I don’t see why AI art can’t have a tiny stamp, logo, or signature type thing in the bottom right corner or something to designate that it’s AI. Could be a requirement for generating any picture to distinguish from other forms of art.
Has anyone had success with ChatGPT reading TFP articles aloud until Substack support figures out how to enable the text to voice feature for TFP? Would be nice to have an alternative to ‘Stream NYT’ to listen to at work.
Kat's plug for her book... Beautifully shameless. But Kat! You should have linked your book to the Free Press's bookseller's page so your boss could get some of the proceeds!
You have to figure this tech was going to be used to create convincing fakes soon (if it hasn't already), either by jailbreaking or by partisan owners releasing it to their preferred side. Grok lets society prepare itself, so that when someone does release an image of Trump or Harris doing a line of coke or exposing their privates in public, people will understand that for once they might not want to believe their lying eyes.
It has the unfortunate side effect that real images may not be believed when they should be. But at this point there's really nothing that can be done about that. The Democrats branding as fake the voluminous evidence that Biden was failing, just before spinning 180 and admitted that it wasn't, may fortuitously have provided a little insurance in that direction.
I have no trouble with Gemini refusing to write murder stories or Grok producing any picture someone can imagine. I just want to keep the government out of it. I trust AI more than I trust all government officials put together.
Iranian, Russian or Hamas agents using those tools to manipulate populations in countries that are defenseless against such misinformation seems not the smartest thing to do. AI itself is not inherently good or bad. Government has a role to ensuring that people are protected from the worst scenarios such tools could be used and to defend us against state-sponsored or otherwise powerful evil actors that want to destroy our liberal democracies.
Why ANYONE would stump for more government control (or role; read, yet more regulation) is beyond me. I like letting me determine what's real or not. Besides, the Genie is outta the bottle now. Good luck asking it to put itself back in there!!
You likely also oppose government regulation for clean water and air or undervalue the necessity of a government-run military to defend against foreign threats. Surely, you and your gun are sufficient to protect your home in case of invasion.
If this isn't the case, you should recognize why a democratically elected government should implement regulations to shield citizens from dangers posed by foreign adversaries or malicious use of AI and social media.
Btw the Iranian agents who have turned a generation of young Americans into fans of Hamas and enemies of Israel by hijacking their minds on TikTok haven’t needed any fake photos—-just an open virtual border provided by the hapless US government.
Which conjures an interesting dilemma: when should a free press not be free, if ever? When can one trust "normal people" (whoever they are), to use "good judgment", (whatever that is)?
Donald and Kamala having a love-child... it could happen. Once, a person would have to drop Mr. Natural blotter acid. Today, anything could happen - without Mr. Natural...
I fear that these pictures will become more realistic and then be unleashed by bad actors at the right moment, preventing people from making informed decisions. Censorship should not be used and will not work. So, there is no "solution" at this point. Perhaps AI and search tools will become freely available to tell us what is unreal in real time.
Conversely, when someone really does have the goods, it'll be denounced as fake, as the White House did with videos showing a befuddled Biden before the debate disaster.
I think it would depend on who releases the realistic photos at the right time. I think people are starting to find the media outlets, accounts, and people they can trust (big, small, independent), like I have with TFP. At this point, anything MSM produces needs to be taken with a grain of salt after the lies they have been willing to publish.
Yes, but long as we permit bad actors, such as those state-sponsored by countries like Iran, North Korea, or Russia, to exploit these tools against us, the process of identifying and labeling false information and fake content will invariably lag behind the creation of these fakes. This is evident to anyone observing current social media trends, particularly on platforms like Twitter following Elon Musk's controversial takeover. Government needs to set incentives that clearly will discourage the production and distribution of fakes and actively demand platform and AI providers to put checks-and-balances in place.
There is no god-given or scientific rule explaining why the government should not be able to do a good job of governing or regulating. If it doesn't work, it's our job to elect the officials who are good at it (if you are living in a democracy, that is).
That headline image of Kamala and Trump had me simultaneously laughing my derriere off and reaching for the eye bleach! I'm going to have to get used to seeing, shall we say, provocative AI-generated images.
Sometimes I need to remind myself to not continually, when speaking to my children and grandchildren, state with conviction well back in my day we would or could never do that ! So yes I am definitely older and hark back to the old days. HOW have times changed !!!
When certain actions were both common and expected like standing when Grandma entered the room and giving your seat to a lady on the bus. When young people would never be allowed to use profane language, especially in front of adults. On TV shows and movies I think the "F" word is more common that Mom and Dad. TV shows would never show a man and wife sleeping in the same bed, they always had double beds like in the Dick VanDyke shows. The only black entertainer allowed on TV was Nat King Cole. Today it is not uncommon to see complete frontal nudity of both sexes and virtual sexual encounters of all the sexes you can now be allowed to conjure up. Today I do not think it is an exaggeration to note that almost 70% of all advertisements contains mostly non caucasian actors. In the 50's drugs were sleazy and only used by the criminals and "bad People". Then drugs became a proud symbol of the cool people, mind opening, almost something to aspire to. The Government spent billions upon billions to tell us alcohol and smoking was bad, bad, very bad. Now we spend billions and are passing laws to allow the use of Cannabis because >> why not , it actually may have medicinal purpose. Just forget about the fact it is still smoking. Where we were when I was young and where we are now was not foreseeable then. So I will assume we have to admit that what ever you can dream up for the future please do not say >> Oh no I don't think that will happen >> not really possible!
