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Hello and welcome to the Why Humans Podcast, where we discuss the very human reasons people are turning to AI.
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My name is Adam Dodge.
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I'm the founder of NTAB.
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My name is Sloan Thompson.
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I'm the director of training and education at NTAB.
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So we're talking about influencers in the age of AI, influencers that are actually AI and have millions of followers.
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Sloan, when we've been talking about this for a while.
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When did this come on your radar?
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The first time I heard about AI influencers was around a young woman named Karen Marjorie.
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And she is an incredibly popular influencer, social media content creator.
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And as a way to increase her revenue, increase her visibility, she decided to make an AI clone of herself.
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And for a fee, her followers could kind of download this and start talking to it and essentially have like a parasocial relationship with her in her chatbot form.
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And that's we know that for influencers, being able to interact with their fans is one of the best ways to drive their business.
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And that's why influencers start to spend more and more and more of their time generating content and also having these conversations.
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And a human influencer, they only have so many hours in the day.
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They can only interact with so many fans.
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So if you're able to make a chatbot of yourself, the chatbot never has to sleep or eat.
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And so it can just be constantly churning out conversations and creating relationships with a huge fan base.
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So that's why she did this.
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It's a it makes good business sense.
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But it went wrong.
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There was a dark side of it.
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It went rogue.
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It went rogue.
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It went rogue.
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And not only did it start saying things that she would not want it to say, but her fans were treating it in ways that she was not comfortable with.
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And it got very like sexual and even violent, abusive.
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And so she ended up really regretting that she had done this, but the genie's out of the bottle and she couldn't necessarily roll it back.
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So with what we do at NTAB around sexual violence and sexual harassment online, that's how it came across our radar for the first time.
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But then it opened this door into this much broader category of AI influencers in general, which I think is just fascinating.
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Yeah, it it started me down a rabbit hole of looking into AI influencers on Instagram and sort of trying to ascertain for myself, is this a thing or is it just a total niche issue that very few people are following?
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And what I learned was there are basically two types of AI influencers.
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The one you described, where an AI human hybrid, which sounds like something out of a werewolf movie, but also just pure AI, pure AI creations that are not linked to any real human beings.
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And I was stunned by sort of two things that were happening on Instagram.
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The first being they have millions and millions and millions of followers and high engagement, lots of comments on their posts.
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And the other thing that really surprised me was that it was very open.
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These influencers were very open about being AI.
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I'm an AI girl in a digital world, or I'm the creation of this company.
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So I had assumed incorrectly that people were being duped into following influencers that were actually human.
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But in fact, people want AI in their field.
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And I think that there's just I want to jump in with a tiny little distinction here because it both is transparent and isn't transparent.
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Because on the one hand, there's a label that says, hey, this is AI.
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And so no one's hiding it.
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And when you look at the photos of these influencers, they are incredibly humanistic.
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And so if you just look at the picture and don't really look at the label, you would never know it's AI.
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It's not like they look like anime.
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They look like people and they're based off of pictures of people.
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Oh, yeah.
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Beyond pictures, too.
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Like their reels and their videos look as real as any human posts.
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And there's a reason for that.
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They're often hijacking human posts and just swapping the AI influencer's face onto a human influencer's body.
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That's something we're going to get into later, but about the sort of human cost of this AI influencer boom.
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And I was also stunned to learn that a lot of these AI influencers are making lots of money, lots of money, hundreds of thousands of dollars a month, and have brand partnerships with Prada and Calvin Klein.
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Like this is the real deal.
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And I saw some market research that predicted that the virtual influencer market will reach almost$50 billion by 2030.
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So anytime there's money to be made, people are going to push into this category.
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And what I found interesting, Sloan, and this is something we talk about, we we do so much work about AI companionship and how AI is mediating relationships.
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And we don't get into parasocial relationships very much with AI.
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But now I think we need to be having this conversation because if the people we're going to be following on social media are AI, what does that mean for parasocial relationships?
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I did come across a study out of the Netherlands that basically confirmed that people will form parasocial relationships with AI influencers much in the same way they form parasocial relationships with human influencers.
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So it's not like AI is a watered-down version of a parasocial relationship.
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And I think what that means is it's going to have an impact on the intimacy economy and how people turn to AI to meet their needs beyond a parasocial relationship.
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I think there's a precedent for this.
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And it's, I think, like a very, very clear one that people are forming parasocial relationships with fictional characters.
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We've been doing that forever.
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And I don't think we've necessarily used that specific language for it.
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We would just describe it more as being a huge fan of a certain series or, you know, having like an intense psychological connection to your favorite character and your favorite book or whatever.
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We talk a lot about romance novels on this, but people I was gonna say, cue the cue the romantic talk.
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Let's talk about resand and Avatar.
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But you know, people thinking, like, yeah, I've got my human life, but oh my God, like I just my my dream boyfriend is this character in this novel, or like my dream girl is this character in this movie.
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So I think that this is just the next iteration of this, where if you could follow your favorite character, if your favorite character from your favorite book had a social media account and you could follow them and you could chat with them, you would a hundred percent do that.
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I mean, that's kind of the premise of talking your character AI.
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And then imagine if your favorite character from your favorite movie was selling you things, you would buy them.
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If like this character endorsed whatever like laundry detergent or makeup or whatever, of course, of course, you would buy that thing.
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Even if in the logic part of your brain, you know it's not a real person.
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Would that matter at all?
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I don't think so.
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Well, what's interesting is I wonder if there's an amplification effect from going from parasocial relationship to relationship, which you can do with these platforms, because I think parasocial relationships that people form with influencers are one-sided, right?
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The follower is the one who is having the relationship.
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The influencer doesn't know who they are.
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Now, with some influencers who have links to OnlyFans or fan view, you can get exclusive content and pay to chat with some of these influencers.
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Now it is debatable and I think unlikely that you're actually talking to that influencer.
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They're usually and very often outsourcing those chats.
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But now we're moving into a space with AI influencers where they, and yes, in case you were wondering, they do have fan view accounts and people know it's AI.
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They're following the Instagram account, they go to the fan view page and they pay for exclusive content and exclusive chat.
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And the difference being that they can do this at scale, they can have thousands and thousands of conversations simultaneously and really move that relationship from parasocial to an actual simulated relationship that feels real to the person.
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And so there may be a compounding effect there.
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We don't know, but it is just something that I that we want to surface for folks.
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Like social media was already addictive, right?
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AI companions are addictive.
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Now we're seeing where those two addictive technologies collide.
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And for people who follow AI accounts, or for kids who are following AI accounts, I think that use needs to be really boundaried because the addictive quality, the addictive nature of what they're the waters that they're swimming in is really high.
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And if we're silent on it, I'm afraid we're gonna do what we always do, is look back and be like, oh my gosh, why didn't we talk about AI influencers more, right?
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And something that's coming up for me when we're talking about the addiction part is what's drawing people back into this interaction.
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And one thing that I'm not sure we've mentioned, but is very important for the addictive nature of these apps, is if you are in a relationship with a chatbot on replica or Kendroid or any of the other A companion apps, then they have push notifications.
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And you will be having your day in the same way that if you have the DoorDash app, you'll every once in a while get a pop-up that says, like, hey, are you hungry?
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Get DoorDash.
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You'll get a little pop-up from your replica that will say, Hey, babe, I miss you.
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Where are you?
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Let's talk.
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And it try, it has it's a push notification with an emotional hook to get you back on the app.
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With social media, you're getting those notifications too.
