
Imagine the cover of Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Edition. And the model chosen is AI generated.
Could you get any more perfect than what science suggests defines beauty? The short answer is yes, but that would make beauty a matter of personal choice. Or what society deems beautiful.
Take for example all of the celebration of fatness happening now. I’m not judging, since I understand that centuries ago, fat people were considered the most coveted. Fat signified wealth.
Again, not judging but these days, fat is mostly a matter of choice. Few people starve in America. Regardless, don’t let being obese trigger a person to actually work out. Not when obesity can be used as an excuse for physical laziness.
How will AI handle obesity? I’m not sure. I would hope that given the science of health, AI would encourage people to hit the gym and not the refrigerator.
As for Sport Illustrated, the magazine won’t care. A pretty model real or AI-generated sells magazines. The only difference is the cost of the model. And no photoshop needed for AI-generated perfect models.
In this example, AI helps Sports Illustrated. But it won’t be like this for all media. Actually, I, just saw a glimpse into the future and the media as we know it currently won’t exist.
While I have major trepidation around AI, I must admit that I like knowing how AI will destroy this abomination we still refer to as media. Check out how this new Channel 1 proposes to do this.
See the highest quality AI footage in the world.
???? – Our generated anchors deliver stories that are informative, heartfelt and entertaining.
Watch the showcase episode of our upcoming news network now. pic.twitter.com/61TaG6Kix3
— Channel 1 (@channel1_ai) December 12, 2023
This article from late November 2017 suggested the adoption of AI by media.
Only 8% of media technology buyers said they had adopted it before IBC2017. Some 36% said that they were unlikely to adopt it while 56% said that they were likely to do so in the next 2-3 years.
These results show that AI is just at the start of its adoption curve.
The 56% set the trend. Because in just over 6 years, we now have fully functional news that is almost free of humans. Understand that AI remains in its infancy. The next 5 years will prove revolutionary.
The organic demise of media.
Donald Trump popularized the term “fake news media”. Until that point, little branding had occurred on the subject.
UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism Dean Geeta Anand chimed in on the subject, though her take on Trump differs from mine:
Donald Trump is no longer president. But his administration’s combative nature with the media over the past four years — of which the terms “fake news” and “alternative facts” were used to describe factual reporting — has exacerbated the public’s distrust of American journalists.
But the media is also to blame for that distrust, said UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism Dean Geeta Anand. More particularly, the failure of the local news model, and the lack of diversity in the industry, has allowed important reporting and coverage to fall through the cracks.
“The perception of the media has become that it is this mystical, evil, distant, elitist, judging institution that annoys people,” said Anand. “American journalists do not represent the face of America, … so we’ve missed the story of the alienated rural white voter, and also much of Black America. We’ve lost the trust there. … We need to change the face of journalism.”
She said that Trump called “factual reporting”, “fake news”.
Yes he did. And as I indicated earlier, Trump made “fake news” stick. He damaged media more than anyone in the past. But it was their insistence to continue to report lies that emblazened the term into the every day lexicon.
As for Anand, more telling are her thoughts on the perception of media. She described the media as mystical, evil, distant, elitist, judging institution that annoys people.
An almost perfect description. The media distorts real news and offers mostly propaganda. It functions not to keep government honest, but instead partners with a government as vile and evil as it is.
Conservatives must embrace AI now. And set the algorithms for real versus fake. Remember how the social media giants suppressed the truth, and helped in the coup of Trump. This can happen again. But it can be stopped.