Shakespeare reminds us through Hamlet that "nothing is good or bad but thinking makes it so." It comes down to one's perspectives, one's cultures' thoughts, the words and phrases (i.e., language) we use, or the times that we live in.
Personally, I have found thinking to be surprisingly useful in discerning right and wrong, but then again, because I actually enjoy thinking, I believe that moral truths not only exist, but their discernment is really important. But that's just me.
God has written their laws on the hearts of men, but it takes thinking to discern them and higher education to rationalize them away. The Sophists were, after all, sophisticated.
I scrolled through a bunch of these images on X and thought most of them were hilariously funny. Only the gory ones struck me as offensive and unfunny. One post on X was telling. Responding to someone's condemnation of the lack of filtering, they said, "These people would put a filter on pencils and paintbrushes if they could."
Most of the images were of Harris and Trump. If we can't make fun of our politicians, I don't recognize this country anymore. Grok sort of democratizes political cartoons. Now you don't need to be able to draw!
Kat makes a good point about how we've survived for generations in a world where we had to sift through text and images and determine what is real and what is not. This has always involved examining context, sources, and corroborating evidence. Really nothing new here.
I understand that it is hard for humans to understand the quality of the tremendous change and dangers that come from AI and underestimate what bad, deep-pocket actors can do with it. Unfortunately it's not as obvious as the invention of nuclear bombs that changed the way war could destroy everything.
From the beginning of photography there have been fakes or posed shots touted as candid images. Matthew Brady manipulated scenes for his compelling Civil War photographs. We will all be fooled some of the time. Critical thinking skills may minimize how often we are taken in. It would be lovely if everyone told the truth and we could trust everything we see and read. The brainwork that goes into the simple act of reading about a politician’s policies is enough for many of us to give up.
I remember watching a movie in high school civics class that taught us how to be educated voters. One of the things educated voters did was read newspapers that outlined the issues and read the politicians’ materials. Thinking about the issues and discussing them with others would help the voter decide how to vote. The underlying values of the movie were that we could trust journalists to tell us the truth and politicians may slant their materials but they would focus on their platforms.
I don’t have a lot of faith in American voters ability to see through the fog of dreck and to vote thoughtfully.
I am angry at the selfishness of this country’s political, tech, finance, and all other leaders. I am angry that they make me feel helpless and stupid are have savvy tools with sophisticated operators at their disposal to push me further in this direction.
Newspapers today, along with mainstream broadcast media and social networking sites like google, Tik Tok, facebook and instagram, are the chief sources of misinformation. This is why alternative news is growing so fast. The Free Press is one example.
The reason why people are afraid of Grok is because education in this country is so piss poor that less than 10% of the population, including 100% of our political class, have any critical thinking skills.
This is why homeschooling , classical education, and solid parochial schools are booming. Putting children in public schools today should be considered to be child abuse.
You can quickly become frustrated by the security constraints of AI tools that think your requests are too racy. The typical Hollywood blockbuster couldn't get through the censors of the most common tools, but as somone who has worked in technology, I understand that once you release a tool into the world, it can be used in ways you didn't imagine.
So you think the image of Kamala Harris carrying Trump's baby is funny? What happens when it is someone harrassing you or your daughter?
Disregarding copyrights is fun until it's your intellectual property being stolen.
Then there is Social Contagion and influence. There was a spat of young women and adolocents that started displaying symptoms of Tourette Syndrome because they were following on online influencer.
Amen
I don’t see why AI art can’t have a tiny stamp, logo, or signature type thing in the bottom right corner or something to designate that it’s AI. Could be a requirement for generating any picture to distinguish from other forms of art.
And the user will immediately crop it out...
Has anyone had success with ChatGPT reading TFP articles aloud until Substack support figures out how to enable the text to voice feature for TFP? Would be nice to have an alternative to ‘Stream NYT’ to listen to at work.
Kat's plug for her book... Beautifully shameless. But Kat! You should have linked your book to the Free Press's bookseller's page so your boss could get some of the proceeds!
You have to figure this tech was going to be used to create convincing fakes soon (if it hasn't already), either by jailbreaking or by partisan owners releasing it to their preferred side. Grok lets society prepare itself, so that when someone does release an image of Trump or Harris doing a line of coke or exposing their privates in public, people will understand that for once they might not want to believe their lying eyes.
It has the unfortunate side effect that real images may not be believed when they should be. But at this point there's really nothing that can be done about that. The Democrats branding as fake the voluminous evidence that Biden was failing, just before spinning 180 and admitted that it wasn't, may fortuitously have provided a little insurance in that direction.
I have no trouble with Gemini refusing to write murder stories or Grok producing any picture someone can imagine. I just want to keep the government out of it. I trust AI more than I trust all government officials put together.