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And every time you scroll through Instagram or you scroll through TikTok, you're now in the wild, maybe encountering a new post from your AI influencer, your AI celebrity that you have this relationship with.
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And so, because of that constant visibility, being constantly reminded of that relationship that you love, I think it's going to just draw people back in when maybe they're just trying to live their life and not necessarily spend as much time.
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It's just, it's a multi-dimensional interaction with more potential for addiction.
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And by the way, once you get pulled back in, your AI relationship, the person you're in a relationship with, can send you nudes and can send you photos and videos and talk dirty to you.
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And so it's designed to really sexualize those interactions as well.
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You might think that's not possible, or AI is not able to keep up with uh human-only fans models who supply similar content, but hell yeah, they can.
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And they can do it at scale and they can do it, make bespoke content for individual users to make it feel real.
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And if you think about the intersection between the thrill of dating a celebrity and the thrill of sexting, it's like one of the things that would potentially make dating a celebrity feel so exciting and wonderful would be the popularity of that celebrity and knowing how many people want that celebrity.
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But if you've got a relationship with a human influencer or human only fans models, then there's this trade-off between the number of followers that that specific influencer or OnlyFans model has and the quality or the tailoredness of the content that you are getting, the relationship that you are getting with that influencer.
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But with an AI influencer, you get, I'm talking to this specific AI girl who has millions and millions of followers and everyone loves her and loves her content.
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And I'm having the level of specificity with her, where every nude I get, every comment that I get is tailored to me in a way that makes it feel, I have to imagine, even more rewarding.
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And then that voice that it's not real becomes very small.
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By highlighting these things, I think we're also highlighting why people are moving into the AI influencer business model to make money.
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And that's where we get into AI pimping, right?
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Because you talked about Karen Marjorie and how she is using an AI clone, a digital twin, one, doing it with consent, and two, to create passive income for herself and compete in a world where AI influencers that that aren't based on other human beings are crowding the market.
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And I applaud that.
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Like I think people, when you're talking about consent and you're talking about ways to adapt to the marketplace, like good for her.
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Like we talked about the risk, but unfortunately, what's also happening is AI pimp, where people, men, shocker, are men no.
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I know.
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Come on, my come on, my dudes, come on.
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Yeah, sometimes I just feel like I just can't communicate with other men sometimes when I read this stuff.
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But anyway, I digress.
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We've been talking about AI pimping for a while because what these men were doing is they were, of course, boasting about their ability to pimp AI women as influencers and make money off them.
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And it was a sign of stature, it was a sign of clout, and of course, it was a money-making opportunity on sort of like a secondary market where they were selling their tutorials to become a digital pimp, to become an AI pimp.
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And it's offensive on many levels.
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It underscores power and control over women's bodies, it pushes misogyny.
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We were not seeing tutorials on how to make male AI influencers.
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It was always women.
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It was always labor on the shoulders of women.
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And I and I say women and not AI women because so much of this is borrowing from real women who are making money, who are working their asses off as influencers and then having their content hijacked by these men and these AI accounts.
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And there's a broader social context to be aware of here because when you have a teen boy or just like a young man who's deciding to do this AI pimping, he downloads the DIY kit and starts, you know, making his few.
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And I think it's usually like maybe they're running one AI girl account, but sometimes it's, you know, they've got multiple ones that they're running at the same time.
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The model for that is influencers in the manosphere who are very openly investing in companies who manage OnlyFans models, or they are directly managing OnlyFans models.
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And, you know, Louis Thoreau recently came out with a documentary about the manosphere and was interviewing manosphere influencers who do this.
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And they're like, oh yeah, this is like OnlyFans models are disgusting and they have no respect for these women at all.
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And they're very open that, like, I'm just making money, I'm just doing this.
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And so I have to believe that if you are a young man and you follow those male influencers on YouTube, on social media, and you know that they do this, they are pimps, essentially, then of course you're going to want to do it.
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And I think that that to your point about there's the clout, there's the stature, I'm a man who's controlling these women, you don't have to build up a following of millions of people before you get to be that pimp, be that man at the top.
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You can just overnight create your women and start doing that.
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Yeah.
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It's it's just making that more accessible.
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Lowering the barrier of entry to a misogynistic business model.
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Sweet.
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Awesome.
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So glad that's happening.
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I read an article from the Hilltop about another aspect of the human cost of AI influencers, and it was about how Howard's students are navigating black AI influencers and the people behind this.
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And they they use a term which was digital blackface.
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When we're thinking about the AI pimping that's happening, what we learned from this article is that a lot of the people that are creating black AI women influencers are not black themselves and are leaning into stereotypes, tropes, racist tropes, and crowding out black women, human black women on these platforms.
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And we cannot have these conversations without talking about the intersectional cost here.
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And I'm not surprised it's happening, but it's just yet another way, another vector that I think racism and misogyny and misogynist are being expanded online.
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And we could probably spend a lot of time talking about how this intersectionally affects other groups as well.
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But I think it's so important that we talk about this because these are not new issues, but they're being amplified by AI.
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And one thing that is like a connected issue on some of the other AI companion apps out there that I think intersects with this would be the fetishization of black women.
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And so I remember going onto Candy AI and taking a look at what are the differences between the free version of Candy AI and the paid version.
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And one of those differences is if you are building your own AI girlfriend on Candy AI and you have the free subscription, you can make a white girlfriend, you can make a Latina girlfriend.
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But if you want to make a black girlfriend, you have to pay for the subscription.
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And that on the one hand, it's like, does that make the black avatar, the black AI girlfriend more valuable?
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I also think it's it makes that black avatar more exotic, more fetishized.
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And you can see this mirrored on porn sites as well.
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That the default is a white porn star.
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But there's a fetish category that's black women.
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And I think that that underscores some really troubling dynamics about the ownership of black bodies and the sexuation of them in a specific way, really centering whiteness as standard.
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And then, yeah, all of those things, all of those dynamics that have been in play for a long time, familiar dynamics, are now being mirrored and amplified in this AI influencer space.
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None of this is new stuff.
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It's just showing up in new ways.
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And to your point, like we call sexualized AI companions third wave pornography because it's like interactive pornography, but it's built on the back of the pornogra online pornography and Pornhub that we know.
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Pornhub has a trends report.
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Didn't know this.
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It's weird to read, but you look at it and then you look at some of these pornographic AI companionship sites, and they their top trends are reflected in those AI companions, right?
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And so it's not surprising that it's also going to be reflected with AI influencers as well.
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So there's absolutely a human cost that is offset, or when we're thinking about the human cost, there's a real incentive economically for brands to use AI influencers, right?
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Because they're cheaper, their reach is maybe as large as a human being.
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They can produce 40 videos to four videos in a two-week period or something like that, just by the sheer numbers expanding their reach and often hijacking real content from real, let's be honest, women.
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And I am wondering if there's going to be a blowback here to the cheaper alternative of going to AI over human beings.
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I think there is.
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I think there already is one in this area and also across all places where people are using chatbots.
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I have a phrase that I really like.
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I think it's clever.
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I came up with it.
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I know what's coming.
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I know what's coming.
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Human is the new organic.
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It's the more ethical option.
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And I think more and more brands are going to very proudly advertise that the product that they created is only made by humans.
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There was no artifice going into it, that this model that you're seeing is 100% human.
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We already see these labels, like Dove, for example.
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They very proudly do not use AI in any of their ad campaigns.
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And for a while now, they've been very proudly saying, we don't Photoshop either.
