades. So good luck with the Vision Pro, Tim
[14]It's uncertain where personal technology is heading, but judging from CES, it smells
Though satisfying, drawing a line between "real" and "fake" betrays a naïveté bordering on wilful ignorance about how our world works. Human hands are in all of it – as both puppet and puppeteer – working alongside algorithmic systems that, from their origins, have been generating what we see and hear. We can't neatly separate the human from the machine in all of this – and never could.
If we can't separate ourselves from the products of our tools, we can at least be transparent about those tools and how they've been used. Australia's Nine News recently tried to blame the sexing up of a retouched photograph of a politician on Photoshop's generative "infill" and "outfill" features, only to have Adobe quickly point out that [15]Photoshop wouldn't do that without guidance from a human operator.
At no point had the public been informed that the image broadcast by Nine had been AI enhanced, which points to the heart of the issue. Without transparency, we lose our agency to decide whether or not we can trust an image – or a broadcaster.
My colleague [16]Sally Dominguez has recently been advocating for a "Trust Triage" – a dial that slides between "100 percent AI-generated" and "fully artisanal human content" for all media. It would in theory offer creators an opportunity to be completely transparent about both media process and product, and another for media consumers to be sensible and anchored in understanding.
That's something we should have demanded when our social media feeds went algorithmic. Instead, we got [17]secrecy and surveillance , dark patterns and addiction. Always invisible and omnipresent, the algorithm could operate freely.
In this brief and vanishing moment – while we can still know the difference between human and AI-generated content – we need to begin a practice of labelling all the media we create, and suspiciously interrogate any media that refuses to give us its particulars. If we miss this opportunity to embed the practice of transparency, we could find ourselves well and truly lost. ®
Get our [18]Tech Resources
[1] https://bcs.org/books/GenAI
[2] https://elevenlabs.io/
[3] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_software/aiml&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=2&c=2Zh@dvq7PW82K8pazhEop5wAAAJQ&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D2%26raptor%3Dcondor%26pos%3Dtop%26test%3D0
[4] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_software/aiml&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=4&c=44Zh@dvq7PW82K8pazhEop5wAAAJQ&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D4%26raptor%3Dfalcon%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[5] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_software/aiml&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=3&c=33Zh@dvq7PW82K8pazhEop5wAAAJQ&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D3%26raptor%3Deagle%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[6] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_software/aiml&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=4&c=44Zh@dvq7PW82K8pazhEop5wAAAJQ&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D4%26raptor%3Dfalcon%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[7] https://www.theregister.com/2024/04/04/ai_replacement_jobs/
[8] https://demo.hume.ai
[9] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_software/aiml&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=3&c=33Zh@dvq7PW82K8pazhEop5wAAAJQ&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D3%26raptor%3Deagle%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[10] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Firefly_(website)
[11] https://www.theregister.com/2024/03/13/age_of_ai_pc/
[12] https://www.theregister.com/2024/02/14/friction_is_good/
[13] https://www.theregister.com/2024/01/24/apple_vision_pro_good_luck/
[14] https://www.theregister.com/2024/01/12/ces_analysis/
[15] https://www.theguardian.com/media/2024/jan/30/georgie-purcell-mp-photoshop-automated-image-nine-news-apology-victoria-animal-justice-party
[16] https://www.linkedin.com/in/sallydominguez/
[17] https://www.theregister.com/2017/05/08/facebook_is_abusive_its_time_to_divorce_it/
[18] https://whitepapers.theregister.com/
The UK has just passed a law to make creating deepfake porn with AI a crime. They didn't go far enough (in my view, others are available) and missed an opportunity by not making the AI's owners and creators jointly liable for the offence. I get the "people kill, guns don't" argument, but we are at the very beginning of a concerningly disruptive technology and it's better to start hard with legislation that can be relaxed later rather than assume we can legislate problems away once the cat is out of the bag.
I wouldn't call avoiding AI/ML output "ideological".
It seems an entirely practical approach. It the content can't be traced back to original source it can't be subject to any of the approaches we might have to evaluate it. It's worthless despite being created at vast expense. The entire AI/ML enterprise is an exercise in squandering trust, money and electricity.
Indeed. It changes not being able to trust some content, to not being able to trust any content.
> It changes not being able to trust some content, to not being able to trust any content.
Sadly yes.
Though interrogating data and narratives does suggest that what is true and real is coherent, whereas batshit crazy bullshit isn't - i,e ML may be able to provide tools for detecting bullshit.
Sorry for my agricultural language, but 'bullshit' has become a technical term... Lies have an antagonistic relationship with the truth, bullshit is oblivious to it.
AI is following the trajectory of most tech these days. The potential to significantly improve nearly all aspects of life - work, leisure, health - is massive but it's undermined by the commercialization and exploitation of people to the extent that most of the real benefits will never be realized.
For example, It would be fantastic to put all the NHS patient data into a single database run with AI. From a personal perspective that would mean my health data would be immediately available to all health professionals wherever I was - GP, A&E, paramedic finding me by the side of the road, etc. From a public health perspective the opportunites are endless and could make genuine improvements. It's never going to happen because I believe the people who can make it happen are more interested in making revenue from my private data than making my life better, so they can fuck off. AI will develop the same way that the internet and its services have - primarily as a means to line the pockets of the likes of Meta, Google, etc. with any real public benefit having to be picked from the bones of what remains.
I vote for "well and truly lost"
Shoulda woulda coulda yada yada. It's all very nice to request the public to be responsible, but the public isn't and it's not being given the tools to be responsible about AI.
Those decisions are all being made at the Board level by people who, frankly, do not have the public's interest at heart in any way, shape or form.
So the only tool the public has is blind disregard for anything AI. Once the Board suits will have understood your message and understood that it is in their interest to show the public what has been 100% human-generated versus what has been "facilitated" with pseudo-AI, then we have a better environment where the public will be able to gradually accept and integrate that, indeed, pseudo-AI is not going away and there are things that might be better for it.
But until then, only shunning AI is going to have any effect on Boardroom discussions.