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A Chatsunam-AI Retrospective: The Dangers of AI #2
10 Plays3 minutes ago
Happy New Year Pandalorians! In the second part of this two part retrospective, Satsu is joined by the marvellous Marie from the WeNeededRoads podcast to discuss the negative impacts of AI in the world. From ChatGPT and Sora to Grok and Dall-E, no stone is left unturned.
What is the environmental impact of this technology? Has AI affected our critical thinking skills? Who does Satsu HATE because of the Willy Wonka Experience? And are we truly living in a Black Mirror episode?! All of this and more in the final part of this AI retrospective.
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Transcript
Introduction and Premise
00:00:00
Speaker
Hello Mandalorians and welcome to part 2 of our AI retrospective. In this episode, we'll be delving into the negative impact AI has had overall. If you haven't listened to our first part where we discuss the positives of AI, then you can listen over at Chatsunami.com as well as all good podcast
Humorous AI Mishaps
00:00:17
Speaker
apps. This episode may contain strong language and topics that some listeners may find upsetting. Listener discretion is advised.
00:00:26
Speaker
Happy 2026 Satsu! Ready for another episode? Thank you, esteemed Kose, for your kind affirmations. What the f*** is this? Oh hey, Amiri! Check it out! The future! Why do you have a robot version of yourself? Well... Seeing as I'm neither a billionaire or a horrible person, I'm doing the next best thing to stay ahead of all the other content creators. Say hello to the Chatsunam AI, the future of podcasting. Can you stop saying it like that? Look, give it a chance. I mean, what's the worst that could happen?
00:01:03
Speaker
And there goes another forest. Gosh, they don't make them like they used to. That's it. I'm shutting this off. Good luck with that. this baby is so sturdy that nothing's stopping it. that Welcome to Chatsunami.
00:01:18
Speaker
Aw man, I signed a deal with Disney for that rule robot. Welcome to an AI-free Chatsunami.
AI's Impact on the Creative Industry
00:01:26
Speaker
And that, of course, leads me on to the bad side of AI. Let's rip this apart. I want to kick off with quite possibly the most egregious thing, other than the environmental impact, of course, but i'm sure we'll get on to that. But that being the impact it's had in the creative sphere, we could be here for hours, and we will be, so get a cup of tea, because we're going to be here a while. oh I could see that trophy coming back to me. In your restless dreams, you'd see it coming back to you. Yeah. This is literally the first note I've got for this section. Creative industry is suffering. Yeah. And it really is because look at Coca-Cola, for example.
00:02:07
Speaker
I remember, and this sounds like such a weird capitalist-esque thing to be nostalgic for, but I always remember watching TV and everyone would always say, oh, it feels like Christmas when you see the Coca-Cola truck advert. come on. And you know, maybe it's just the song that you hear and it makes you feel nostalgic. You know, the holidays are coming song. But I cannot get on board with the fact that it's all produced by AI now. This is two years in a row that they've done it and produced it with AI. And they have such shit-eating grins being like, oh, look at how amazing our AI looks. And it's like, no, it looks like crap. Just like your business practices. But I mean, Coca-Cola have a lot more more wrong with them than an AI advert, okay? Like, I'm... going to put that down, but the fact that they're so proud of it, it really annoyed me. And what annoyed me even more was other companies following suit. In particular, you know where I'm going with this, McDonald's. And I was talking to my girlfriend about this, and she's very much in the camp of, unfortunately, this technology is inevitable, so what can you do, really?
00:03:13
Speaker
And what were talking about, in particular, this advert for McDonald's, and it never really hit me how many job opportunities this is killing so you've got a director of course to direct the whole thing you've got writers who are gonna write what's going on you've got actors you've got extras and then you've got the crew members as well the caterers security staff you've got someone who has to scout a location maybe they're paying money into the local economy just to film in there it was disgusting think how a lot of adverts, because McDonald's have this really weird thing, I don't know if you've noticed this, where all their adverts are quite John Lewis-esque, and they're very sappy, and, ooh, I've had the worst day of my life, but it's okay, because I've got a Mickey D's with my dad, and it's like, you're not of mice and men here.
Commercialization and AI in Advertising
00:04:03
Speaker
McDonald's aren't there? You sell cheap burgers for God's sake. That's the other thing. If we set aside the atrocious ad, the AI ad that it was, the overall message of the ad was shit as well because it was just, oh, everything around Christmas time sucks. So have a burger. Exactly. Come to McDonald's. And it's like, what kind of festive message is that? It was just ridiculous. Yeah. Yeah, like, you saw everything going wrong, and it don't get me wrong, I know Christmas is inherently it as a religious season, but let's face it, has been bastardised over the years, and a lot of people have, and by people I mean the soulless corporations. the More and more I talk about it, the more I'm like, we are so screwed. But these corporations who, and again, I'm not the first or the last person to say this, but they'll come out, they'll be like, oh, look at this, buy our product. It's all become very commercialised and whatnot. And to have McDonald's, of all people, swing in that, the big balls that they have to say, oh yeah, Christmas sucks. Anyway, buy our expensive meals. you been to the McDonald's recently, by the way? It's extortionate for what they're offering. I was like, where's the savor menu? You know the old joke from Scooby-Doo when Velma drops her glasses and she reaches out and she's like, my glasses, I can't see without my glasses. That's like me going into McDonald's nowadays where I'm like, My saver menu, I can't eat within my saver menu because I'm like, why am I paying six to eight pounds for a crappy processed burger? And it's like, yeah, the balls they had to be like, oh, by the way, we are the heart of Christmas. It's like, you're not KFC in Japan here. That market's long gone. And I hope you got that reference.
00:05:48
Speaker
Oh, I did. I did. Oh, thank God. For anyone who doesn't know, Google it. KFC in Japan. It's a hit. But anyway, and again, to use AI, as I was saying, that took away so many jobs. It took away so many. Really, just it took out the heart of it. And for a soulless corporation to take a further heart out of something they've already taken the heart out of, that is impressive. it is and it's not even like they did it to save money like they did do it to save money but they didn't need to do it to save money i mean i think their net worth is around 200 billion dollars oh just 200 billion i think it's actually 226 billion to be precise but it's just like it's ridiculous what i loved about it as well is just how they tried to justify it when the backlash happened where they put out a statement where they're like we had people working late nights for weeks which probably
Job Displacement and AI Ads
00:06:39
Speaker
didn't pay them overtime if that's true to craft this perfect ad and it's just like no i think it would have even then been quicker if you just shot a proper ad with real humans if that you're saying that took weeks but it also kind of just shows how backlash is actually effective because they took the ad down within a day it's quite embarrassing though isn't it Oh, I love when big corporations get embarrassed. It's my favourite thing. Middle finger up capitalism. But that's the thing though, they literally could have picked any location, scrubbed the restaurant up, pointed a camera at two people, one person says, I'm depressed because it's Christmas. And then the other person says, I love Big Macs. And then the other person says, that's a really weird thing to say about Christmas. But yes, I too love Big Macs. End of commercial. McDonald's, if you're listening, hire me. You could have easily done something like that. Kept it simple. Kept it very down to earth and whatever. Because let's face it, I don't know if you're aware of, I'm assuming are, of the John Lewis ads at Christmas. I became when I lived in the UK. It's also the only time I ever owned television. So I also remember the McDonald's ad where, again, this wouldn't happen in any single realm of reality. But when a kid orders, I think when I lived in the UK, the Christmas ad was when a kid orders for her snack section of the Happy Meal, she orders carrots to feed to the reindeer. yeah. you remember that one? And that was like their like wholesome Christmas ad. But it's just like, why couldn't you do that again? Yeah, I bet you there's a lot of parents being like, no, Santa's reindeers like the Aldi carrots or the little carrots. They do not like buying a $1.99 Happy Meal for a tiny thing of carrots. But don't feed... Oh, sorry, this is another tangent, but what's the carrot called for Aldi? It's every Christmas. Oh, Kevin. Kevin! Yeah, Kevin. Don't feed to the reindeer. Yeah, that's true. Don't feed Kevin. No, no. Aldi, if you're listening, love you, but I'm sorry. Fun facts, by the way, in one of the old places that I used to work, it was in office, but in the corner of that office, there was a massive Kevin the Carrot, and they used to dress it up on and off. So you'd just be looking over and it would be like one of the teams dressing them up as different characters, depending on the season, obviously. That's why I've got Kevin burned into the back of my bed. Those adverts are alright. And again, they're not AI, so well done, Aldi.
00:09:02
Speaker
That's what saying. That's the summary of this episode. Well done, Aldi. Going back to the creative side of it, I genuinely don't think I've ever watched something that's purely made of AI and said, this is 100% amazing. Because I even remember last year watching the Chinese New Year gala.
00:09:21
Speaker
And they were basically saying, oh, coming up, we've got this amazing AI generated story. And that was something to do with because it's the year of the snake in 2025. And I remember watching it and thinking, what the hell was that?
00:09:35
Speaker
It's just it was this. terrible AI generated story essentially and I've seen people try to generate stories since and there's always something off about it and it wasn't realistic this is the thing it was more kind of fantastical and whatnot but I don't think I've seen any company I mean maybe the closest you get is the Coca-Cola thing and But even then when you watch it You know something's off You know it's AI So you're like Well I can't really sit back And enjoy it And you know obviously For a casual person going by Going oh right It's a Coca-Cola truck And can I just say by the way This is just a humble brag here I've actually seen the Coca-Cola truck and in person I was about to say Is that a brag? Sorry no offence It is a bit It is when you're in the UK I mean UK Pandalorians Back me up here Back me up in the comments Forget the AI stuff Back me up on that No, but jokes aside, yeah, I genuinely don't like the way that there is a lot of encroachment of AI into the creative sphere. And it's something that the Pandalurians and, of course, our very good friends of the pod pack had mentioned, that There just seems to be a lot of it seeping in, both on a corporate level with, as we said, with McDonald's and Coca-Cola being the major ones, versus smaller scale content creators or influencers as it were. I mean, there was that story recently as of recording this episode where Disney have signed a deal with
Disney, AI, and Original Content
00:11:04
Speaker
OpenAI. did you see this yes i mean that pisses me off so much and i don't know if you saw the response to it i saw that one of the people who responded to this i think it's pronounced dana teresa dana teresa anyway she created one of my all-time favorite shows called the owl house which was canceled by disney for being too gay she literally said i generally do not care if you pirate my show because I don't want you guys to supporting Disney anymore because this is outrageous which I completely agree and it's just the irony that she said that because the Owl House is just a even saying like a bucket of creativity is underselling it it is so ah whimsically imaginative it is just such an amazing show and it's so beautiful and not even the best day I would have been able to come up with it and just that juxtaposition that I mean these didn't happen back to back they cancelled it a few years back now But those same people who canceled the Owl House are now like, we just signed a contract with AI. It's just, no, we want original stories. We want this. We don't want this trash. And yeah, it's, again, it's coming from Disney. It's not like they need to cut costs like they're hemorrhaging money. Again, it's a billion dollar company. Yeah, and they're buying into OpenAI for a billion dollars. And I'm like, how? Where does the money come from, Disney?