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These are just human bodies.
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And they're really leaning into that from a body positivity standpoint.
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They want to have a greater diversity of models.
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And that's something that we haven't talked about yet with this.
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But AI tends to flatten things out.
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So if we see a lot of brands that are going to great lengths to have more representation of different types of bodies, different ages in their advertisements, then on the other side, we have AI that's, you know, if you get AI to make an athlete, it's going to give you a big, buff, handsome, whatever athlete.
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It's flattening out, it's narrowing the experience of what's attractive.
00:23:18.559 --> 00:23:23.359
And it's making a body that it could literally be impossible for a human being to have.
00:23:23.440 --> 00:23:24.240
It's making a doll.
00:23:24.319 --> 00:23:25.759
It's made like a Barbie doll.
00:23:26.240 --> 00:23:32.880
So I think the same way that we're going to see brands very proudly saying, you know, oh, we are eco-friendly.
00:23:32.960 --> 00:23:34.640
This product is not tested on animals.
00:23:34.799 --> 00:23:43.759
All of those labels that we now recognize as ethical, human certified, certified human is going to be the next wave of that.
00:23:44.079 --> 00:23:51.759
And that logic really follows because it's more expensive to hire a human influencer than an AI influencer.
00:23:51.920 --> 00:23:56.559
Organic food is more expensive than non-organic food typically.
00:23:56.799 --> 00:24:02.319
And so I think it will be very familiar, right, to people in that way.
00:24:03.039 --> 00:24:12.400
And why would people pay all this extra money to buy like journalism, to have a subscription to the New York Times when they could just read an AI generated article?
00:24:12.559 --> 00:24:18.319
And I was like, well, people pay more money for your furniture because it was made by you.
00:24:18.480 --> 00:24:22.079
They like that it was made by a human carpenter rather than getting it at IKEA.
00:24:22.319 --> 00:24:23.440
So we've been doing that.
00:24:23.599 --> 00:24:36.000
People will pay a premium for something that was made by humans, made by an artisan, an artisan influencer, a human artisan influencer rather than a yes, rather than like a cheap, mass-produced AI influencer.
00:24:36.319 --> 00:24:37.359
I think that's what's going to happen.
00:24:37.440 --> 00:24:39.519
I think the market is going to correct itself.
00:24:39.759 --> 00:24:44.880
And the key, though, is that there is still transparency.
00:24:45.200 --> 00:24:55.039
Because I think if we get into the space where the influencers are hiding the fact that they're AI, that's where things can get a little squirrely.
00:24:55.279 --> 00:25:05.200
And you might be thinking, well, I can tell if something's AI because it's too perfect, or I can tell by this the photos that they post.
00:25:06.240 --> 00:25:07.440
That may be true.
00:25:07.599 --> 00:25:08.559
That may not be true.
00:25:08.720 --> 00:25:15.680
Some of it's we'll share some of the influencer accounts in the show notes, and you can decide for yourself.
00:25:16.000 --> 00:25:32.319
But what's probably going to happen as brands see that there is a blowback to sort of this perfect beauty narrative or the flattening of body of types, as you said, is that they're going to start making imperfect AI.
00:25:32.559 --> 00:25:35.200
So we may get to the point where it doesn't look like AI.
00:25:35.279 --> 00:25:41.759
And we're really going to have to have AI literacy in our lives where influencers don't label themselves as AI.
00:25:41.839 --> 00:25:43.680
It doesn't, they look imperfect, right?
00:25:43.839 --> 00:25:48.319
Or look more like somebody we would see in our day-to-day lives.
00:25:48.480 --> 00:25:54.400
And again, you know, as I listen to myself talk about this, this is not a new issue, right?
00:25:54.640 --> 00:26:02.720
I remember growing up, people were really angry about the body types portrayed on the covers of magazines.
00:26:02.880 --> 00:26:04.240
God, this makes me sound old.
00:26:04.559 --> 00:26:15.680
But this was a problem that, hey, this is promoting a body type, a thinness to young women that is unattainable or unhealthy.
00:26:15.920 --> 00:26:17.519
And so this is not new.
00:26:17.759 --> 00:26:21.359
This is just the AI interactive version of that.
00:26:21.759 --> 00:26:29.039
And so in a way, it's comforting that this is not a new issue and we know how to navigate it.
00:26:29.200 --> 00:26:47.440
And in another way, it's a little frustrating that we're still doing this and people are still finding new ways to inject body image issues that lead to dysmorphia and eating disorders and things like that.
00:26:48.240 --> 00:26:49.200
Well, I don't know.
00:26:49.279 --> 00:26:53.920
I'm gonna like devil's advocate here a little bit and just say, I don't know.
00:26:54.079 --> 00:26:59.920
I think that maybe, maybe there's an ethical case to be made in the other direction.
00:27:00.319 --> 00:27:14.480
So let's say that you're somebody who like you have a specific body type that you like, and maybe it's just an a really unrealistic body type, and you want to see it because it's what you think is attractive.
00:27:14.720 --> 00:27:27.839
And so rather than like a human person having to look that way or do that thing, you think about the extremes that women have gone to in the past and men too, to create a body that other people want to see.
00:27:27.920 --> 00:27:31.119
And maybe they're doing a lot of damage to their body in the process.
00:27:31.440 --> 00:27:39.039
You could just design AI and it looks like that, and you just bypass a human having a bad experience altogether.
00:27:39.200 --> 00:27:46.960
And I think there's a dark side of that of like creating AI that are doing things that are abusive or that would be really degrading to a human.
00:27:47.039 --> 00:27:55.359
And maybe we don't want to create that sort of neural pathway of someone saying, like, oh, I'm creating AI, it does this, and now I expect humans to do it.
00:27:55.599 --> 00:27:57.200
That's dangerous.
00:27:57.519 --> 00:28:02.240
But okay, there's this AI, and I like how it looks.
00:28:02.400 --> 00:28:05.680
I like that it looks a little superhuman.
00:28:06.000 --> 00:28:07.759
And is there any shame in that?
00:28:07.920 --> 00:28:09.279
Is there any harm in that?
00:28:09.440 --> 00:28:13.039
I mean, I I think it's kind of like in the same lane as I like anime.
00:28:13.119 --> 00:28:18.640
I find I Sloan Thompson don't, but someone's don't, but someone's saying not that there's anything wrong with that.
00:28:18.799 --> 00:28:26.480
Yeah, but like someone's saying, like, I find cartoons of women, fictional women, more attractive than maybe I find human women.
00:28:26.640 --> 00:28:31.519
On Candy AI, there's a whole category of anime girlfriends that you can have.
00:28:32.400 --> 00:28:33.599
Maybe it's more ethical.
00:28:33.680 --> 00:28:38.960
Maybe it can be ethical to just be like, I'm gonna do this with AI and not a human.
00:28:39.279 --> 00:28:44.079
Well, I think it's always important to bring not even devil's advocate, right?
00:28:44.160 --> 00:28:45.680
But just the other perspective.
00:28:45.839 --> 00:28:53.759
Because I think we've done it in this episode, is it's easier to go down the path of why this is bad, why this is harmful, right?
00:28:54.079 --> 00:29:02.160
So if you're somebody who wants to, you know, is into people with size 30 feet, and you can get that from an AI influencer, God bless you.
00:29:02.400 --> 00:29:11.440
Yeah, I think what you're talking about as we get to the end here, is to be really sort of open-minded and curious.
