Contrary to my contrarian opinions, I can sometimes be a pretty normal guy. I eat food, sleep and drink water just like the rest of y’all.
On top of all that nifty human stuff, I also spend a good thirty minutes to an hour on social media because every now and then I fancy a good top text, bottom text meme or a high-quality Internet video.
Recently, my social media recommendations have become filled with quaint, short videos of three peculiar characters and a rotating cast of others. The three main characters’ voices are created through artificial intelligence to sound just like Donald Trump, Barack Obama and Joe Biden.
This group often discusses important sociopolitical topics like Minecraft servers, love lives, music production and other video games they play with each other over Discord calls.
For the past several weeks I have thoroughly consumed and enjoyed these clips, wondering why they’re so entertaining and what ramifications, if any, may arise from them.
After these many minutes of human reflection, because I’m definitely human and not artificially generated like those humorous skits, I have come to the conclusion that these types of videos are not only wholesome but also healing.
To remove the bit and talk candidly, there’s an off-putting level of sincerity to the scripts being run through the AI that produces these videos. The conversations, at least to the ears of a male in his early twenties, sound natural and relatable despite the clear robotic qualities of the voices.
However, this isn’t anything new. What piqued my interest was how much sympathy I felt for the three recurring characters after these videos were shown to me repeatedly.
For some reason, I began to equate the AI versions of Donald Trump, Barack Obama and Joe Biden to their real selves despite knowing full well that the clips I was watching were fake.
Although I don’t terribly care for any of the men, hearing jokes about Trump’s indictment or Biden being a sleepy fellow provoked the same emotions I get when I think someone or something I care about is being unjustly criticized.
In other words, I got defensive because I saw deep-faked videos on social media.
This phenomenon is fascinating to me because of its potential implications and potential revelations about human nature.
I have often heard the argument that humans have evolved to live with the changes around them. Our ability to adapt to our environment is why rapid developments in technology aren’t a problem.
In particular, this argument is used around social media usage and its effects on the human psyche, but I think this example of AI videos brings up a good counterpoint.
Sure, humans can adapt to their environment, but they can’t adapt their genetic makeup and natural tendencies. We didn’t evolve as a species to receive validation from potentially thousands of other humans through social media or decipher between real and fake messaging.
When I see a video of the current and former presidents making fun of each other over Discord, I am not distinguishing between the real version from the fake version.
Instead, I am acknowledging that the way these people talk is colloquial, relatable and humorous. I think they’re just dudes being guys, a couple guys being dudes.
In terms of the implications, I doubt this is anything new. Brands try to be relatable through all kinds of advertisements like humorous tweets, but they’re rarely up to date enough on pop culture for it to have a significant impact.
Rather, I think AI can be used to improve the public perception of individuals, something that was often just done through the passage of time.
As a result, I think AI can be used to remove those feelings of vitriol and replace them with feelings of sympathy, whether that be for better or for worse.
Regardless, I’m going to enjoy my AI videos as if the voices were from normal humans, like me, and if it means feeling negatively towards less people, then I’m all ears – human ears that is.