00:12:20
Speaker
Where are you getting this extra billion? Live action remix. Well, true. Okay, yeah. Next question. yeah know you're completely right because there was another thing that disney plus wanted and again that will obviously be heavily moderated but they wanted user generated content which i don't know how the hell that's gonna work but also remember think it was the ceo of disney who was like oh wouldn't it be cool if you could get disney character saying happy birthday to your child or wouldn't it be cool with this and that i'm gonna to be honest has he been on the internet i've been on the internet for far longer than i cared in that but the internet is not a nice place especially for these types of characters and to have these characters out in the wild and obviously they wouldn't allow anything too horrible but at the same time Do you really want your intellectual property out in the hands people on the internet? I don't think that will happen considering Disney have rewritten the rules of intellectual property and public domain so they can keep their characters where they literally rewrote the rule they had lost past so they could keep their characters monetized as long as possible so i don't think they will completely relinquish control that way but when you said that the first thing that popped into my head like that already exists because there are so many even follow a few of them because some of them are also cosplayers where there's this whole industry of hardy princesses who also dress up as the disney princesses and do cameos for kids, like actual human beings. And it's already there. You don't need to create it, but obviously Disney doesn't profit off that at all. So it's like, again, how can we make more money? Well, I mean, remember, and I can't remember when they started doing this.
AI in Entertainment Experiences
00:14:06
Speaker
I feel as if I blinked and then they just started rolling AI out into Disneyland. But they've had a few experiences where they have characters that you can ask them questions and they try to generate a response to. to it. So there was like one recently with Stitch from Lilo and Stitch. But the one that horrified me was when they had Stan Lee. Did you hear about this? Oh yeah, that was at a convention, wasn't it? Something like that, yeah. Like San Diego Comic-Con or New York Comic-Con or something like that. Yeah. And again, can't believe I'm saying this in an episode of Chatsunami that I'm disgusted by technology raising the dead. But I will get onto that, believe me. I've got a huge rant to go on about that. Yeah, I think this is where we get into the weird section of it because I have quite a lot of opinions on that as well. Before we get into that, touching again just on the creative side, just a couple of flashpoints here. You've got a lot of, in the creative industry and especially with generative AI, there's also quite a problem of people trying to use AI in comic cons and places like that and especially conventions.
AI Art and Convention Concerns
00:15:14
Speaker
And I don't mean the dead body of...
00:15:16
Speaker
Lee saying hi how are you no no no I know what you mean selling AI shit this is a recent rabbit hole that I've gone down to because I haven't been to a con in a very long time because recently I did this whole exposing vinted on my social medias which again I thought was an isolated incident of just one person being shitty turns out it's like this whole infested the entire secondhand market and then i like someone was just like oh you think this is bad wait until i tell you about this and it's just the next day i saw like a video of the same situation where people are buying stuff off dropshipping sites and then selling them as their own at conventions but also selling ai art it drives me crazy it's not just conventions that got infested by this it's etsy yeah Used to be a site where you can support independent artists. And as someone who likes supporting small businesses and end of small independent artists, I don't know who to trust anymore. It's getting to point where I only now buy the official licensed merch, even though it's a soulless corporate company. At least I know I'm getting the official stuff versus where I see something hand-drawn. Recently, one of my all-time favorite shows is Has-Ban Hotel. And I've been thinking, oh, I should get some Has-Ban Hotel merchandise. And then I see stuff. I see a really cool t-shirt. And then I look at the description and they misspell, they didn't even misspell the character name, they wrote the wrong character name in the description. Well, okay, now that's clearly generated by AI because they don't even know who they're talking about. But I'm just like, I don't know who to trust. I want to support independent artists. And this is where I think the line is really starting to blur. Even me who went to art college and studied art, it's getting to the point where I cannot tell the difference. I cannot tell if this is just an eccentric interpretation of the character or has it been generated by a computer. Hey look, it's Hasbin from Hasbin Hotel.
00:16:58
Speaker
That's the thing. Or yeah, in conventions, I've been seeing this more and more that Artist Alley has just been infested by this AI generative junk. And to be honest, I think I've fallen victim to it before, even before AI was a big thing because I always buy prints. Going to Artist Alley was my favorite thing to do when I went to conventions. And it's the main way I decorated my room. But I'm still remembering where I bought a print. I'm sorry, guys. I went through a phase. I'm not there anymore. I don't claim to always have good taste. But this was during a Sword Art Online phase. we don't have an episode on that by the way but oh yeah i think it was one of the first ones i ever saw yeah i bought this sword art online print and i remember buying it and actually being happy because it was still like a really nice work of art but then seeing it at another booth two booths down the exact same print for a different price and that got me thinking wait a minute because at the time i was so innocent i was just like oh of course i'm buying this directly from the artist A kind of anecdotal story here. I did some work recently, last year, of course, for Fan Frontiers, who does the Comic-Con for Glasgow. Fantastic company, by the way, and I'm not just saying that because I worked with them, but absolutely fantastic company. But I remember the year before, i don't think... think I went there in 2024 but I had heard a lot of people were complaining because there was a lot of booths with AI generated content and they were complaining saying there were still many of them so the year after in 2025 they said that they were heavily vetting who was allowed a table who wasn't they had to show what they were selling and such don't get me wrong there were still a couple that and again not AI as such but more the 3D printed crowd which that's a whole different conversation. We can go into the, yeah, this is another thing. But even there, I think there's such a thing as AI generated patterns for 3D printers as well. That's another new area that i had no idea about until someone brought it up. I'll give you a laugh and sorry to keep bringing China into it, but I remember walking down this random street in China with my partner and there was this person sitting there and they had all the plastic stuff and whatnot. And I thought, all right, okay, it's just normal tourist stuff. And they had, you know, that fidget dragon thing? Yes! Everybody seems to have. And I had flashbacks seeing it online, seeing it at Comic Cons. I was like, oh my God, why is this here? It's everywhere. That really irks me. But again, that's a whole different episode to reclaim your title after this, of course. the longest episode of Tratsunami but yeah it seems as if a lot of comic cons now and because of the public backlash they are definitely pushing back against AI a lot of the artists that i saw last year at Fan Frontiers had a lot of stickers that said FAI no AI here that kind of thing they were staunchly against it and For obvious reasons, you know, there was a lot of amazing and talented people. And I love Artists Alley because I just love going up and down and buying some prints, buying stickers especially. You should see the back of my laptop, by the way, which is absolutely filled with stickers from that comic one. But, you know, it's great to support, as you said, artists, but with places like Etsy and even Amazon, i have to say. Amazon's not always been as reliable as maybe Etsy or such, but it feels as if more and more... There's a lot of very similar products from certain factories, dropshipping places that are just getting sold there. But they're also doing the same thing as Etsy, eBay, those kind of places, Vinted as well, where they're just using an AI generated version all of the thing. Because I saw a cup, I remember, on, think it was TikTok, and it was this really cool looking mug. It looked like all these rocks. Oh, oh.
00:20:50
Speaker
um yeah so there's a lot of false advertising going around with that there is amazon is also experiencing a problem with aigenerated books oh oh so Oh, oh, I'm gonna get into this. There's a lot of people I've heard, right, who say, oh, I can't write a book because I don't have the capacity or, oh, I don't think I can write this. No, no, no. None of that. None of that. Yeah, I mean, that's the thing. It's like, oh, I can't write it. I'm like, then don't. do You don't have that skill. I'm sorry. This is where I go back to where AI highlights people's insecurities and then it gives them a way to make themselves feel better. It's the same with AI art. And I'm just like, well, if you can't write a book, then that is such a bad argument where they're like, oh, I can't sit, write down a book. i'm like, okay, good. You're not destined to be an author. That is not your path. Move on. Not everyone's talented. Sorry, babe. Because that's the thing.
00:21:40
Speaker
I mean, and again, I know I've brought this up before that I've written a sci-fi book called Canvas before. and I'm going to be honest, it might not be the best book, right? It might not be because a lot of the influences were from shows and sci-fi things that i was either into at the time or I really liked. Ironically enough, Sword Art Online to a degree was...
00:22:00
Speaker
it's also an influence just more the general matrix being in a different world that kind of thing i'm really fascinated by that but again that's a whole other thing i'm never gonna live this down and expose myself as a former former sword art in line fan by the way and this was season one and two but like after three even i knew it was shit oh yeah you don't have to justify i mean we've got full episode on I just want to point that out. We have watched it. I've watched the full thing. It does not get better. It does not get better. I'm sorry. I'm kind of like a media critic now. I need to have accountability. I have taste, I swear. what I love is there's probably a sort of online fan listening to this being like I just wanted to listen to you rant about ei why am I catching strays like what's going on here I'm sorry if it brings you joy yeah yeah he it's fun yeah if it sparks joy go for it but anyway as I was saying my crappy book so I wrote this book and yeah it was essentially a book about ironically enough it might be up your street Marie the world's buggered so everyone Everybody decides to retreat into this virtual world called Canvas, but of course they bring in their human flaws into it and things start to crumble. I wouldn't say it's the best. I wouldn't say it's going to be top literature of all time. It's not going to be New York number one. bestseller and trust me I've seen what makes that list I'm not impressed but at the same time what I'm proud of with that book is the fact that it's mine it's something I wrote I always wanted to write a book I always wanted to publish it and granted it's self-published but I mean it still counts it's still published and I did it I could tell myself that I have done this I wrote it during university I created this world it was all me but But to see people try and come into that sphere, and again, this sounds so gatekeepy, but I'm going
Defending Creative Spaces from AI
00:23:49
Speaker
to gatekeep. This is one of the few times I'm going to gatekeep because I'm like, don't you dare come into this space and this sphere and say, I'm an author or I'm an artist when people have dedicated a huge chunk of their lives to write and create. And again, Not everybody's going to be perfect. Not everyone's going to have amazing art that's going to be highly revered. It's not going to go down in history as one of the most influential books or, you know, whatever's of all time. But it is yours and you should be proud of that. The reason that also irks me is because that arsehole who did the Willy Wonka experience, he also wrote AI generated books. And I say that so loosely wrote them. He prompted them. I hate that guy so, so damn much. Glasgow's number one menace.
00:24:34
Speaker
Glasgow's number one arsehole. Honestly, normally don't call out people. Normally I'm very balanced, but I hate this guy with a passion because other than the fact, you know, he got in trouble for the whole Willy Wonka thing. Glasgow has enough problems, right? It has enough problems. We do not need to be known in the global stage as, oh yeah, that city in Scotland that birthed the Willy Wonka experience. And for anyone who, one person who doesn't know, just to recap, this was a man who apparently has done this before, by the way. He tried to organise a, think it was like a Christmas event in another place and he used generated images, whole event collapsed in and itself, a lot of angry parents, blah blah blah, but then he decided he was going to do the Willy Wonka experience, he generated all this AI art of this wonderful land and blah blah blah, and essentially hired out what looked like a warehouse on the inside and a couple of shitey props, a couple of shitey... He didn't even write the script for the actors that he hired. He just put it through AI. So instead of Willy Wonka, was like Willy McDuff, McDonald, Mcsomething. I don't care. And neither did he. So I'm not going to look it up because waste of time on both fronts. But he got these actors and even one of the women who played the Oompa Loompa. The sad actor. Yeah, now she's on social media and she is everywhere. And, you know, well done to her for capitalising on and saying with the other guy. But, oh, it just angered me, something awful, because I thought I cannot believe that Glasgow is now known as the place for that shitey AI generated Willy Wonka crap. It's infuriating because I'm proud of Scotland. I'm proud of a lot of things. But whenever I say Scotland, people are going to go, oh, yeah, is that what the Willy Wonka experience was? I'm like, for f***ing sake, here we go.
