We’re now living in a fascinating time, but also quite a troubling one. Like many others, I've been playing with AI tools for a while.
However, we’ve now reached the point where:
AI can create blogs and advertisements in text form
AI can create images and artwork
AI can create videos that are convincing of real or fictional people
AI can synthesize realistic voices of known or new figures
Putting all of this together poses a serious challenge to trust going forward in the internet itself, and I'm not sure how we can solve it or if it is solvable.
This caught my eye recently
What might seem like a Joe Rogan podcast, is not what it seems. It's a video produced to look like one, with voice AI selling a product that seems like it came straight from Joe Rogan himself. Now, this by itself would never cause me to buy anything (nor do I really watch Joe Rogan to begin with), but fundamentally I don't purchase that way, or really undertake any of my work this way.
Currently, if I look for a product or service I rarely will take note of marketing materials and adverts. Part of my due process is to search the internet to validate a product or service, be that through tech posts, forums, and video media like Youtube.
More often than not, my consensus comes from pairing up all these data sources to ensure to the best I can that my purchase will be ok; and that I’m getting good value for money. Surely you expected this, I am an Analyst after all.
Now I pose the question. What if we reach a point where:
I’m marketed to by AI based on my interests
My independent research via search engines is now populated with
AI-written blogs
AI-written forum posts
AI-created video with speech potentially of known trusted sources
I'm unable to validate the real from the created
Can I now use the internet and believe anything on it anymore?
I’m absolutely for use of data to do amazing things, but wondering if we’re going too far too fast without controls in place.
We’re reaching the point where creating influence for good or for bad will become extremely easy, for those of us in technology we may see the wood through the trees but I’m not sure the rest of the population necessarily will.
While I'm behind the use of AI to improve things like healthcare, by catching mistakes and ultimately saving lives, I can't help but think we could see the use of this by Governments and Companies to swing opinions and change public perception on a scale we've never seen.
What do you think? Maybe get in touch and share your thoughts, I'd love to see other points of view on the problems we think are coming up, and ideas on how you'd solve them!
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