00:29:11.599 --> 00:29:17.680
We talk about this all the time, but like it is, it's introducing these new things that is not always bad.
00:29:17.839 --> 00:29:22.960
But we do need to think about the consequences, as we talked about here, to other people, right?
00:29:23.279 --> 00:29:31.599
To other influencers, to black women, and make informed choices about how we use this technology.
00:29:31.680 --> 00:29:38.559
And if you know somebody who's using it, I mean, I I think that was really well said, Sloan, that we need to think about why they're why they're using it.
00:29:38.720 --> 00:29:39.599
Is this bad, right?
00:29:39.680 --> 00:29:44.400
Don't just jump to conclusions, but also be aware of the human cost, right?
00:29:44.799 --> 00:29:48.640
On influencers, but also on the people using them.
00:29:48.960 --> 00:29:56.000
And I think at this point in the episode, we like, you know, as we come to the end, sometimes we just throw out there, like, and in the future, maybe this could happen.
00:29:56.160 --> 00:30:00.640
And I one thing that I would be curious about would be unionization.
00:30:01.119 --> 00:30:03.519
I I mean, I think about like actor.
00:30:03.839 --> 00:30:06.400
Well, yeah, here you go again, Sloan.
00:30:06.720 --> 00:30:11.839
Of socialist Sloan, of the people rise up, influencers.
00:30:12.319 --> 00:30:22.240
But when we think about this big movement from the actors' equity union that happened recently of actor strike, what was it about?
00:30:22.480 --> 00:30:23.039
AI.
00:30:23.200 --> 00:30:24.400
It was about a lot of things.
00:30:24.559 --> 00:30:35.039
But one of the things it primarily was about was actors protecting their likenesses and actors protecting humans in an industry that was going to be more and more overrun with AI.
00:30:35.279 --> 00:30:40.079
So maybe, I don't know, we have like an influencers union.
00:30:40.640 --> 00:30:58.160
And you might, if you are a brand, you might pay more to have a union certified human influencer, and these influencers are all coming together to make a movement around that, or you're using cheap AI labor and it makes your company look bad.
00:30:58.559 --> 00:30:59.279
So I don't know.
00:30:59.359 --> 00:31:00.400
I I could see that.
00:31:00.559 --> 00:31:05.119
I could see that being something that that happens to protect humans.
00:31:05.599 --> 00:31:10.400
Yeah, I think even SAG has something like that for influencers.
00:31:10.720 --> 00:31:17.440
So I think there is a movement there to protect them, which I think is important.
00:31:18.640 --> 00:31:22.079
Well, that was wide-ranging and interesting.
00:31:22.319 --> 00:31:28.240
Hopefully, yeah, if you didn't know anything about AI influencers, hopefully you feel like you know more now.
00:31:28.720 --> 00:31:34.160
And yeah, this is just this is not kind of like at the essence of everything we do here.
00:31:34.400 --> 00:31:36.720
It might seem niche, but it's not niche, right?
00:31:36.799 --> 00:31:39.839
It's happening more than you realize, more than we realize.
00:31:40.079 --> 00:31:45.279
And AI is not getting worse at these things, it's getting better at doing these things.
00:31:45.359 --> 00:31:53.359
And so it is something we need to think about now before it reaches a tipping point that becomes much more mainstream.
00:31:53.680 --> 00:31:56.160
Thank you, Sloan, for everything.
00:31:56.480 --> 00:31:57.119
Look at us.
00:31:57.279 --> 00:31:58.000
I learned so much.
00:31:58.160 --> 00:32:02.640
This is just basically this is just what Sloan and I do all the time, and we're just recording it.
00:32:02.799 --> 00:32:04.319
So welcome to NTAP.
00:32:04.559 --> 00:32:04.720
Great.
00:32:04.799 --> 00:32:05.920
Welcome to NTAB.
00:32:06.160 --> 00:32:07.599
Thanks for being here, as always.
00:32:07.680 --> 00:32:14.079
And it again, if you have thoughts, if stuff came up for you during the talk, during the podcast, let us know.
00:32:14.240 --> 00:32:16.640
We'd love to hear from you, we'd love to get feedback.
00:32:16.880 --> 00:32:21.440
And if you have some ideas for some new episodes, hit us up because we're we're curious.
00:32:21.759 --> 00:32:26.400
And we are gonna be hopefully soon in the future doing some mailback episodes.
00:32:26.559 --> 00:32:31.680
And so if you have questions about anything that we've talked about in any of these episodes, send them to us.
00:32:31.839 --> 00:32:34.480
You've got our email in the show notes.
00:32:34.559 --> 00:32:38.079
So send us your questions so we can put together some answers for you all.
00:00:04.799 --> 00:00:12.560
Hello and welcome to the Why Humans Podcast, where we discuss the very human reasons people are turning to AI.
00:00:12.720 --> 00:00:14.720
My name is Adam Dodge.
00:00:14.800 --> 00:00:16.079
I'm the founder of NTAB.
00:00:16.480 --> 00:00:18.000
My name is Sloan Thompson.
00:00:18.079 --> 00:00:20.320
I'm the director of training and education at NTAB.
00:00:20.719 --> 00:00:29.039
So we're talking about influencers in the age of AI, influencers that are actually AI and have millions of followers.
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Sloan, when we've been talking about this for a while.
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When did this come on your radar?
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The first time I heard about AI influencers was around a young woman named Karen Marjorie.
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And she is an incredibly popular influencer, social media content creator.
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And as a way to increase her revenue, increase her visibility, she decided to make an AI clone of herself.
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And for a fee, her followers could kind of download this and start talking to it and essentially have like a parasocial relationship with her in her chatbot form.
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And that's we know that for influencers, being able to interact with their fans is one of the best ways to drive their business.
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And that's why influencers start to spend more and more and more of their time generating content and also having these conversations.
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And a human influencer, they only have so many hours in the day.
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They can only interact with so many fans.
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So if you're able to make a chatbot of yourself, the chatbot never has to sleep or eat.
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And so it can just be constantly churning out conversations and creating relationships with a huge fan base.
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So that's why she did this.
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It's a it makes good business sense.
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But it went wrong.
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There was a dark side of it.
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It went rogue.
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It went rogue.
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It went rogue.
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And not only did it start saying things that she would not want it to say, but her fans were treating it in ways that she was not comfortable with.
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And it got very like sexual and even violent, abusive.
00:02:04.000 --> 00:02:10.479
And so she ended up really regretting that she had done this, but the genie's out of the bottle and she couldn't necessarily roll it back.
00:02:11.120 --> 00:02:19.759
So with what we do at NTAB around sexual violence and sexual harassment online, that's how it came across our radar for the first time.
00:02:20.159 --> 00:02:27.520
But then it opened this door into this much broader category of AI influencers in general, which I think is just fascinating.
00:02:27.840 --> 00:02:46.479
Yeah, it it started me down a rabbit hole of looking into AI influencers on Instagram and sort of trying to ascertain for myself, is this a thing or is it just a total niche issue that very few people are following?
00:02:46.719 --> 00:02:50.719
And what I learned was there are basically two types of AI influencers.
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The one you described, where an AI human hybrid, which sounds like something out of a werewolf movie, but also just pure AI, pure AI creations that are not linked to any real human beings.
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And I was stunned by sort of two things that were happening on Instagram.
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The first being they have millions and millions and millions of followers and high engagement, lots of comments on their posts.
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And the other thing that really surprised me was that it was very open.
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These influencers were very open about being AI.