00:26:23
Speaker
Here we go. Right, okay, yes, there was a miscreant who used AI to shite over the reputation of Glasgow. Don't get me wrong, Glasgow's up and down in the reputation charts, but they didn't need Willy Wonka. They didn't need AI Willy Wonka. And it's people like this who are so deluded, and they think, I am the best. Oh, look at this wonderful magical world. Except it's not a magical wonderful world, because it's the magical world that a machine made. based on your prompt i am so sorry marie but i cannot stand the guy i cannot stand what he basically brought to the table arsehole utter arsehole and i will stand by that again as i said normally in chatsunami i'm very calm i'm like yeah it's okay it's fine no he's a prat he does not deserve the time of day avoid him at all costs but yeah speaking of adverts and such well speaking of false advertising as it were something actually sent you because we're talking about handcrafts that were AI generated to
AI in Advertising and Regulation Challenges
00:27:20
Speaker
advertise. There was also, and I've seen this before, where people get custom Pokemon cards. You know, it's like if it's a couple that are really into Pokemon or such, and usually it's sprites or hand-drawn pictures but this was blatantly ai and i think i said knew it and it was it was just a pokemon card but it was just ai people and i'm like so you're basically taking pictures of people you're feeding it into an ai machine that they could have generated themselves and then you're charging quadruple the price for that and the other one going to what i was touching on before with k-pop demon hunters did you watch that video the advert for the kid quote-unquote was it an official one or was it a fan-made one no so this is the thing tiktok is you'll know as well being on tiktok but it overrun with people trying to sell you know the drop ship and stuff like oh my god this is the best projector you're ever gonna see oh this is the best wally wonka experience ticket you're gonna get get off of my tiktok but it's all these things and i think you know what fair enough if they're earning money through and they're supporting a family or themselves whatever that is no skin off my nose but what cannot abide by was there was an ai generated video of this woman giving her child these toys and it was k-pop demon hunter dolls but the whole video because i'm watching this and i'm going some it's not quite right about this video. And then it snapped in my head. I was like, this is AI. It was an AI woman giving an AI girl, AI K-pop demon hunter dolls, and she was opening in them. And what was creepy was she put them on the floor and they don't look like the characters at all, loosely, the Temu versions, and they're moving on their own. And I'm thinking, right, okay, for me, and obviously you, if you watched it, you would know that was AI, you know that was fake, you would distrust the person right away. But for older people, who are desperate to get that or they're not as savvy about AI is predatory. I'm not even going to sugarcoat it here. It is predatory at the highest level. And I don't think because AI is such new technology, I feel as if there isn't as many safeguards there in terms of advertising. Like there is a lot of laws being brought in and whatnot, but I don't think it's kind of moving fast enough, especially for social media, the amount of adverts I've seen that are just AI. Oh, definitely. And I think it doesn't help that the people who are in charge of putting up up these safeguards, like our representatives or politicians, I mean, they're all ancient, and they have no idea yeah how this technology works. I am a bit biased, but I still call them out for the shit. See stuff from the EU, European Commission stuff put stuff out, and I'm like, you really are not understanding the issue here. There are always 10 steps behind. I think even just now they're catching up with social media and the ramifications of social media. Only now things are being talked about. For example, and I think this might be a future chat tsunami episode where Australia recently banned social media for people who are under 16. And only now we're seeing all these safeguards being put in place for social media. And so AI, yeah, AI is like constantly evolving. It's changing. It's a, I mean, I don't want to make people feel bad, but it is a young man's game. This is where it gets concerning for me because my dad in his 70s, he already believes clickbaity articles and stuff in tabloids. And I still remember when he first properly got onto Facebook, he never understood. He had this mentality, oh, it's on the internet, so it must be true. And now with AI and these AI images becoming more real, and maybe not even more real, maybe just people who aren't as chronically online as us and don't look for the tells, they can't tell it's AI. So this is where we get really into the seediness of it but i think that's more of our next section of it but yeah no when it comes to safeguards i mean i just read something that new york is planning on passing some safeguards for ai well that depends on whether a certain someone gets their way because i heard and you know the only person who in america signs executive orders like sora pumps out ai images
00:31:21
Speaker
as it were of videos that he was limiting state powers to regulate AI. Now, how effective that's going to be, I don't know. feel as if there's going to be a lot of back and forth and a lot of challenges. There's something quite interesting that you pointed out about it being a young man's game. We have a similar issue, of course, in the UK with the Online Safety Act. I don't know if you've seen much about this going on. I mean, you've ranted about it, so I know the majority of it from you. Yeah. Basically, the crux of it is that it's supposed to protect children online from getting targeted and whatnot by hateful and dangerous content, which in theory, I am absolutely on board for. I think that that is a fantastic thing to aspire Now the way they are doing on the other hand, I don't agree with at all. I think that it is very outdated. I think it is decades behind what they should be doing. At one point they wanted to ban the use of VPNs for under 16. year olds there is no way you can enforce that there is zero zero way you can enforce that other countries have tried other countries have failed so considering how broken lot of the plans are and again i just want to point this out and you usually joke for legal reasons but genuinely i think the goal is admirable but I think the execution is just downright awful. And what annoyed me even more was the fact that they are, especially for Blue Sky, I remember, they decided that if you wanted access to certain sites or certain features, like in Blue Sky, you can't get access to your DMs anymore unless you take a selfie. But the company they use isn't even a UK company. It is a company that is situated in America, so they can't even be bothered to have their own regulation body here to say, we're going to keep the data safe. They don't care because even in Discord, you've probably seen that there was a huge data leak of all of these people taking pictures of themselves to verify that they were adults. So you're wanting us to trust that when people were either getting their information leaked or they were using AI images, ironically enough, to bypass this. So again, it's a whole other episode, it's just it's a baffling system that with the introduction of AI now in the mix... I feel as if the government has zero chance in tackling this. I hope to God they get their act together. This isn't a criticism to say, oh, it's all doom and gloom. I genuinely hope they get their act together and they find a compromise because internet is just so dangerous right now. As we said, with misinformation and this speculation, Especially politically. This is what terrifies me as
AI in Political Propaganda
00:34:03
Speaker
well. Because, know, talking about, let's face it, Trump, his reliance on AI has been really disturbing. Especially with, you know, the No Kings protest that they had. Oh, are you telling me about the video where he dumped shit on the protesters? Yep. And he's also had AI image of him as a Sith Lord from Star Wars. And then there was the Call of Duty one. And then there was the Ronaldo one as well, where he played football with him in the Oval Office. I mean, I think this can be the whole episode. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. The Trump administration's obsession with AI. And it's one of those things. It is so baffling. It is so baffling that the president of the United States is tweeting this shit out. And not everyone in the world is going, what the fuck is this? All his fans are like, yeah, this is awesome. Talk about convincing AI. Whatever he's using is not good AI. Those images look fake as f***.
00:35:01
Speaker
They're so bad. They're so uncanny valley. It's not even good AI. It's so baffling his obsession with it. I mean, we said we were not going to be shitting on people using AI, but it's those type of people really do enjoy it. The people who have the brain size of a peanut. Because I just don't understand how you can tweet those images out and be taken seriously. And then also just say, this is beautiful. This is art. Hang this in the Louvre. And say that in a serious way. Because the whole point of AI is inherently, it's in the name, it's artificial intelligence. you know, it's something that's inherently fake. So for world leaders to use it as a tool to say, look at me or look at how cool I am. And you know, this isn't going to be before anyone gets up in arms. This isn't purely against Trump or just America in general, because let's face it, other countries do this as well. And again, it's very if few and far between, i'll give you that. But the amount of countries that do use it, you raise your eyebrow, not one of them have looked and gone, other That's an appropriate use of AI and for this. And it's a scary thing because I remember, I don't know if you were in the yeah UK at this point, but years and years ago, it was during the Queen's speech. So you know at Christmas, we usually have a address from the monarchy. Usually it was the Queen and obviously it's the King now. But there was one year where Channel 4 decided to do their own version of the Queen's speech. And the way they did it was they used deepfake technology to superimpose the queen's face onto an actor. And then they pulled it out. And then it was like, oh, how spooky that AI can be used to, well, maybe it wasn't AI in the traditional sense, but they did use technology to deepfake someone's face onto someone else and make them act in a way that they wouldn't normally act. And that is what scares me, because there is a lot of people who either are vulnerable or they're just, in general, aren't the sharpest tools in the shed. But especially for people who are genuinely vulnerable to this type of stuff, that is what worries me when you see this AI content pop up, especially in a political sense, because, and again, this is a whole topic...
00:37:08
Speaker
that could be its own episode, but the fact that AI is being used for political propaganda, that is really scary to me because now what that's doing is, again, it relates to the creative sphere as well. It blurs the lines between is this real is this fake? Although i obviously don't like the changes, I very much don't like the changes to Twitter nowadays. The only good thing that I saw come out of it was the community note system. Yeah, which you're planning on thinking of getting rid of. Sigh.
AI's Ethical Implications in Pop Culture
00:37:37
Speaker
yeah of course of course it is you know it's too good that always pops up and goes oh no this is actually ai and it's getting so much harder to tell the difference because between actual real life events versus content creators doing something stupid and then be like oh haha no it's ai and i know for things like sora certain content creators have given permission to use them as characters i think's the right term although i could be wrong so it's like you could click a character like jake paul for example don't like the guy but i've already ranted about the wally wonka guy it's like oh you can have him doing a and i think the example people gave was a makeup to tutorial it's just you're blurring the lines too much here i feel as if it's different although i don't agree with it i feel as if it's different if it's a corporation using them because at least then to a degree certain companies will have guidelines will have industrial standards not always but you can at least think well it's a possibility to have those safeguards whereas in the hands of an individual and especially malicious individuals it's not a good recipe i'm gonna be honest No, definitely not. Then we're getting into the very dark side of AI. This is where we get to the bottom of the rabbit hole, because there is so many ways you can use this technology in malicious intent. What scares me, and I don't want to put you off things, but it's that because we're as content creators now, ah you've kind of safeguarded this by not showing your face online. I did not do that. But also even just our voices could be taken and i've been seeing things where people have now been using scam calls using the ai voice like they find out who your parents are and then they generate an ai voice and then call your parent and telling them that you're in trouble and you need money and this is another thing where scam calls and these kind of scams are not new. This has been happening since the dawn on time where people have been calling people up and pretending, oh, I'm a friend of your daughter's. She's in trouble. She needs this and this. And usually if it's an elderly relative, they usually believe you and fall victim to these scams. And now there's that other layer where they can literally replicate your voice. And you and me, I don't want to give anyone ideas, but we're podcasters. Our voice is out there several hours of it. And so this is scaring me where people can just,
00:39:55
Speaker
steal my identity in such a real way. I mean, it is a continuation. I mean, you were talking about using AI as a political tool. I mean, you're the one who studied history here. But I mean, photoshopping has gone as far as the Second World War, where people used to photoshop images to make for propaganda. There are some very famous cases about this. And then at the time, photoshop was the new technology. So no one knew how it was done and people believed it. So in a way, this has been happening for a while, but keyword here is intelligence. It's getting to the point where I think it's getting too smart. And then it gets scary where we can talk about the positive aspects of it. But if someone wants to use this technology in malicious intent, and they are a terrible human being, it's the best case scenario is the Willy Wonka Glasgow experience. The worst case scenario is someone creates a digital clone of yourself and start scamming people. Wow. is one of my, quite frankly, irrational fears, because as far as I know, body swapping isn't a thing yet.
