It’s Martin Luther King Jr day today, 1/18/2025, and is celebrated every third Monday in January. We’ve been honoring this day since the 80s. King’s famous “I have a dream….” speech (https://www.npr.org/2010/01/18/122701268/i-have-a-dream-speech-in-its-entirety) is well worth re-reading. It ends with hope.
This author doesn’t play the mega popular game Fortnite currently, but a few years back, they tried to put MLK JR’s speech inside Fortnite, with mixed reactions:
Yes, it’s ironic that a game with guns and killing people seeks to celebrate a famous man who believed in peace, but it’s not the first time history and gaming have crossed.
Let’s talk about making the internet a better place on this day federal holiday.
I have an internet dream that might seem unlikely to ever come true: that scammers and spammers become the exception and not the norm.
Virtually everything good we’ve known on the internet has been subverted by spammers and scammers and AI is the new para-scam-adise.
No less in the form of AI videos trying to fake us out that they’re human created.
“Scammers are using artificial intelligence to create highly realistic fake videos or audio recordings that pretend to be authentic content from real people,” McAfee warned, “As deepfake technology becomes more accessible and afford
able, even people with no prior experience can produce convincing content.” So, just imagine what people, threat actors, scammers and hackers with prior experience, can produce by way of an AI-driven attack. Attacks that can get within a cat’s whisker of fooling a seasoned cybersecurity professional into handing over credentials that could have seen his Gmail account hacked with all the consequences that could carry.” – Urgent New Gmail Security Warning For Billions As Attacks Continue
Some time ago I got into a bit of a scrum online with a reader disappointed in the use of AI generated images in some of the articles here. I explained that all the text, every word you’re reading right here and now is human-written and human edited. 100%. We have zero desire to use AI for text content here. Not today, not tomorrow and probably never. One lone exception might be in an article about AI where AI is being used to provide example to the reader, and probably to mock how generic and boring AI-generated text is to read.
Why the hesitation to say never? Because never is longer than I can and should promise on anything. For example, I said — wrongly — that I would never buy another pinball machine again, and last year I bought two. I’m going to write articles 100% myself as long as I can, but what happens when I can’t write articles any longer? Hopefully, we’ll have more human writers to take over. I don’t like the idea of reading AI generated articles and don’t want readers to read them here either.
I just want to keep an open mind to the future, because you never know. Never.
So, there you have it. 100% human written, edited and published article content is a benefit to readers. The same for videos and podcasts. As for music, static images and games? Yes, I’m willing to experiment with and publish AI-generated content in these areas.
Why not go all the way? Because no AI can write your words or mine the way we would write them. Writers are unique. Some would argue that artists are unique, too, and I’d agree that AI generated art is a downgrade from human drawn art. Why we use some of that AI generated art is a publishing, not a creative, decision. We don’t and won’t pretend AI art is better than the human art from a creative standpoint. From a business standpoint, from economics, from speed to generate something usable for a placeholder image? AI generated artwork has its place.
Truth is, if we didn’t use AI generated art, we wouldn’t pay an artist for the placeholder image, so we’re not depriving any human artist being paid, which is the bigger reason professional artists — those that make a living by their art — don’t like AI generated art. They don’t like thinking a machine might be/is taking commissioned work from them. I get it, but it’s not going to stop AI generated artwork from existing.
Also, it’s understandable that creative non-professional artists like me might balk at AI generated artwork, feeling it has no soul. I don’t quite go that far into the extreme like others, because I know it’s going to exist and it makes sense from my point of view to try and understand how it can be used in the creative art process. I’m not nearly as anti-AI as some others.
Now, let’s get back to the scammers. They don’t care about readers, except to the extent your eyes are advertising fodder. They don’t care about artists or musicians or the art of creativity in general.
They care about money.
Their content is BS. It always is. They are merely there for a piece of ad revenue. If they were legitimate they would tell you and I they were AI generated. Put it in every video and let us make the call if we want to watch it or not.
For those that do? I have no problem with them. They are being honest, transparent with their actions. They deserve a chance to carve out something on the internet and elsewhere.
Maybe YouTube and other video sites will get around to fingerprinting this AI generated content, pulling the mask down to show us that it’s not created by real people. Maybe those of us real people creating real content will get some sort of internet blue verified checkmark. Something that tells visitors at a glance where the AI is at.
I think ultimately on the internet that’s the way. Advertise proudly human generated content. People want to read and watch real people, not AI.
Oh, and yes I have an AI generated band called AI KILLS (https://open.spotify.com/artist/63ataxYlRXQGxWaJz6JFTU). Before anybody labels me some kind of hypocrite. The “band”” name is firmly tongue in cheek. It’s experimental and, yes, it’s commercial. I’m not doing it to scam anybody, I say right in the description that it’s AI and the name has “AI” in it.
I’m openly promoting that it’s AI. I think this is the right way for those wanting to do something that AI-generated. Be up front about what you’re up to or risk being labeled yet another scammer. The reality is some will loop what I’m doing as a scam.
Let’s recap what an AI scammer is and does:
- A scammer uses AI covertly, without identifying in any obvious way the content is either completely, mostly or even partially AI. They don’t tell you what they are doing intentionally in order to show you ads and have you click thru making them $$.
- Scammers do not care about what they are publishing, except to the extent that they profit in some way for/from it.
This, of course, is this author’s opinion. You might label a scammer as anybody that uses AI for any reason and not tie it to money, but money is always the motivation for a scam. Always.
If there was not financial incentive for undisclosed, covert AI generated content, they wouldn’t do it. They hide that it’s AI because less real people will be interested in it if they know it’s AI generated.
Your turn, friendly readers Why do you think scammers are using AI? What do you honestly think of AI-generated content? Do you sit somewhere in the middle like me or are you strongly for or against it?