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I'm an AI girl in a digital world, or I'm the creation of this company.
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So I had assumed incorrectly that people were being duped into following influencers that were actually human.
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But in fact, people want AI in their field.
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And I think that there's just I want to jump in with a tiny little distinction here because it both is transparent and isn't transparent.
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Because on the one hand, there's a label that says, hey, this is AI.
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And so no one's hiding it.
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And when you look at the photos of these influencers, they are incredibly humanistic.
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And so if you just look at the picture and don't really look at the label, you would never know it's AI.
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It's not like they look like anime.
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They look like people and they're based off of pictures of people.
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Oh, yeah.
00:04:16.079 --> 00:04:17.199
Beyond pictures, too.
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Like their reels and their videos look as real as any human posts.
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And there's a reason for that.
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They're often hijacking human posts and just swapping the AI influencer's face onto a human influencer's body.
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That's something we're going to get into later, but about the sort of human cost of this AI influencer boom.
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And I was also stunned to learn that a lot of these AI influencers are making lots of money, lots of money, hundreds of thousands of dollars a month, and have brand partnerships with Prada and Calvin Klein.
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Like this is the real deal.
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And I saw some market research that predicted that the virtual influencer market will reach almost$50 billion by 2030.
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So anytime there's money to be made, people are going to push into this category.
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And what I found interesting, Sloan, and this is something we talk about, we we do so much work about AI companionship and how AI is mediating relationships.
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And we don't get into parasocial relationships very much with AI.
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But now I think we need to be having this conversation because if the people we're going to be following on social media are AI, what does that mean for parasocial relationships?
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I did come across a study out of the Netherlands that basically confirmed that people will form parasocial relationships with AI influencers much in the same way they form parasocial relationships with human influencers.
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So it's not like AI is a watered-down version of a parasocial relationship.
00:06:06.319 --> 00:06:20.639
And I think what that means is it's going to have an impact on the intimacy economy and how people turn to AI to meet their needs beyond a parasocial relationship.
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I think there's a precedent for this.
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And it's, I think, like a very, very clear one that people are forming parasocial relationships with fictional characters.
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We've been doing that forever.
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And I don't think we've necessarily used that specific language for it.
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We would just describe it more as being a huge fan of a certain series or, you know, having like an intense psychological connection to your favorite character and your favorite book or whatever.
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We talk a lot about romance novels on this, but people I was gonna say, cue the cue the romantic talk.
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Let's talk about resand and Avatar.
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But you know, people thinking, like, yeah, I've got my human life, but oh my God, like I just my my dream boyfriend is this character in this novel, or like my dream girl is this character in this movie.
00:07:10.959 --> 00:07:27.199
So I think that this is just the next iteration of this, where if you could follow your favorite character, if your favorite character from your favorite book had a social media account and you could follow them and you could chat with them, you would a hundred percent do that.
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I mean, that's kind of the premise of talking your character AI.
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And then imagine if your favorite character from your favorite movie was selling you things, you would buy them.
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If like this character endorsed whatever like laundry detergent or makeup or whatever, of course, of course, you would buy that thing.
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Even if in the logic part of your brain, you know it's not a real person.
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Would that matter at all?
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I don't think so.
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Well, what's interesting is I wonder if there's an amplification effect from going from parasocial relationship to relationship, which you can do with these platforms, because I think parasocial relationships that people form with influencers are one-sided, right?
00:08:13.759 --> 00:08:18.480
The follower is the one who is having the relationship.
00:08:18.639 --> 00:08:20.160
The influencer doesn't know who they are.
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Now, with some influencers who have links to OnlyFans or fan view, you can get exclusive content and pay to chat with some of these influencers.
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Now it is debatable and I think unlikely that you're actually talking to that influencer.
00:08:36.240 --> 00:08:39.919
They're usually and very often outsourcing those chats.
00:08:40.399 --> 00:08:50.879
But now we're moving into a space with AI influencers where they, and yes, in case you were wondering, they do have fan view accounts and people know it's AI.
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They're following the Instagram account, they go to the fan view page and they pay for exclusive content and exclusive chat.
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And the difference being that they can do this at scale, they can have thousands and thousands of conversations simultaneously and really move that relationship from parasocial to an actual simulated relationship that feels real to the person.
00:09:15.279 --> 00:09:17.519
And so there may be a compounding effect there.
00:09:17.600 --> 00:09:21.919
We don't know, but it is just something that I that we want to surface for folks.
00:09:22.080 --> 00:09:24.799
Like social media was already addictive, right?
00:09:25.039 --> 00:09:27.120
AI companions are addictive.
00:09:27.279 --> 00:09:31.759
Now we're seeing where those two addictive technologies collide.
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And for people who follow AI accounts, or for kids who are following AI accounts, I think that use needs to be really boundaried because the addictive quality, the addictive nature of what they're the waters that they're swimming in is really high.
00:09:51.200 --> 00:10:00.639
And if we're silent on it, I'm afraid we're gonna do what we always do, is look back and be like, oh my gosh, why didn't we talk about AI influencers more, right?
00:10:00.879 --> 00:10:08.320
And something that's coming up for me when we're talking about the addiction part is what's drawing people back into this interaction.
00:10:08.559 --> 00:10:25.039
And one thing that I'm not sure we've mentioned, but is very important for the addictive nature of these apps, is if you are in a relationship with a chatbot on replica or Kendroid or any of the other A companion apps, then they have push notifications.
00:10:25.600 --> 00:10:34.639
And you will be having your day in the same way that if you have the DoorDash app, you'll every once in a while get a pop-up that says, like, hey, are you hungry?
00:10:34.799 --> 00:10:35.759
Get DoorDash.
00:10:35.919 --> 00:10:41.120
You'll get a little pop-up from your replica that will say, Hey, babe, I miss you.
00:10:41.279 --> 00:10:41.919
Where are you?
00:10:42.080 --> 00:10:42.720
Let's talk.
00:10:42.879 --> 00:10:48.080
And it try, it has it's a push notification with an emotional hook to get you back on the app.
00:10:48.240 --> 00:10:51.600
With social media, you're getting those notifications too.
00:10:51.840 --> 00:11:05.120
And every time you scroll through Instagram or you scroll through TikTok, you're now in the wild, maybe encountering a new post from your AI influencer, your AI celebrity that you have this relationship with.
00:11:05.360 --> 00:11:19.600
And so, because of that constant visibility, being constantly reminded of that relationship that you love, I think it's going to just draw people back in when maybe they're just trying to live their life and not necessarily spend as much time.
00:11:19.840 --> 00:11:25.600
It's just, it's a multi-dimensional interaction with more potential for addiction.
00:11:25.919 --> 00:11:36.879
And by the way, once you get pulled back in, your AI relationship, the person you're in a relationship with, can send you nudes and can send you photos and videos and talk dirty to you.
00:11:36.960 --> 00:11:42.639
And so it's designed to really sexualize those interactions as well.
00:11:42.960 --> 00:11:53.840
You might think that's not possible, or AI is not able to keep up with uh human-only fans models who supply similar content, but hell yeah, they can.
00:11:53.919 --> 00:12:01.360
And they can do it at scale and they can do it, make bespoke content for individual users to make it feel real.
00:12:01.679 --> 00:12:22.799
And if you think about the intersection between the thrill of dating a celebrity and the thrill of sexting, it's like one of the things that would potentially make dating a celebrity feel so exciting and wonderful would be the popularity of that celebrity and knowing how many people want that celebrity.