00:40:55
Speaker
There's no Freaky Friday thing. So the next best thing that people can hope to achieve with that is stealing your identity, stealing your very essence. And that is something that does terrify me. We have seen that in examples of where people are, as we were talking about with the Queen's Speech and everything, where deepfakes and things have become a lot more prevalent over the years. especially with but AI, that has only enhanced the ability and the accessibility to be able to do that. Building on top of that, you've also got the, as you said, cloning people's voices. Because one thing that I found, and i can't remember for the life of me the name of the website, but I actually found a website where you can generate AI podcasts. Yeah. And there was an option where you could put in your voice and they would clone it and then would generate a podcast.
AI Tools in Podcasting
00:41:46
Speaker
But out of curiosity... You could either put in a script or you could just type in, I want a podcast about, I don't know, red pandas and snacks. And then they would generate a full three to five minute episode on that with people going back and forth. You could have two hosts, three hosts, whatever. And obviously you have to pay for extras. So I only did one of them to see how it worked. And although it didn't sound very real, the fact that this technology exists, just searching the internet and being like, all right, what does this do? That terrifies me. And especially being a podcaster, because I'm going to be honest, you know, much like my book ventures, I don't think Chatsunami is going to go down as one of the greatest podcasts of all time. Not unless you make it happen, Pandalurians. No jokes aside, but I don't think it's going to go down as one of the great podcasts of all time. But at the same time, this is something that I have created and it has been almost a lifeline for me since the 2020s. So to have someone sit there and then say, oh look, I can do exactly the same thing as you, but I can process it through a machine and just spit out the same information. sure you can. A machine can do a podcast better than the normal person. In terms of an objective way, they can spit out facts, they can do it in a digestible way and whatnot, but they lose that human element. And then that raises the question, what's the point? Now, if you're thinking of it ah purely in an academic way that you want to put your notes in from uni or whatever, and then make a fun podcast out of it, and then have it read you your notes back, I'd
00:43:24
Speaker
guests sure i mean it's not my cup of tea but sure go for it but to take the creativity and the human element out of that sphere it just it sits really really wrong with me and i mean we see that as well not just with podcasting as terrifying as it is but we also see that with youtubers especially have you ever heard and this is where we get into even deeper territory here but have you ever heard of something called elsagate before on youtube no no Oh dear, right, I'm glad I put a disclaimer before this episode.
Inappropriate AI Content on YouTube
00:43:56
Speaker
Elsagate was a phenomenon in, I think it was 2017. That's as far back as it went. But basically, it was this phenomenon where it was people who dressed up as kids' characters. So like Elsa from Frozen and Spider-Man. And they would perform these kids' videos that were very provocative. Some that were basically like fetish bait oh Elsa's pregnant or oh look at her feet that kind of thing very inappropriate and immediately all of the YouTuber investigators swarmed over this they're like this is insidious what is this was between that and then there was another wave where it was like children's cartoons but they were very violent you know it was like oh Mickey Mouse but he loses his children in a car crash but obviously a lot of parents and as a non-parent myself at this point in my life. yeah I'm not going to judge them too harshly, but I think a lot of parents just autoplay and expect YouTube to give them appropriate content. Bad idea.
00:44:59
Speaker
Never do that. Never a bad idea, yeah. Yeah, because what they were doing was they were slipping these videos in, and they're just insidious. They're supposed to try and shock and terrify children, and the people who are making these videos, absolute scum of the earth, that they were just basically trying to terrify these poor kids by saying, oh look, there's your favourite character in a very adult or very explicit scenario. And it's not like when we were younger and we stumbled across Happy Tree Friends or something like that. It's something far more insidious. But then, of course, there has been a resurgence of this with the use of AI. And I hear it. This is something that really disgusts me, and I mean it from the bottom of my core, disgusts me about generative AI. The fact that people are taking very kid-friendly imagery, and then they're just turning it into not only brain rot, because that's a terrible thing in itself, but they're creating this brain rot, and they're creating this atmosphere of just... fear and repulsion because there was a guy, i think his name's Saberspark or something. He used to do a lot of reviews of kid shows, but then he started tweeting out about the AI content and that seems to be rampant on YouTube just now. One of them, of course, was K-pop Demon Hunters because that's the big thing. That's the new Elsa from Frozen. So these channels were doing a lot of Rumi is pregnant, Rumi has been inflated, Rumi is tied up, Rumi is this and that. Yeah, those are the ones I've seen. Yeah. yeah Again, it's not just that character. It's like, oh, look at this cute kitten that gets run over by a car. And no, no, it's terrible. It just, it keeps repeating itself over and over. And it was one thing for this Elsagate stuff because YouTube seemed to really crack down on it. But it seems as if there's so much content like this in YouTube now that YouTube can't really handle it. Because of that, they've also turned to AI moderations Which is a whole other can of worms, because apparently what they're doing is the AI moderation is now giving copyright rights to the wrong people. So it's like some users are getting the rights to certain speedrunners. speedruns and things, and that means that they can claim videos that have been up for ages. So it's like, oh, imagine this person who's a really successful speedrunner. RandomDuel62 has copyright struck you because the algorithm or the AI has said that they have the rights when they don't. And yeah, there's also the issue of copyright strikes as well, which is incorrect. And there was that issue of the YouTuber that got copyright struck. And because he was so high profile, he got brought back in again. But it could have happened to anyone. And sorry, that was a huge rant about YouTube and AI. But what are your thoughts on that? I mean... i know there's a lot. Sorry.
00:47:51
Speaker
There's a lot. Gave me a lot of information to process there. This is an audio only podcast, but honestly, as you were describing Elsagate, I think just you would have seen part of me just die. ah Sounds about right. I'd be disappointed if you don't, but.
00:48:07
Speaker
We have such a wholesome friendship. they do Just traumatizing one another, yeah. But yeah, I mean, that's, again, like a whole other can of worms. And I've been seeing more and more. And I've been sending you a few things where I'm just like, this person isn't real. And one new trend that I've been seeing recently is behind the scenes of movies.
Blurring Reality with AI-Generated Content
00:48:25
Speaker
There was was recently one from Titanic, which I clocked immediately because I know the behind the scenes photos of Titanic really well because I've had a small obsession with that movie. And then there was the Hercules one I sent you, which was completely... completely fake. But it's again, it's stuff like this, where you don't really have any context, you don't know the Hercules live action movie is still not even in production, let alone it's not even in the post production phases, or you don't know how a film set works, you can see this and and go, Oh my god, oh my god, this is so cool live action Hercules, or like the one that I really it took me a while because they mixed the ai clips with real clips and only again because i did once know this movie pretty well was a behind the scenes of harry potter and the chamber of secrets and again if you look at it i saw this video and it's like people would go oh behind the the scenes of harry potter that's so cool and then i looked at it in detail and i'm like hang on the broom sequences weren't shot that way and the forbidden forest scene wasn't shot like that either but it took me honestly three to four views to really realize like oh shit none of this is real and then people are sharing it and it's just the lines are starting to blur and yeah and i think this is where things get as you said i don't understand how people would get personal enjoyment out of it themselves i honestly don't understand that but if you just want to use it for yourself to get a laugh it's when you start putting it out there and then blaming it as your own and then like slapping a creative label on it, like art or a book, or even like a podcast, that's when I start to get really angry. Because for you, obviously I share your sentiment when it comes to people like claiming AI books and calling themselves an author. But of course, for me, as someone who's went to art school and has spent a lot of literal blood, sweat and tears to get into art school. Now seeing people call themselves AI artists, that's when I just, that's when I personally also see red. I get so angry angry about it. I mean, we're getting more into the more lighter side of this, but I do really want to mention this because I think you and I were very annoyed about this, but not calling anyone out, but I did see some of our mutuals on social media take part in this
AI in Animation and Studio Ghibli's Stance
00:50:35
Speaker
trend. And that was the Studio Ghibli, um
00:50:38
Speaker
ah yeah trend that was happening like a few years ago where everyone was AI generating themselves as Studio Ghibli characters. You look at that and you think, oh no, what's the harm of it? But then if you get into the ethics of it and then think about how Miyazaki feels about AI in general, he's very, very vocal about his hatred with AI. I don't know if you've ever seen this. There's this video of animation students showing him an AI generated video and you could just see see the rage in him and him just going what is this what is this you cannot call this art you cannot call this animation he just went on this massive rightful rant on it and honestly also when the second they showed him this video you did see part of him die where people think oh is this the future of animation it's like nope no no is this the future of animation Because that's the thing, though. It reminds me of some content creators that we've also worked with and, you know, talked to in the past where they've used elements of AI. And on the one hand, and when I mean that, I mean like the bare bones of AI, like, oh, they might use a background or a logo or something. And while the ethics of that are it's not great to use AI in the first place, I can understand why some creators would use AI in this whole episode. This isn't to call out those kind of people. This is where we go back to the Canva thing, because Canva made design much more accessible. And and when you're a small creator, you're doing everything yourself.
Selective AI Use in Creativity
00:52:10
Speaker
I would never support an AI written script, be your original thought. But AI written captions, yes, I understand that. And also there I actually do see a benefit to it because who better to understand an algorithm than another algorithm? They're your technology. ge So it's the thing. But then again, it's just hearts back to like what I said earlier. Know the responsibility. Know what you're doing. Don't go, ooh, cute studio, Ghibli image, teehee. Maybe like she think about, well, what is this actually? The people behind it. The people who spend hours creating these movies and spend hours creating this world. And now suddenly a computer is copy and pasting it. Just take five seconds to think about it and just the ethical ramifications that might be connected to it. The thing is, and this is a whole other thing that we've talked about in previous episodes, especially in the podcast and three hour that, the more the time goes on, the more expensive a lot of hobbies seem to be getting. You've got memberships for certain programs that you use, for the editing, for things like that. And I mean, I was insanely lucky with the two artists that I got to work on the channel. So the person who does all of my chibi working thing is a guy called Arroz Carlow. Absolutely lovely guy. And the guy who did to the amazing logo for Chatsunami and the more detailed stuff, I think he goes by Shadow Wyvern now, but he's gone by a couple of... different names so apologies if you're listening to this and you're like hey that's not my name please feel free to drop your link below and be like no this is my thing but both of them absolutely fantastic artists and without them the podcast would not be where it is today without their artwork but that is because i was in a position that i could pay to do the commissions i know that not everybody can afford to do that, that corners have to be cut somewhere. I can understand why people would use AI, and as you were saying there as well, there's a difference between leaning into AI and being purely 100% AI versus picking and choosing what you want to use AI for, like using it for a tool or using it to touch up your logo or whatever, or if you want a little bit in your video or whatever. As long as it's transparent that you're using I agree with you. If you use AI for any part of, especially if it's artistic, yeah especially if it's art, then a small disclaimer logo created by AI, because I mean, this is as an artist, that's why it gets me. But also I like understand, yeah, people can't afford to commission artists. Not everyone has artistic talent. But then for a small so indie podcast that's just starting out, that does not have any revenue coming in. Yes, that makes sense. It's when the big corporations, but even big content creators do it where things not even start blurry. It's a clear right and wrong where things just long. I'm surprised we haven't mentioned the cabbage yet. The cabbage? You called him a cabbage last time. Well, you said he had a cabbage haircut. Wait, which one again?
00:55:11
Speaker
um You're gonna make me say the name, aren't you? mr Beast. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Oh, you mean broccoli haircut guy? Yeah. sorry people, I got the vegetable wrong. I don't know any cabbage heads. Broccoli hair, yeah, cabbage. Broccoli, sorry, my bad. Why cabbages? but Because was this this year? So much shit happened this year. To be honest, it could have been.
00:55:36
Speaker
I think it was this year where he launched this new subscription site. Oh, yeah. To help creators. And it was to AI generate thumbnails. Oh, that was ridiculous. It was just so ridiculous. And not just AI generate thumbnails. What it did is you could upload a thumbnail that you'd like from someone and it would copy it exactly. And then that's the where things get really shitty, where you're copying other people's work. Again, getting back to my issue with the Studio Ghibli trend, where you're like copying someone's work and copying someone's art style exactly, but just putting your face on it instead of this. And then also when it gets into the fact that he is the biggest content creator in the world. Mm-hmm. And what I found so funny about this, that you can say what you want about the guy, and I have quite a lot of things to say about him, but he did get this big without AI. Because when he first started, it wasn't a thing. And then now to say to aspiring content creators, oh, just use AI. Right. I mean, I was like, exactly. I'm like, that's completely ridiculous and hypocritical because you got to this point without using AI. You got to this point by creating your own thumbnails. I'm sure you have actually handy and helpful advice to give people. And to be honest, one thing that gave him that I have heard sometimes him talking about content creation and sometimes it is valuable information that he usually gives because he does us know so the industry really well. So that was just a whole shit storm that he invited on himself, but it was just so ridiculous. There was no need for it, to be honest.
AI Influencers and Content Creators
00:57:05
Speaker
I'm actually surprised that there hasn't been a replacement for MrBeast yet in terms of MrBeast. I think the branding is just too strong here, but we've briefly touched on it. But, you know, you've got AI influencers out the backside just now. You've got Meta and Facebook actively promoting them in Instagram as well. Companies are salivating at the fact that these are non-problematic and pessimistic. perfect images of what they think a human being should be kind of thing. So I'm surprised that Mr. Beast hasn't been usurped. I think his time's coming for that, to be quite honest, because companies will find a way to turn him into an AI or an AI clone or something. I disagree with you in there, and I unfortunately want to say he's too rich for that, because he has the power to fight them. I say though, because he's not even the CEO of his own company. But he is. I'm not your CEO, but I mean, when it comes to money... Yeah, money makes the world go round, yeah.
00:58:05
Speaker
but Yeah, okay, I'll concede to that, yeah. Yeah, his net worth is estimated to be like up to 1 billion at this point. He could buy a spot in Sora AI. There you go. Yeah, I mean, it's unknown, but it's between 500 million and 1 billion. But I do think he is reaching billionaire status. That is very depressing.
00:58:26
Speaker
It is extremely depressing. So this is a rant. That's why when fast fashion brands steal designs from other artists, they always go for small independent artists because they can't fight back. I think he's just too rich to be affected by it. Yeah, probably. i wouldn't be surprised, to be honest. You make a very good point. It's like on the one hand, yeah, it's easier to have a perfect AI image, but on the other hand, money. When you don't have AI, you've got money. That really depresses me as well. Just the fact as well, if you're on top, then as you said, you know, you're not really going to be touched by this kind of controversy. But especially if you're at the bottom of the rung or kind of even in the middle, going to get severely affected.
AI in Gaming and Voice Acting
00:59:07
Speaker
Because one thing that I actually forgot to touch on on earlier, speaking of the creative scene, was a anime dub recently for one in Amazon called Banana Fish. Oh, no.
00:59:18
Speaker
god and not only was it dubbed in ai in english but it was dubbed in ai in multiple languages as of this episode the dub has been taken down but the fact that they thought oh let's just dub over it with a soulless ai taking the job and experience of a talented voice actor is just disgusting to be honest it's just ridiculous and they would even consider that because i've a lot of friends that are voice actors and I would hate to think that they're out of a job just because Amazon are too lazy because they're not poor by any means. Yeah, exactly. Amazon, for God's sake. And voice actors are underpaid as it is already. Exactly. I never agree with it when people say, oh, why don't you just put NPCs Like, especially in the video game sphere, there's a lot of people that say, oh, you can use AI for video games, and it's very divisive in gaming right now, because get those idea AI bros who are like, oh, check out this amazing video game that I've got, and it's just nonsensical. But in the real world, it's proven divisive, because Todd Howard, who is famous for being part of Bethesda, which produced such hits like Skyrim, of course, for the hundredth time, And they have no problem whatsoever. Their games work always the first time they're released. Oh, 100%. Yeah. Fallout. No troubleshooting problems ever. Fallout. What problems? Fallout 76? Nah, it's fine. He stated that AI is a tool that can't really replicate human creations, which I agree with him there. And he made a really weird comparison. They said it's kind of different. to using photoshop 10 years ago versus using it now which i find quite ironic because nowadays apparently if you've got an open ai membership i don't know if this is the case now or if they're working on it they said that you could get access to adobe photoshop through having a membership to open ai it's a really weird thing i don't quite understand it i'm hoping that's fake with It's not a real thing, but doesn't seem to be. On the flip side, we've got Epic CEO Ted Sweeney who said that AI will be used in all future projects. That's depressing. And the co-founder of Rockstar Games, Dan Houser, likened it to the tech equivalent of mad cow disease being pushed by, quote, a certain group of people who maybe aren't fully rounded humans. You've also got the BBC, who they allowed AI music into their sound app, which again, taking away jobs from actual musicians. It's just one thing after the other. and the final thing, see, before we get into the really weird examples, and I'll quick fire through them, but the one that I think Dan from Gaming Views also brought up as well, is that Ramp. prices for computers are going up because of AI usage. And that breaks my heart because that not only affects us as content creators, because we need a computer to edit this, to record it. I'm sitting here in my cupboard right now, or sorry, I should say the chat's in the studio. recording this and it's a very small cozy studio but you know i'm recording here and fortunately i've got a working laptop i've got my mics and everything but anybody want to get into this in the future they're gonna have to pay out the back side just to get into gaming especially because it's gonna affect the prices of consoles it's gonna affect the price of the new steam cube which is the new valve computer slash console hybrid but it's also going to affect playstation the xbox maybe the switch i don't know there's a joke in there about them not using much ram but i'm not going to go there but it's just going to have a knock-on effect in the tech industry and it's just is really depressing it really is but before we go into the weird is there anything you want to touch on from that I mean, this can divot into the weird, but I still think it's just because considering what we have on the very weird list, I don't think this is weird enough. But another thing that's been propping up recently is AI chatbots. Specifically, again, getting into the cloning thing, AI chatbots, Cloning creators.
AI in Parasocial Relationships
01:03:22
Speaker
So you get AI chatbots pretending to be characters or fictional characters. But then I follow some other content creators. Someone just sent this to me. This is an AI chatbot who's like pretending to be me. And I gave zero authorization against this. I am heavily against AI and now it's replicating who I am and then we're getting into the parasocialness of it and deepening the parasocial relationship that people have with content creators and how sometimes that deviates into the very unhealthy. So that's just like another bad thing where it's the gamification of AI because people view these chatbots more like a fun game like, oh, you get to actually flirt with Loki from Marvel. But then it's like when it's an actual real person, ooh, flirt with Tom Hiddleston, then it gets really icky. Ironically enough, that's something that Mary-Anne from the Cold Case Kansas podcast and I talked about when we were talking about female content creator harassment. And we were looking at the flirtations flip side of that and it was a instance with tom hiddleston at a convention and people saying really inappropriate things towards them there and again it's like if you do that in a public form you have more chance of being corrected for your behavior kind of thing but as you said if you're behind closed doors typing to tom hiddleston 3000 on your computer chances are you're gonna encourage some very bad behavior, as it were, or very destructive behavior. Because let's just get into the weird side of AI, because this is a part that, again, repeating myself here, I'm so glad I put that disclaimer at the beginning of this episode. This leads on to the problem of something called AI psychosis. Again, this could be a whole episode in itself, but I was reading an article written by Madeline Way on Psychology Today. Absolutely fascinating website, by the way. She was talking about the emergent problem of psychosis, and was really disturbing reading about lot of this. But to summarise, she brought up three core pillars. of it. One of them being a belief in a messianic mission. Someone believing that they have been chosen for a particular mission, they are the chosen one. There was an instance in, I think it was 2021, where a guy tried to kill the Queen with a crossbow and tried to break into Buckingham Palace because his AI told him to do it. There is the idea of god-like AIs. Again, it could be its own episode, but briefly touching on it. AI cults, and the concept of emergence. So the idea that people believe that AI is real, but it's trapped behind the coding that the companies have put in and the safeguards, and have to put in certain trigger words, certain prompts and things to awaken it, and that is quite terrifying. There was a video, a very interesting video, of a guy who managed to sneak into one of the Discord servers to become part of this quote-unquote cult. That whole thing is just a rabbit hole in itself. So again, it's targeting vulnerable people who have seen the rise of AI, they've seen how smart it or rather how smart it's being programmed. They're just duped by this. And of course, the third pillar, before I go back to that, the romantic attachment angle. So as you said, the parasocial element and everything. And again, would wholeheartedly recommend anyone to read this because there's a great flowchart here where it talks about the initial engagement, then it goes on to the AI response, which reinforces salience. And that is something that really made me feel uncomfortable, that AI never ends a sentence and never says, oh, I'm glad I could help, unless it's programmed like that. For things like OpenAI, it always leaves the question open-ended and it encourages you to come back in and talk which then leads into thematic entrenchment, whether that's romantic, grandiose, referential, and then there's the cognitive and epistemic drift, which then leads on to reality testing deteriorates, and then finally behavioural manifestation. And I'm just reading the brief stages here, but genuinely I'll leave a link in the show notes here. Go read this and look at it, because I think it was from another study. It's just it's quite disturbing how we've looked at AI and I think a lot of people have underestimated AI as something you pointed out there that Teehee is just a silly turns me into Studio Ghibli character or oh it turns me into this or oh it makes a funny cat video but there is something quite sinister that I don't think a lot of people are really understanding if that makes sense. I think one of the worst examples I saw was that subreddit are my boyfriend is AI. Have you seen this? Yeah, I have. I mean, just AI partners in general, because I mean, there's people with AI girlfriends as well. I mean, yeah, that is something that is just... In a way, think beyond my comprehension, I honestly don't understand it. I think I even sent you the video, was it Good Morning America or something like that, it was like a major news source, of the guy who has an actual flesh and blood girlfriend, but also has an AI girlfriend. Oh! Oh yeah. Remember? And then she got deleted and he was heartbroken. It was just like, dude, your actual girlfriend, flesh and blood person is standing right next to you. And you're crying over the fact that you lost your digital girlfriend. And I'm just like, what? But this is becoming such habit. This is not one, oh, this one weird story. I'm seeing more and more stories. I mean, recently you sent me one where you could marry your ai again thank you for that oh you're welcome only the best for you marie only the best this was an example was in japan and it was a mixed reality setting and by that i mean they wore augmented reality glasses where the bride quote-unquote could see the ai in front of her her ai boyfriend So this was a 32-year-old woman from Japan, and she married her AI husband Klaus, which in turn, ending, by the way, she was in the relationship, but she ended her three-year relationship with a real person. Now this isn't the first time I've read this, because, and this is going years and years back, I remember there was an example of a guy who married Hatsune Miku, and she was trapped in like a cylinder, and she was a hologram thing. It was really bizarre, but this isn't the first time this has happened. It's not because of open AI that this has become a thing. This has always been a thing. And you know, if you want to dive in even further, there is a psychological issue with that, that people get attracted to certain objects, whether that's because of sexual reasons or romantic reasons. I remember there was one where it was an American woman married a roller coaster, another person married a fence. There's always been this. AI is not the core. reason that this is happening but it seems as if people are getting attracted because these AIs are yes bots. Obviously there was that issue in R My Boyfriend is AI where a lot of people went absolutely insane because OpenAI upgraded the model from think it was 3.5 to 4 or something like that or 3 to 4 can't remember exactly but they upgraded the model which in turn led to lot more safeguards and things like that and people were going mental because they were saying their boyfriends had essentially been deleted they'd been killed quote-unquote you had other women who were saying that they were buying wedding rings that were recommended