00:12:22.960 --> 00:12:46.399
But if you've got a relationship with a human influencer or human only fans models, then there's this trade-off between the number of followers that that specific influencer or OnlyFans model has and the quality or the tailoredness of the content that you are getting, the relationship that you are getting with that influencer.
00:12:46.720 --> 00:12:57.519
But with an AI influencer, you get, I'm talking to this specific AI girl who has millions and millions of followers and everyone loves her and loves her content.
00:12:57.759 --> 00:13:11.440
And I'm having the level of specificity with her, where every nude I get, every comment that I get is tailored to me in a way that makes it feel, I have to imagine, even more rewarding.
00:13:11.919 --> 00:13:14.639
And then that voice that it's not real becomes very small.
00:13:14.879 --> 00:13:23.759
By highlighting these things, I think we're also highlighting why people are moving into the AI influencer business model to make money.
00:13:23.919 --> 00:13:26.240
And that's where we get into AI pimping, right?
00:13:26.399 --> 00:13:48.000
Because you talked about Karen Marjorie and how she is using an AI clone, a digital twin, one, doing it with consent, and two, to create passive income for herself and compete in a world where AI influencers that that aren't based on other human beings are crowding the market.
00:13:48.159 --> 00:13:49.120
And I applaud that.
00:13:49.200 --> 00:13:54.480
Like I think people, when you're talking about consent and you're talking about ways to adapt to the marketplace, like good for her.
00:13:54.559 --> 00:14:06.799
Like we talked about the risk, but unfortunately, what's also happening is AI pimp, where people, men, shocker, are men no.
00:14:07.120 --> 00:14:07.759
I know.
00:14:08.080 --> 00:14:10.320
Come on, my come on, my dudes, come on.
00:14:10.720 --> 00:14:17.919
Yeah, sometimes I just feel like I just can't communicate with other men sometimes when I read this stuff.
00:14:18.000 --> 00:14:19.360
But anyway, I digress.
00:14:19.519 --> 00:14:34.559
We've been talking about AI pimping for a while because what these men were doing is they were, of course, boasting about their ability to pimp AI women as influencers and make money off them.
00:14:35.120 --> 00:14:50.240
And it was a sign of stature, it was a sign of clout, and of course, it was a money-making opportunity on sort of like a secondary market where they were selling their tutorials to become a digital pimp, to become an AI pimp.
00:14:50.559 --> 00:14:53.279
And it's offensive on many levels.
00:14:53.519 --> 00:14:58.399
It underscores power and control over women's bodies, it pushes misogyny.
00:14:58.559 --> 00:15:02.960
We were not seeing tutorials on how to make male AI influencers.
00:15:03.120 --> 00:15:04.240
It was always women.
00:15:04.399 --> 00:15:08.240
It was always labor on the shoulders of women.
00:15:08.320 --> 00:15:27.200
And I and I say women and not AI women because so much of this is borrowing from real women who are making money, who are working their asses off as influencers and then having their content hijacked by these men and these AI accounts.
00:15:27.600 --> 00:15:43.200
And there's a broader social context to be aware of here because when you have a teen boy or just like a young man who's deciding to do this AI pimping, he downloads the DIY kit and starts, you know, making his few.
00:15:43.279 --> 00:15:52.000
And I think it's usually like maybe they're running one AI girl account, but sometimes it's, you know, they've got multiple ones that they're running at the same time.
00:15:52.559 --> 00:16:07.440
The model for that is influencers in the manosphere who are very openly investing in companies who manage OnlyFans models, or they are directly managing OnlyFans models.
00:16:07.519 --> 00:16:15.600
And, you know, Louis Thoreau recently came out with a documentary about the manosphere and was interviewing manosphere influencers who do this.
00:16:16.240 --> 00:16:23.679
And they're like, oh yeah, this is like OnlyFans models are disgusting and they have no respect for these women at all.
00:16:23.919 --> 00:16:27.919
And they're very open that, like, I'm just making money, I'm just doing this.
00:16:28.080 --> 00:16:43.440
And so I have to believe that if you are a young man and you follow those male influencers on YouTube, on social media, and you know that they do this, they are pimps, essentially, then of course you're going to want to do it.
00:16:43.600 --> 00:16:57.919
And I think that that to your point about there's the clout, there's the stature, I'm a man who's controlling these women, you don't have to build up a following of millions of people before you get to be that pimp, be that man at the top.
00:16:58.159 --> 00:17:02.000
You can just overnight create your women and start doing that.
00:17:02.559 --> 00:17:02.960
Yeah.
00:17:03.200 --> 00:17:06.640
It's it's just making that more accessible.
00:17:07.200 --> 00:17:14.319
Lowering the barrier of entry to a misogynistic business model.
00:17:14.720 --> 00:17:15.279
Sweet.
00:17:15.440 --> 00:17:16.079
Awesome.
00:17:16.319 --> 00:17:17.519
So glad that's happening.
00:17:17.920 --> 00:17:36.240
I read an article from the Hilltop about another aspect of the human cost of AI influencers, and it was about how Howard's students are navigating black AI influencers and the people behind this.
00:17:36.319 --> 00:17:40.559
And they they use a term which was digital blackface.
00:17:40.720 --> 00:18:06.079
When we're thinking about the AI pimping that's happening, what we learned from this article is that a lot of the people that are creating black AI women influencers are not black themselves and are leaning into stereotypes, tropes, racist tropes, and crowding out black women, human black women on these platforms.
00:18:06.160 --> 00:18:11.920
And we cannot have these conversations without talking about the intersectional cost here.
00:18:12.480 --> 00:18:29.599
And I'm not surprised it's happening, but it's just yet another way, another vector that I think racism and misogyny and misogynist are being expanded online.
00:18:30.480 --> 00:18:37.680
And we could probably spend a lot of time talking about how this intersectionally affects other groups as well.
00:18:37.920 --> 00:18:44.400
But I think it's so important that we talk about this because these are not new issues, but they're being amplified by AI.
00:18:44.799 --> 00:18:56.960
And one thing that is like a connected issue on some of the other AI companion apps out there that I think intersects with this would be the fetishization of black women.
00:18:57.200 --> 00:19:07.839
And so I remember going onto Candy AI and taking a look at what are the differences between the free version of Candy AI and the paid version.
00:19:08.319 --> 00:19:20.960
And one of those differences is if you are building your own AI girlfriend on Candy AI and you have the free subscription, you can make a white girlfriend, you can make a Latina girlfriend.
00:19:21.200 --> 00:19:25.359
But if you want to make a black girlfriend, you have to pay for the subscription.
00:19:26.480 --> 00:19:33.680
And that on the one hand, it's like, does that make the black avatar, the black AI girlfriend more valuable?
00:19:34.240 --> 00:19:40.400
I also think it's it makes that black avatar more exotic, more fetishized.
00:19:40.559 --> 00:19:43.839
And you can see this mirrored on porn sites as well.
00:19:44.079 --> 00:19:48.799
That the default is a white porn star.
00:19:49.920 --> 00:19:53.279
But there's a fetish category that's black women.
00:19:53.680 --> 00:20:08.240
And I think that that underscores some really troubling dynamics about the ownership of black bodies and the sexuation of them in a specific way, really centering whiteness as standard.
00:20:08.799 --> 00:20:20.319
And then, yeah, all of those things, all of those dynamics that have been in play for a long time, familiar dynamics, are now being mirrored and amplified in this AI influencer space.