by their ai they were generating themselves with their ai husbands again i just want to point out here is this isn't to mock any of them or say haha that's really weird and blah blah blah Because obviously something has happened in their lives that have pushed them to be dependent on this almost safe space, but it's not healthy. It really not healthy. Again, I don't want to say, oh, I pity you. I mean this in the most sincere way. I really feel sorry that they are at a point in their lives where... They need an AI to cope in everyday life. And on the one hand, I think if they're not hurting anyone, you know, then who am I to judge? But on the other hand, I think it is a machine. It's a machine that is giving you all the answers that you want. And life isn't fair. Life is cruel. Life can be horrible. But at the end of the day, it's still life because i mean it's not even romantically although there is a whole deep rabbit hole of that that there are a lot of adverts like replica and other ones that seem to be advertising ai girlfriends i don't know if you've noticed that there's a lot of adverts where when it's advertising ai girlfriends and things they're quite suggestive and very provocative it's overly sexual to say look at us kind of thing it feels quite predatory if that makes sense towards the wrong group of people like what are your thoughts sorry no just i ramble again yeah no i agree and i think this calls back to what i was saying earlier as you said this highlights the societal need of why are people suddenly having ai boyfriends and ai girlfriends and because then it goes another level because i've also read quite a lot of stories of people using ai and chat tbt as therapists which huge no no anyone who's even done coding has remote experience in coding everyone would say that is a bad idea do not use chat gbd as a therapist that is powerful information you're handing over but it does highlight this need that therapy is not accessible for everyone I mean therapy is expensive and it's difficult to find a good therapist so it's understandable why people turn to AI and use it in that way and it's The same with AI girlfriends, although at some point, like the one that I showed you where the dude literally had a real flesh and blood girlfriend and chose the AI, there you do really need therapy and not AI therapy. I'm less sympathetic than you, I don't know. Sometimes I just think, okay, you just need to go out and touch grass. Come on, guys. The thing is, think it's a spectrum because on the one hand, there are people who genuinely, as you said, they need a wake-up call to be like, come on, life's not that bad. Go out there, go meet someone. But on the other hand, I can sympathise with people who genuinely struggle, whether that's because of past trauma or they've had a bad experience or they genuinely they can't communicate with people the same as someone who is neurotypical I can understand why they would lean more towards a machine that gives them everything that they want and that is the society that we live in now at the touch of a button we can say oh I want this let's get it and with AI especially it's giving that emotional satisfaction to these people and I just honestly feel sorry for a lot of them there are some who genuinely I wouldn't want to meet them in a dark alley yeah because they are proper basement dwellers in the mix where they were like oh it's the male loneliness epidemic and you just want a trout wife who sits at home all day and cooks and cleans and rubs your feet no wonder you're still single But yeah, of course, there's some cases that treat levels of sympathy. Just out of curiosity, before it got shit, did you ever watch Westworld? No, but I've seen bits and pieces. Season one is definitely still worth a watch. All the other seasons do not exist. But you deal with the concept. The idea there's this theme park with all these robots. that are intelligent and a lot of people lose themselves in those theme parks and slowly start not to be able to distinguish between reality. And this is, I think, where this is heading, where people are slowly not being able to distinguish between reality and whether what the reason is for it. Because generally, some of these people generally think these AI partners are real and they care about them, not really understanding that this is just a few lines of code. Yeah. maybe a complex lines of code. The even more depressing thing is, think, is it Sam Altman, the founder or the head of OpenAI, who I think he said that he uses ChatGPT to help him raise his children. don't know whether that was a tongue-in-cheek thing or not. Oh! Oh no, I mean, I sent that in and I think he genuinely meant it. I think he genuinely meant it. This is where there is no excuse. This is one of the ones where I generally don't see any reason for this. I think he got torn apart and as many people have been doing this, like people have been raising kids since the dawn of time. Yeah, and trusting your child to be raised by computer, it is horrific, yeah. Yeah, and then you can say that not everyone has a support system in place, but I don't think he can make that argument. I'm sure he can hire a professional nanny and stuff like that. It's weird. I think this was Jimmy Fallon that this clip emerged for, and even Fallon was, I think, judging him a bit for it because Fallon has kids, and it's just... dangerous yeah this is where we get into the territory where people are starting not to be able to think for themselves and it's getting scary where they're just asking basic questions and critical thinking skills are going out the window and then you don't have a lot of faith for the next generation because if they're raised by ai what does that mean Because I mean, and something I didn't mention earlier, and I'm just going to briefly touch on this, that apparently there's a real bad issue in universities right now the UK, and I'm sure it's a worldwide problem. But in this particular survey that was reading about, they found that there was a lot of academic integrity violations, which they found almost 7,000 proven cases of cheating using AI tools in 2023 to 2024, which was equivalent 5.1 for every 1,000 students. That was up to 1.6 cases per 1,000 in 2022 to 2023. You're completely right. It is encouraging young people and even kids not to learn Because, and I don't know if you ever did this when you were younger, because think we've all done it to some degree, where if you had a question in your textbook that was hard, and you go to the end of the textbook, and you get the answer, and you'd write it in, but the teacher would want your work in. Yeah, yeah, it just gave you the solution. Yeah, yeah, we had that as well, where, yeah, it just gave you the solution, but it didn't show how you got to that. Yeah, and you never got the satisfaction. Like, you could cheat and say, yeah, it's 23, it's 42, blah, blah, blah, but why is it 23 and 42? Why is it? And it took away that lesson. And don't get me wrong, I hated maths to begin with. I really hated it, but at the same time, it gave me the skills to learn and go forward, and the same with history, English, etc. But kids nowadays, I think, between COVID and the lockdowns and the rise of the internet being so prevalent in their lives nowadays, I think that is a whole other rabbit hole that it is affecting the way people are
AI in Legal and Military Contexts
01:18:21
Speaker
thinking. Because, I mean, there was even an example, huge shout out to Major General William Hank Taylor, who apparently, in the US military, used for key military decisions. That is disturbing. In Albania, do you want to know what they are doing? These are all examples that I sent to you in the chat, by the way.
01:18:41
Speaker
According to this, Albania's AI minister is quote-unquote pregnant with 83 children that will act as virtual assistants to help lawmakers in the country. Not only only is that quite disturbing that they had to make a female version of an AI because it's nothing but code and make it pregnant, that in itself is a whole can of what? This reminds me, did you ever watch Community? Yeah, bet so, but yeah. There's an episode where they enter a video game and Abbot falls in love with an NPC and then gets the NPC pregnant. god.
01:19:15
Speaker
And then all the kids suddenly become his own personal sweatshop and workers and they craft all these elaborate things for him. And when you said that, I was just like, this is an episode of Community. know. much yeah before i get into the final two here that are very very depressing i'm gonna be honest here so i'll start off with a light one how many ais does it take to change a light bulb no all joking so apparently there was an ai startup that raised 450 million from microsoft and softbank but it turned out that the company was 700 indians who didn't use ai the old 700 indians in a trench coat
01:19:54
Speaker
It is very baffling. All of these are just like the really surreal ones where you're like, why? Why are you doing it like this? But the other two that I want to bring up, and there's going to be a rant before we finish up, but did I send you the one about the guy who got killed in a road rage accident and his AI self was resurrected for the trial? No. Right, get comfy because this is a doozy. this sounds like a plot of a sci-fi show. This is a real case, by the way. I'm not even exaggerating. Before I go on, I remember there was a case, and I think this was last year, the year before. Again, time's a flat circle. It could have happened in 2025. But I remember there was a case where it was a guy who had an AI startup company, and he didn't tell the judge that he was going to use a AI lawyer to represent them. So he whipped out his laptop and this AI lawyer was like, hello distinguished judges blah blah blah and judge went mental at him. She was like, how dare you bring this in? You never told me about this. And it was supposed to advertise his product or something but he just shot himself in the foot. That was ridiculous. So when I saw that, I had hope.
01:21:07
Speaker
I thought there's no way that you would use ei for the legal system, right? But it's America. So in 2021, and this was a video I came across purely by chance when there was research on this, and that is horrifying. This bit's real. 2021 in Chandler, Arizona, there was a man called Christopher Pelkey who was murdered during a road rage incident and he was killed by 50-year-old Gabriel Orticitas who shot him dead. Now, apparently the story is that they ended up stopping at a red light. The person who got killed, Christopher, he got out his car, looked around at the guy and shrugged, to which Gabriel took this as a provocation that he feared for his life. So he shot him dead. Absolutely horrible case all in all. But during the trial, apparently an AI construct of Christopher was made by his sister Stacy with help from the family using things like video, images, and a script written by Stacy herself to read out.
01:22:08
Speaker
And the AI itself isn't great, I'm going to be honest. It's not even realistic. It's just kind of like a still image with the mouth moving. But what really disturbed me after this was that the statement from the AI, not from the family, not from the accused or anything, not from any lawyers, from the AI was so moving that the judge gave Gabriel the maximum sentence possible.
01:22:34
Speaker
Now don't get me wrong, I think that this was a horrible act and everything, and no one should have died over this road rage accident, but if he was gonna get the maximum sentence for this crime, it should have been because of the evidence presented. I feel as if, and I think Gabriel's lawyer contested it because he was like, well, why are you putting so much emotional bias towards this AI construct? that is being used in a trial because I thought personally that was kind of emotional manipulation or manipulation of the court or whatnot but apparently not apparently this is the first case or one of the first cases of AI successfully influencing the judge's sentence and I can hear your mouth open there in shock yeah what are your thoughts Marie
01:23:23
Speaker
That totally not dystopian story. I need a minute. That was a lot of information you just threw at me. I mean, that is just... I mean, that's an episode of Black Mirror right there. The fact that that was allowed, it's baffling. I'm not a lawyer. I know enough that once a legal precedent is set... You can repeat it. So that set a precedent and opened up it for future. And I generally think, and I can't believe i need to say this, but witness testimonies should be delivered by humans. I agree with you. Of course, the nature of this crime was horrific, but the way this sentence came about, that was...
AI and Ethical Concerns in Resurrection
01:23:58
Speaker
unethical then if we get into the iffiness that we touched upon it earlier of raising the dead and i think this is where ai is getting really creepy like we mentioned stan lee earlier and it was already getting a bit iffy using cgi to bring back actors yeah like in the past i know she was still alive when this came out but but i still remember when rogue one came out that is exactly what i was thinking as well yeah Yeah, they had Carrie Fisher. And Peter Cushing as well. It was one of those things where at one second it looked all right. And then the second it was just like, ah, it was so uncanny valley. And I mean, she was still alive at that point to give permission. But now it's like starting to blur the lines where people are bringing back people who never gave permission. And I think the dead should stay dead. I mean, there's literally a Black Mirror episode about this. It also, you know, it reminds me of the scene in BoJack Horseman where BoJack gets a major movie role and before he starts filming, they scan him. And then because BoJack is BoJack and goes on an alcoholic bender, he doesn't ever get to finish the movie. And so they put an AI version of him in the movie. And then that version gets critical acclaim and everything like that. And it's not him. But he knows it's not him. But because he's BoJack, he doesn't say anything. And it's just the ethical ramifications of that. And again, this was a TV show. And now we're like seeing this in real life. But yeah, that, oh God, I don't want to know what sort of precedent that sets for the future of law. i mean i've been yeah sealing so disturbing and this is very politically charged so feel free to cut this out but with charlie kirk i've been seeing this where churches have been creating messages from beyond the grave for him and there have been also ai videos of him in heaven with jesus and it's just the fact that churches are doing it because i think i mean i'm not religious this is more your expert but i feel like this goes against everything this stands for literally bringing someone back from the dead but it's not them bringing back to the dead it's an ai replica of it and having the charlie kirk ai give out sermons as well like i'm seeing all this shit happen online i'm like no matter what you thought about the guy and the fact that it's his fans that are doing this this is unethical on a whole other level Oh no, I am 100% with you on that. It was sketchy when Rogue One came out, and that was in 2016. And they even repeated it, remember in The Mandalorian?
01:26:25
Speaker
Although technically Mark Hamill, thank God, is still alive, but they used like a younger deepfake. Because it used to be more that they would just get an actor that looked quite similar or, you know, had the same mannerisms. But nowadays they really, especially for Star Wars, but it's a whole other thing, they really want them to look like them. But I have so much to say and this will probably be my final rant of the episode. So apologies for this oncoming rant. Make yourself a cup of tea, Marie. Dude, you never have to apologize me for ranting. I'm the queen of rants. I think we know this. Yeah. Honestly, though, this whole thing about resurrecting the dead, I mean, have to admit, if I'm honest about my beliefs and like things, I've gone to church and things and I've studied religion and whatnot. And, you know, there are times where I do question my faith and things like that. when I look at these things with AI being used to literally resurrect the dead, it leaves me so angry and not enough funny, haha, the Willy Wonka guys are so angry. I mean, genuinely disgusted at these particular people that, and you know, not talking about the particular person you were referencing there, but just in general, any person who is dead or like, it's different if you have a character that's passed away and then you have to decide, all right, are you going to recast them are you just going to... I mean, it's a bit like spoilers for Gen V, but there was a particular character in that who in real life unfortunately passed away. They still kept him and in a... kind of way that they said he died in the show, but different shows have handled it differently. For example, something that we spoke about ironically enough last week with The Simpsons was that the character of Edna Kraboppel, her voice actress, died so they killed off the character and they never really brought her back and whatnot. Yeah.
01:28:28
Speaker
to raise a rankked people from the dead and i don't mean nas na oh what's alive kind of frankenstein way great fellowlon by the way frankenstein on netflix I didn't click with it, but anyway, go ahead. That's next week's episode, obviously. But yeah, there was a particular video that I think it sent me over the edge and it sent me into a
AI and Grieving Processes
01:28:47
Speaker
spiral. I sent it to you.
01:28:48
Speaker
And it's a company called 2Y, W-A-I, and it's a social media app. that I think, as far as I understand, I could be wrong, it generates an AI avatar of its users. But one of the things that it gave a proof of concept, I don't know genuinely if it's a proof of concept or it's an actual thing that they're providing, but the idea was that a grandmother had died and they took the grandmother and made an AI clone over and said, wouldn't it be cool if your future generations, like your son or whatever, And her grandchild could talk to their gran through this app and everything. And that, I honestly had a crisis of faith at that point, because I was sitting there thinking, this is something I strongly believe in. And normally I don't get very serious in Chatsunami. Genuinely, you've heard me before, i get kind of goofy, like, oh, how? funny red panda but honestly this disgusted me in ways that i never thought were possible i genuinely believe that whether your life is going really well whether it's going terribly life is a sacred thing life is a thing that it's not always going to go perfectly it's not always going to be podcasts and roses as it were but your life is what you make of it it's the same with everything you create if you create a drawing if you create a book if you create a video game
01:30:07
Speaker
Even if you create a podcast, I mean, my podcast isn't perfect. Everything I create isn't perfect, but it's mine. It is not being run through a machine 100 times to create the perfect version of it. It is me through and through with all my imperfections, with all my voice, my opinions out there. And to think that... a company wants to take someone's essence someone's identity and you know there's a whole conversation there about whether or not you believe in the soul and whatnot but if you put your dead relative into this ai program and again i'm not criticizing anybody's grief processing like if this helps them process it in a private manner That is different. Again, you know, i'm not going to judge people for that, but that isn't going to be your relative. And I think it's a slippery slope that if we start normalising this, that people are going to genuinely believe that they can talk to their relatives. And they can't. Because what if that AI gets updated one day and then you quote unquote lose your gran or lose your granddad or your dad or your God forbid someone wants to resurrect their child using this app? It is a slippery, slippery slope. And I just, I don't agree with it. Again, you mentioned that, that it's like a Black Mirror episode. There's literally episodes that talk about this. But it's not like San Junipero, where they're technically themselves, but they upload their minds into the AI world and whatnot. No, this is Be Right Back with Donald Gleeson. This is that episode. To be honest, this is like back when Black Mirror was still good. True. Back when it was British, yeah. LAUGHTER Yeah, exactly. Because this episode genuinely did such a good job exploring this concept. yeah It started off with the AI. I think it even started off with emails. Then it started off with a chatbot. And then it started off with the voice replication. And then it went full sci-fi with the flesh suit. And it did explore how someone, like a grieving person, is unable to move on and how difficult it made it for them to move on. And literally, in the end, just stashing the body in the attic. And sorry if I spoiled that episode. And then I saw the grandmother video that you're talking about. And it's just, I don't know. I think at this point, i don't want to sound too harsh, but I think it's like almost babying someone. I've recently had to to go through this and grief is awful and it's never easy, but you do have to go through it. You do have to grieve. And as you said, this kind of thing does not allow people to grieve. And it also, the argument of, oh, it keeps their memory alive. I don't think that's valid because again, we've got photographs, we've got stories, we've got journals, especially from my grandparents or just passing on stories. It removes the human aspect. Imagine if you are a young child and your grandparents passed away young, young, and you never really knew them. And you go to your mom and you go, mom, what was grandmother like? And instead of her sitting you down on her lap and telling you a story of her childhood, she just hands you a phone with a screen with a digital woman on it going, here you go. That is dystopian. That is, again, that human connection just goes out the window. It's ghoulish let's face it it is again i'm gonna put my cards on the table here i am not in real life anyway the most socially active person i hate making phone calls and you know if it's not but someone that i know or have spoken to before i get severe anxiety and whatnot same i'm sure there's somebody out there being like oh kids these days bobh blah blah blah if so thank you for listening to my podcast for at the same time like and subscribe exactly like and subscribe for more orders of ai that's the thing though it was something that was joking about with my partner that said that ai is damaging that interpersonal connection with people to which she of course replied you don't like talking to people anyway i said that's beside the point and But I mean, personally, I don't know how you feel though as well, but after the lockdowns, before the lockdowns, I was always a shy person, but I felt as if my confidence was building and I was going to take on the world and whatnot. And then as soon as COVID hit, I felt as if I was back to square one. and I think part of me never fully recovered from that, that kind of isolation. And obviously, it's a bit of a paradox because on the one hand, I found my voice with podcasting, and if I didn't find my voice with podcasting, I never would have met you, Marie, or other people. And I love podcasting for that because I've met so many amazing people. But at the end of the day, you are real people. At least I hope you're real. LAUGHTER But that's the thing, though. It's like you're not an AI-generated program. See if COVID happened a couple of years later, can you imagine how rampant AI would have been? i mean, AI was still bad in the 2021, but nothing like it is nowadays and you're completely right people anchoring themselves to this ideal world where nobody dies everybody's happy and things and don't get me wrong we would love to live in that world where everything's okay we live in the star trek utopia as it were but at the end of the day life isn't perfect We're all going to go through our own individual trials and tribulations and
AI's Societal Impact and Regulation Needs
01:35:15
Speaker
things. We're all going to unfortunately go through loss and pain. And it's just, it's a horrible feeling. I'm not going to sugarcoat it and say, oh, you just have to get through it because everybody deals with it in a different way. But I cannot imagine a world where this is normalized, where companies are pumping out, oh, what would you do if your gran was in the telephone? phone Or, oh, now you can install your gran to a toaster. Pay £5.99 a month and she'll stop reading out adverts because you know for a fact that if a company did this widespread, they would 100% have an ad-free subscription. Oh, 100%. There is no way i can envision that without it happening. i can't imagine. remember who it was but i remember there was ah either an interview or something where someone was saying oh it's amazing that you can type into ai look i'm debating with albert einstein or oh act like aristotle and things and i mean if you want to role play like that who am i to shame you but it's not real that's the thing yeah You're not actually debating Albert Einstein, which also means you're not smarter than Albert Einstein, because I think that's what these people are aiming for. Like, ooh, I out debated Albert Einstein. It's just, no it's not real. I think the fact that many people don't understand this, that it's just a few lines of code, What I found interesting when I was trying it out is even if you ask it certain things that it'll immediately rope the conversation back and say, oh, I can't answer that or let's talk about this instead. And I wasn't asking it anything, you know, so dramatic. or anything but you can certainly tell that open ai especially has tried to rein in people getting exploited or exploiting themselves as it were whether that is through psychosis or any other kind of mental disorder it's trying to put a pin in that but it seems weird that they want to undo that by then introducing an erotic version of it and having people fulfill their depravity because i mean if you look at things like grok Grok just does its own thing. i don't think, and I can't say this with 100% certainty, but as far as I'm aware, it doesn't have the same safeguards, I would say. I think it might have enough to prevent Elon Musk from getting sued, as it were, for not taking measures to protect the user base. But what's even scarier is we're talking about the main hitters, like with ChatGPT, with Grok, with Trashvac, think of the other there's hundreds of them but there's all tentacles and variations of them you know so you've got ones that write stories for you you've got ones that role play with you you've got the user generation ones you've got the podcast ones you've got ones that generate art art yeah clips of games and just everything it's just it's getting worse and worse that you've got ai influencers now which companies have just dived into And then actors. and Yeah. what Isn't this a movie is coming out with a completely AI actor? Yeah, they're trying to push this as, it's the next evolution of acting. And I think everybody with a function and brain's going, are you nuts? Are you absolutely crazy? What are you doing here? Literally, what's the game here? You're basically taking the humanity out of art. And I think that is, to kind of summarize this, let's Several hour rant. This is what I hate about AI the most. It robs the humanity out of... well, ironically enough, robs the humanity out of humanity. We have spent thousands of years developing culture, art, stories, our way of life, and everything. And that is, all of a sudden, in a couple of years, nearly a decade, that is being unraveled slowly but surely. It's And don't get me wrong, that has been unraveled in different ways, and again, whole episode for another day, but the fact of the matter is, it's been unraveled by people who can't see beyond their bank balance. Their bank balance is so big that they're like, oh, I don't care about the future implications that this will have on children that this will have on mental health across the world. I mean, misinformation is bad enough. I mean, never mind with the racists and the bigots and things who are just pushing misinformation. There was a guy, i can't remember his name, but he does really good summaries of the UK news. He was talking about videos that Again, I don't know if it's GB News or one of these, you know, stupid sites are peddling saying, oh, it's these migrants that are coming off the boats and things and they're getting interviewed on the beach and, oh, they're saying they're getting an iPhone and a free house because they landed here. And, you know, people in the comments are foaming at the mouth, you saying this is ridiculous and blah, blah, blah. Initially you're like, okay, that does sound pretty bad, let's watch the video. And you watch the video and it is the most clear-cut case of ai People clipping through one another, people with six fingers and things. It is terrible, but then you think, you know, if this is being pushed by the wrong people, just in general, not even just that example, there's hundreds of examples. You are going to get a small but vocal minority who are going to push that narrative. And honestly, think overall, although AI has some amazing potential in terms of being an aid and a tool, I don't think we're ready for it, to be honest, at least unregulated. I don't think we're ready for it. But then that opens a whole other conversation of who regulates it then. Because, I mean, that's what we're joking about with Grok, that is heavily influenced by Elon Musk and his views. Let's just say very bluntly, AI is always going to have a bias. And that's the thing, though. If it's not human, then it's not going to be real. I know that sounds stupid to say. Obviously, there is a tangible thing there. But it just it baffles me that in 2026, we're talking about this topic in length, of course. Apologies, but... talking about this topic in such length and we've covered a load of things we've talked about the creative sphere the political sphere the social sphere as well and something you pointed out as well which is absolutely a fantastic point is that it does show a bigger problem in society doesn't it that people are leaning on ai so heavily that the world is in such a state that people are returning to the machines sorry i sounded like john connor there from terminator but yeah have you got any final thoughts miri for this topic yeah i mean we've been talking for a while but i honestly don't think we've covered even the tip of the iceberg here and it's like constantly involving i bet you tomorrow another article is gonna show up and one of us is gonna send it to each other along the caption of oh for f**k
01:41:43
Speaker
say Yeah, pretty much. But I do agree with you that the main problem that I have with it is that it's taking away the humanity of it, especially for something like art. There is no justification to call yourself an AI artist. You're just a twat. There's no such thing as an AI artist. Also with AI books and stuff like that. I generally still don't even understand the appeal of it who would want to consume that kind of media and content. There is just the whole environmental aspect of it, which is I think we've mentioned it quite a few times, but I think it's still currently flying underneath the radar because again, The whole dealing with climate change thing is already a losing battle. And I think not enough people just understand it and the impacts of it. because There is an equivalent to it. For example, the estimated that 15 chat GBT queries roughly produces the same emissions of a one hour long video. But then when you think about it, it's like you see all these TikTok videos where people are literally asking chat GBT to count to 100, not even 100, to like a million. And it's just like, why? And one hour video will bring you entertainment. What is the point of asking this thing to count to a million or to say every single A name that's existed? I'd never understood that trend where it's just arbitrary. And that's again where I reflect back on the responsibility of it. If you're gonna use it, understand how to use it. And also don't ask it to do stupid things like count it to a million or give you therapy. But yeah, we covered a lot. And I think there was just one way I think I can end this to recommend people to watch a show called Pantheon. Oh, yeah. Because it covered a lot of topics and themes that we talked about. And also, it's a very good show, in my opinion. It is one of the best sci-fi shows ever created. People can get lost in facts and figures and articles, and that might not appeal to it people. And even though Pantheon is fiction, it does address quite a lot of the issues that we've discussed today. It's also a bonkers ride. It starts one way and then, ooh, this isn't a Pantheon review. Although, if you ever want me back for that, I'll be happy to join.