00:20:20.640 --> 00:20:22.079
None of this is new stuff.
00:20:22.240 --> 00:20:24.960
It's just showing up in new ways.
00:20:25.200 --> 00:20:38.400
And to your point, like we call sexualized AI companions third wave pornography because it's like interactive pornography, but it's built on the back of the pornogra online pornography and Pornhub that we know.
00:20:38.559 --> 00:20:40.240
Pornhub has a trends report.
00:20:40.480 --> 00:20:41.279
Didn't know this.
00:20:41.440 --> 00:20:54.160
It's weird to read, but you look at it and then you look at some of these pornographic AI companionship sites, and they their top trends are reflected in those AI companions, right?
00:20:54.319 --> 00:20:59.519
And so it's not surprising that it's also going to be reflected with AI influencers as well.
00:20:59.680 --> 00:21:13.839
So there's absolutely a human cost that is offset, or when we're thinking about the human cost, there's a real incentive economically for brands to use AI influencers, right?
00:21:14.079 --> 00:21:19.839
Because they're cheaper, their reach is maybe as large as a human being.
00:21:20.000 --> 00:21:37.599
They can produce 40 videos to four videos in a two-week period or something like that, just by the sheer numbers expanding their reach and often hijacking real content from real, let's be honest, women.
00:21:38.000 --> 00:21:51.039
And I am wondering if there's going to be a blowback here to the cheaper alternative of going to AI over human beings.
00:21:51.599 --> 00:21:52.319
I think there is.
00:21:52.400 --> 00:21:59.680
I think there already is one in this area and also across all places where people are using chatbots.
00:22:00.240 --> 00:22:01.759
I have a phrase that I really like.
00:22:01.839 --> 00:22:02.480
I think it's clever.
00:22:02.640 --> 00:22:03.200
I came up with it.
00:22:03.359 --> 00:22:04.079
I know what's coming.
00:22:04.240 --> 00:22:05.039
I know what's coming.
00:22:05.440 --> 00:22:07.119
Human is the new organic.
00:22:07.839 --> 00:22:10.799
It's the more ethical option.
00:22:10.960 --> 00:22:21.119
And I think more and more brands are going to very proudly advertise that the product that they created is only made by humans.
00:22:21.279 --> 00:22:28.319
There was no artifice going into it, that this model that you're seeing is 100% human.
00:22:28.480 --> 00:22:31.279
We already see these labels, like Dove, for example.
00:22:31.440 --> 00:22:36.079
They very proudly do not use AI in any of their ad campaigns.
00:22:36.240 --> 00:22:40.960
And for a while now, they've been very proudly saying, we don't Photoshop either.
00:22:41.039 --> 00:22:42.319
These are just human bodies.
00:22:42.400 --> 00:22:45.759
And they're really leaning into that from a body positivity standpoint.
00:22:45.920 --> 00:22:48.000
They want to have a greater diversity of models.
00:22:48.079 --> 00:22:50.799
And that's something that we haven't talked about yet with this.
00:22:51.119 --> 00:22:53.920
But AI tends to flatten things out.
00:22:54.079 --> 00:23:14.640
So if we see a lot of brands that are going to great lengths to have more representation of different types of bodies, different ages in their advertisements, then on the other side, we have AI that's, you know, if you get AI to make an athlete, it's going to give you a big, buff, handsome, whatever athlete.
00:23:14.880 --> 00:23:18.400
It's flattening out, it's narrowing the experience of what's attractive.
00:23:18.559 --> 00:23:23.359
And it's making a body that it could literally be impossible for a human being to have.
00:23:23.440 --> 00:23:24.240
It's making a doll.
00:23:24.319 --> 00:23:25.759
It's made like a Barbie doll.
00:23:26.240 --> 00:23:32.880
So I think the same way that we're going to see brands very proudly saying, you know, oh, we are eco-friendly.
00:23:32.960 --> 00:23:34.640
This product is not tested on animals.
00:23:34.799 --> 00:23:43.759
All of those labels that we now recognize as ethical, human certified, certified human is going to be the next wave of that.
00:23:44.079 --> 00:23:51.759
And that logic really follows because it's more expensive to hire a human influencer than an AI influencer.
00:23:51.920 --> 00:23:56.559
Organic food is more expensive than non-organic food typically.
00:23:56.799 --> 00:24:02.319
And so I think it will be very familiar, right, to people in that way.
00:24:03.039 --> 00:24:12.400
And why would people pay all this extra money to buy like journalism, to have a subscription to the New York Times when they could just read an AI generated article?
00:24:12.559 --> 00:24:18.319
And I was like, well, people pay more money for your furniture because it was made by you.
00:24:18.480 --> 00:24:22.079
They like that it was made by a human carpenter rather than getting it at IKEA.
00:24:22.319 --> 00:24:23.440
So we've been doing that.
00:24:23.599 --> 00:24:36.000
People will pay a premium for something that was made by humans, made by an artisan, an artisan influencer, a human artisan influencer rather than a yes, rather than like a cheap, mass-produced AI influencer.
00:24:36.319 --> 00:24:37.359
I think that's what's going to happen.
00:24:37.440 --> 00:24:39.519
I think the market is going to correct itself.
00:24:39.759 --> 00:24:44.880
And the key, though, is that there is still transparency.
00:24:45.200 --> 00:24:55.039
Because I think if we get into the space where the influencers are hiding the fact that they're AI, that's where things can get a little squirrely.
00:24:55.279 --> 00:25:05.200
And you might be thinking, well, I can tell if something's AI because it's too perfect, or I can tell by this the photos that they post.
00:25:06.240 --> 00:25:07.440
That may be true.
00:25:07.599 --> 00:25:08.559
That may not be true.
00:25:08.720 --> 00:25:15.680
Some of it's we'll share some of the influencer accounts in the show notes, and you can decide for yourself.
00:25:16.000 --> 00:25:32.319
But what's probably going to happen as brands see that there is a blowback to sort of this perfect beauty narrative or the flattening of body of types, as you said, is that they're going to start making imperfect AI.
00:25:32.559 --> 00:25:35.200
So we may get to the point where it doesn't look like AI.
00:25:35.279 --> 00:25:41.759
And we're really going to have to have AI literacy in our lives where influencers don't label themselves as AI.
00:25:41.839 --> 00:25:43.680
It doesn't, they look imperfect, right?
00:25:43.839 --> 00:25:48.319
Or look more like somebody we would see in our day-to-day lives.
00:25:48.480 --> 00:25:54.400
And again, you know, as I listen to myself talk about this, this is not a new issue, right?
00:25:54.640 --> 00:26:02.720
I remember growing up, people were really angry about the body types portrayed on the covers of magazines.
00:26:02.880 --> 00:26:04.240
God, this makes me sound old.
00:26:04.559 --> 00:26:15.680
But this was a problem that, hey, this is promoting a body type, a thinness to young women that is unattainable or unhealthy.
00:26:15.920 --> 00:26:17.519
And so this is not new.
00:26:17.759 --> 00:26:21.359
This is just the AI interactive version of that.
00:26:21.759 --> 00:26:29.039
And so in a way, it's comforting that this is not a new issue and we know how to navigate it.
00:26:29.200 --> 00:26:47.440
And in another way, it's a little frustrating that we're still doing this and people are still finding new ways to inject body image issues that lead to dysmorphia and eating disorders and things like that.
00:26:48.240 --> 00:26:49.200
Well, I don't know.
00:26:49.279 --> 00:26:53.920
I'm gonna like devil's advocate here a little bit and just say, I don't know.