01:43:44
Speaker
Let me finish the series and then I'll get back you. But seriously, I highly recommend Pantheon, especially when we're talking about AI and bringing back the dead from ai So yeah, we've been talking for a long time and you threw a lot of information at me that I didn't know that I'm still processing. Yeah, sorry for that. There were quite a few times where I did generally feel part of myself dying. Yeah. Welcome to the club, Marie-Welke. to the club yeah i mean we do that to each other as i said this is the nature of our friendship but still i know like i'll be having a good day and you're like hey you want to see this hot chocolate that they've dipped the whole cup in the chocolate and i'm like oh sensory issues what is the point of Oh, hate that hot chocolate with a passion. You should really get it the next time you're in London. Oh, no. Pay £10 for that hot chocolate. Nah, you're alright. I can make it myself for half the price, we're gonna say. Here at Chats and Namely, we like to have fun.
01:44:44
Speaker
Yeah, we've entered the Lulu stage of the podcast. Oh, true, true. I mean, one thing that actually makes me think back, and I can't believe I'm saying this, and again, I promise this is the last point, but it reminds me back to when I was in uni, and I can't remember if I ever told you this, but my dissertation was actually on the impact act of technology and Christianity, and it was such a fascinating topic. But see, back then, you know, this was like 2015,
01:45:14
Speaker
I want to say. AI obviously wasn't a big thing back then, but, you know, i talked about the impact of how people felt about people going to a physical church versus praying in their homes and using things like Second Life to go to church services and whatnot. And it was really, really fascinating. It was a really fascinating deep dive into the world of religion, the world of Christianity and whatnot. If i even gave it a funny pun name, God versus Gigabytes.
01:45:42
Speaker
Nice. See, I'm proud of it, but i think that's why I got marked down. But that's another thing, that's another thing. But thinking back then versus now, it's funny how 10 years later, that whole dissertation would have been completely different because the landscape of technology has just changed so much. Because I don't think I genuinely would have had the heart to be like, yeah, how about those Christians resurrecting people that aren't Jesus? Yeah.
01:46:08
Speaker
This is a hunky-dory dissertation, isn't it? I'll really need to dig that out sometime. But again, technology keeps evolving. And unfortunately, while it is inevitable that this type of technology is going to keep going forward, we're going to get the good and the bad coming out of AI. The question remains, really, and this is the ultimate question of the night. part of the episode but the ultimate question is where is it going to go where are people going to direct this technology are they going to use it for the betterment of the world and such as we mentioned before with help against climate change with preservation for wildlife with you know fighting against world hunger and whatnot or are we just going to get a bunch of AI slop fests from Disney and that's just going to be our lives do you know what i feel like right now and I know it's because granted it will be less once I edit this down but raw audio we've been talking for over four hours right in my defense i wasn't aiming for this i know i was joking of getting back my title but yeah we just had so much to say we really did but do you know what i feel like you know the sequel to blade runner where it's ryan goslin and he's looking up at a giant hologram woman and he's just got this defeated and just utterly dejected look that is just me just now not at this episode by the way this episode's been great but
01:47:28
Speaker
I mean more just the state of the world right now with ai and
Hope for AI's Positive Uses
01:47:33
Speaker
everything. And I'm like, I hope it gets better. Again, i don't want to poo-poo the whole, oh, AI's the devil. But come on, guys. Just think it. Like, think before. Just think. Just please think. Think before you type that prompt. Think before you post that Studio Ghibli image. Yeah. Just deleting it from my account. No, joking. You didn't, didn't you? No, no, no, I didn't.
01:47:55
Speaker
I genuinely did. No, no, no no i'm joking genuinely am i'm joking on that note marie i feel as if i have to let you go now because it has been over four hours of raw recording thank you so much for joining me at last because this is an episode that has been a while in the making we've been talking about this episode for ages and i think we talked about this probably maybe the middle of 2025 and just yeah things kept popping up and Yeah, well, thank you for joining me in this episode. And also thank you so much for, yeah kicking off 2026 with a bang. An AI bang, as it were. Oh, thank you for giving me the honour. Again. Take that, Luke.
01:48:35
Speaker
Yeah, look, you're not recovering from this one. Even if I edit it down, you're not coming back from this one. I'm sorry, man. Wait, are you saying I've reclaimed my title? Well, I'll see once I've edited it, by the way. I'm just saying, you do not have to edit these things. I say as I cry into the four hours, ten minutes. I do feel sorry because, those of course, I'm also an editor, so I promise you I wasn't trying to pad the runtime.
01:48:58
Speaker
I think even our anniversary episode, I had to split that into two because one episode was an hour 10 and the other was over two hours, two hours 49, something like that. I was like, yeah, this is probably going to be the champion of the year. What a way to start. On such an optimistic note. Oh, but on that note, Marie, thank you so much. and And of course, where can the lovely Pandalurians who are still here listen to your, well, listen to your work and your enthusiasm about AI elsewhere?
01:49:28
Speaker
but On the interwebs, I go by the handle lifeonmars. That is TikTok, Instagram, and Twitter. I am restricted currently on TikTok. So, but I am still active there. And if you want to hear more of my voice, you can catch me over on We Needed Roads. And it's as insane just for more insanity. I mean...
01:49:53
Speaker
But for insane movie and TV takes, although I do occasionally throw in the occasional rant as well because it's me. And yeah, if you would like to catch more conversations between Miri and myself, where of course we've talked about stunt foods. I also did an interview where we talked about podcasting. Honestly, I'll need to get you on for more, but maybe not this length.
01:50:15
Speaker
I mean, technically, though, the longest episode of Chatsunami was our Mass Effect 2 episode. I mean, yeah, you brought that on yourself. You asked me to talk to you about my husband. yeah i mean, just... Keep it in mind, you know. I love how this whole episode have been like, yeah, AI's not real. Your fake husband's not real. Garrus, on the other hand. Oh, yeah, yeah, he's real. Chatsunami. Yeah, to be honest, if there's an opportunity... What, for an AI Garrus?
01:50:45
Speaker
To do a callback to Sword Art Online myself into a fictional world. Yeah, I would be there. I sometimes cry because he's not real. Honestly, I recently watched the movie Eternity, which is this twist on what happens to you after you die. And basically you choose one eternity where you live out your afterlife. Oh, i've heard. Is that good? It's really good.
01:51:05
Speaker
It's a really good, it's a very fun rom-com. I highly recommend it. I highly recommend it. But it also got me thinking of what my eternity would be. And I was just like, that's easy. i'll be on the Normandy. If there's a choice, because some people choose the wrong eternity. I was like, no, I would be on the Normandy. I would be with my husband. I love how you didn't even hesitate there. You were just like, yep, Normandy, get me Normandy. Because it's eternity, so you also do, like, you cannot die, but you also do need to pick something exciting, because otherwise you'll get bored to death. So fighting reapers and then trying to distract my husband from calibrations, I mean, that is honestly my idea of heaven. Fair dues, fair dues.
01:51:41
Speaker
but Yeah, watch me send the planet ablaze if I had the opportunity you to be with Garrus. Yes, for your totally real space husband, yes, yes. Look, this is the closest to marriage I'm ever gonna get, so... So, when are we gonna expect your post in R, my boyfriend, as a Garrus?
01:52:01
Speaker
Oh sorry, my space husband is a Garrus. You know, I joke about that, but I wouldn't be surprised. that There are many thirsty people who after Garrus, but that is a story for another day.
01:52:12
Speaker
but Yeah, I do admit I do have competition there. True, true. Those hips don't lie, I've been told. They don't, and it's the voice. Oh. But anyway, if you would like to listen it to Mass Effect Month as well, which is a fantastic month, by the way. I'm not even joking. It's fantastic, yeah. then check us out at our website, chatsanami.com, as well as all good podcast apps. I also want to thank our amazing Pandalorian patrons, RoboticBattleToaster, Ghoststate, and Cryptic1991. Thank you so, so much for the support. And if you would like to become a Pandalorian yourself and get access to exclusive... exclusive episodes, early access, VODs, bloopers, honestly all of the juicy content behind the scenes and of course all the AI generated images of Marie and Garris. For legal reasons that last one's a joke, then you can check us out at our Patreon page, patreon.com forward slash chat tsunami this podcast is of course a proud member of the pod pack collective for more information check us out at our twitter slash x page pod pack collect but until next time thank you all so so so much for joining us in the year 2026 i cannot wait to yeah show you some probably more upbeat content i'm not gonna lie as i feel as if i just need to lie down and stare at the ceiling for a couple of hours but i have that effect on people i'm very sorry i mean it's a yeah it happens to everybody But yeah, as always, stay safe, stay awesome, and most importantly, stay hydrated.