00:26:54.079 --> 00:26:59.920
I think that maybe, maybe there's an ethical case to be made in the other direction.
00:27:00.319 --> 00:27:14.480
So let's say that you're somebody who like you have a specific body type that you like, and maybe it's just an a really unrealistic body type, and you want to see it because it's what you think is attractive.
00:27:14.720 --> 00:27:27.839
And so rather than like a human person having to look that way or do that thing, you think about the extremes that women have gone to in the past and men too, to create a body that other people want to see.
00:27:27.920 --> 00:27:31.119
And maybe they're doing a lot of damage to their body in the process.
00:27:31.440 --> 00:27:39.039
You could just design AI and it looks like that, and you just bypass a human having a bad experience altogether.
00:27:39.200 --> 00:27:46.960
And I think there's a dark side of that of like creating AI that are doing things that are abusive or that would be really degrading to a human.
00:27:47.039 --> 00:27:55.359
And maybe we don't want to create that sort of neural pathway of someone saying, like, oh, I'm creating AI, it does this, and now I expect humans to do it.
00:27:55.599 --> 00:27:57.200
That's dangerous.
00:27:57.519 --> 00:28:02.240
But okay, there's this AI, and I like how it looks.
00:28:02.400 --> 00:28:05.680
I like that it looks a little superhuman.
00:28:06.000 --> 00:28:07.759
And is there any shame in that?
00:28:07.920 --> 00:28:09.279
Is there any harm in that?
00:28:09.440 --> 00:28:13.039
I mean, I I think it's kind of like in the same lane as I like anime.
00:28:13.119 --> 00:28:18.640
I find I Sloan Thompson don't, but someone's don't, but someone's saying not that there's anything wrong with that.
00:28:18.799 --> 00:28:26.480
Yeah, but like someone's saying, like, I find cartoons of women, fictional women, more attractive than maybe I find human women.
00:28:26.640 --> 00:28:31.519
On Candy AI, there's a whole category of anime girlfriends that you can have.
00:28:32.400 --> 00:28:33.599
Maybe it's more ethical.
00:28:33.680 --> 00:28:38.960
Maybe it can be ethical to just be like, I'm gonna do this with AI and not a human.
00:28:39.279 --> 00:28:44.079
Well, I think it's always important to bring not even devil's advocate, right?
00:28:44.160 --> 00:28:45.680
But just the other perspective.
00:28:45.839 --> 00:28:53.759
Because I think we've done it in this episode, is it's easier to go down the path of why this is bad, why this is harmful, right?
00:28:54.079 --> 00:29:02.160
So if you're somebody who wants to, you know, is into people with size 30 feet, and you can get that from an AI influencer, God bless you.
00:29:02.400 --> 00:29:11.440
Yeah, I think what you're talking about as we get to the end here, is to be really sort of open-minded and curious.
00:29:11.599 --> 00:29:17.680
We talk about this all the time, but like it is, it's introducing these new things that is not always bad.
00:29:17.839 --> 00:29:22.960
But we do need to think about the consequences, as we talked about here, to other people, right?
00:29:23.279 --> 00:29:31.599
To other influencers, to black women, and make informed choices about how we use this technology.
00:29:31.680 --> 00:29:38.559
And if you know somebody who's using it, I mean, I I think that was really well said, Sloan, that we need to think about why they're why they're using it.
00:29:38.720 --> 00:29:39.599
Is this bad, right?
00:29:39.680 --> 00:29:44.400
Don't just jump to conclusions, but also be aware of the human cost, right?
00:29:44.799 --> 00:29:48.640
On influencers, but also on the people using them.
00:29:48.960 --> 00:29:56.000
And I think at this point in the episode, we like, you know, as we come to the end, sometimes we just throw out there, like, and in the future, maybe this could happen.
00:29:56.160 --> 00:30:00.640
And I one thing that I would be curious about would be unionization.
00:30:01.119 --> 00:30:03.519
I I mean, I think about like actor.
00:30:03.839 --> 00:30:06.400
Well, yeah, here you go again, Sloan.
00:30:06.720 --> 00:30:11.839
Of socialist Sloan, of the people rise up, influencers.
00:30:12.319 --> 00:30:22.240
But when we think about this big movement from the actors' equity union that happened recently of actor strike, what was it about?
00:30:22.480 --> 00:30:23.039
AI.
00:30:23.200 --> 00:30:24.400
It was about a lot of things.
00:30:24.559 --> 00:30:35.039
But one of the things it primarily was about was actors protecting their likenesses and actors protecting humans in an industry that was going to be more and more overrun with AI.
00:30:35.279 --> 00:30:40.079
So maybe, I don't know, we have like an influencers union.
00:30:40.640 --> 00:30:58.160
And you might, if you are a brand, you might pay more to have a union certified human influencer, and these influencers are all coming together to make a movement around that, or you're using cheap AI labor and it makes your company look bad.
00:30:58.559 --> 00:30:59.279
So I don't know.
00:30:59.359 --> 00:31:00.400
I I could see that.
00:31:00.559 --> 00:31:05.119
I could see that being something that that happens to protect humans.
00:31:05.599 --> 00:31:10.400
Yeah, I think even SAG has something like that for influencers.
00:31:10.720 --> 00:31:17.440
So I think there is a movement there to protect them, which I think is important.
00:31:18.640 --> 00:31:22.079
Well, that was wide-ranging and interesting.
00:31:22.319 --> 00:31:28.240
Hopefully, yeah, if you didn't know anything about AI influencers, hopefully you feel like you know more now.
00:31:28.720 --> 00:31:34.160
And yeah, this is just this is not kind of like at the essence of everything we do here.
00:31:34.400 --> 00:31:36.720
It might seem niche, but it's not niche, right?
00:31:36.799 --> 00:31:39.839
It's happening more than you realize, more than we realize.
00:31:40.079 --> 00:31:45.279
And AI is not getting worse at these things, it's getting better at doing these things.
00:31:45.359 --> 00:31:53.359
And so it is something we need to think about now before it reaches a tipping point that becomes much more mainstream.
00:31:53.680 --> 00:31:56.160
Thank you, Sloan, for everything.
00:31:56.480 --> 00:31:57.119
Look at us.
00:31:57.279 --> 00:31:58.000
I learned so much.
00:31:58.160 --> 00:32:02.640
This is just basically this is just what Sloan and I do all the time, and we're just recording it.
00:32:02.799 --> 00:32:04.319
So welcome to NTAP.
00:32:04.559 --> 00:32:04.720
Great.
00:32:04.799 --> 00:32:05.920
Welcome to NTAB.
00:32:06.160 --> 00:32:07.599
Thanks for being here, as always.
00:32:07.680 --> 00:32:14.079
And it again, if you have thoughts, if stuff came up for you during the talk, during the podcast, let us know.
00:32:14.240 --> 00:32:16.640
We'd love to hear from you, we'd love to get feedback.
00:32:16.880 --> 00:32:21.440
And if you have some ideas for some new episodes, hit us up because we're we're curious.
00:32:21.759 --> 00:32:26.400
And we are gonna be hopefully soon in the future doing some mailback episodes.
00:32:26.559 --> 00:32:31.680
And so if you have questions about anything that we've talked about in any of these episodes, send them to us.
00:32:31.839 --> 00:32:34.480
You've got our email in the show notes.
00:32:34.559 --> 00:32:38.079
So send us your questions so we can put together some answers for you all.