Iranian, Russian or Hamas agents using those tools to manipulate populations in countries that are defenseless against such misinformation seems not the smartest thing to do. AI itself is not inherently good or bad. Government has a role to ensuring that people are protected from the worst scenarios such tools could be used and to defend us against state-sponsored or otherwise powerful evil actors that want to destroy our liberal democracies.
Why ANYONE would stump for more government control (or role; read, yet more regulation) is beyond me. I like letting me determine what's real or not. Besides, the Genie is outta the bottle now. Good luck asking it to put itself back in there!!
You likely also oppose government regulation for clean water and air or undervalue the necessity of a government-run military to defend against foreign threats. Surely, you and your gun are sufficient to protect your home in case of invasion.
If this isn't the case, you should recognize why a democratically elected government should implement regulations to shield citizens from dangers posed by foreign adversaries or malicious use of AI and social media.
Btw the Iranian agents who have turned a generation of young Americans into fans of Hamas and enemies of Israel by hijacking their minds on TikTok haven’t needed any fake photos—-just an open virtual border provided by the hapless US government.
Imagine what additional harm they can do to our democracies when they figure out how to use more and more powerful AI tools...
Which conjures an interesting dilemma: when should a free press not be free, if ever? When can one trust "normal people" (whoever they are), to use "good judgment", (whatever that is)?
Donald and Kamala having a love-child... it could happen. Once, a person would have to drop Mr. Natural blotter acid. Today, anything could happen - without Mr. Natural...
I say - keep on truckin'!
I fear that these pictures will become more realistic and then be unleashed by bad actors at the right moment, preventing people from making informed decisions. Censorship should not be used and will not work. So, there is no "solution" at this point. Perhaps AI and search tools will become freely available to tell us what is unreal in real time.
Conversely, when someone really does have the goods, it'll be denounced as fake, as the White House did with videos showing a befuddled Biden before the debate disaster.
I think it would depend on who releases the realistic photos at the right time. I think people are starting to find the media outlets, accounts, and people they can trust (big, small, independent), like I have with TFP. At this point, anything MSM produces needs to be taken with a grain of salt after the lies they have been willing to publish.
The “solution” is to know what is true and then to tune out the “narrative” and the fake AI pix and movie animations.
Yes, but long as we permit bad actors, such as those state-sponsored by countries like Iran, North Korea, or Russia, to exploit these tools against us, the process of identifying and labeling false information and fake content will invariably lag behind the creation of these fakes. This is evident to anyone observing current social media trends, particularly on platforms like Twitter following Elon Musk's controversial takeover. Government needs to set incentives that clearly will discourage the production and distribution of fakes and actively demand platform and AI providers to put checks-and-balances in place.
Government does not do a good job of governing or regulating...face it, it's up to us now.
There is no god-given or scientific rule explaining why the government should not be able to do a good job of governing or regulating. If it doesn't work, it's our job to elect the officials who are good at it (if you are living in a democracy, that is).
That headline image of Kamala and Trump had me simultaneously laughing my derriere off and reaching for the eye bleach! I'm going to have to get used to seeing, shall we say, provocative AI-generated images.
Sometimes I need to remind myself to not continually, when speaking to my children and grandchildren, state with conviction well back in my day we would or could never do that ! So yes I am definitely older and hark back to the old days. HOW have times changed !!!
When certain actions were both common and expected like standing when Grandma entered the room and giving your seat to a lady on the bus. When young people would never be allowed to use profane language, especially in front of adults. On TV shows and movies I think the "F" word is more common that Mom and Dad. TV shows would never show a man and wife sleeping in the same bed, they always had double beds like in the Dick VanDyke shows. The only black entertainer allowed on TV was Nat King Cole. Today it is not uncommon to see complete frontal nudity of both sexes and virtual sexual encounters of all the sexes you can now be allowed to conjure up. Today I do not think it is an exaggeration to note that almost 70% of all advertisements contains mostly non caucasian actors. In the 50's drugs were sleazy and only used by the criminals and "bad People". Then drugs became a proud symbol of the cool people, mind opening, almost something to aspire to. The Government spent billions upon billions to tell us alcohol and smoking was bad, bad, very bad. Now we spend billions and are passing laws to allow the use of Cannabis because >> why not , it actually may have medicinal purpose. Just forget about the fact it is still smoking. Where we were when I was young and where we are now was not foreseeable then. So I will assume we have to admit that what ever you can dream up for the future please do not say >> Oh no I don't think that will happen >> not really possible!
The contrast between the governments and the peoples reactions to Grok is very telling. The government, or the people, your choice.
Shakespeare reminds us through Hamlet that "nothing is good or bad but thinking makes it so." It comes down to one's perspectives, one's cultures' thoughts, the words and phrases (i.e., language) we use, or the times that we live in.
Personally, I have found thinking to be surprisingly useful in discerning right and wrong, but then again, because I actually enjoy thinking, I believe that moral truths not only exist, but their discernment is really important. But that's just me.
Moral truths exist in time and space.
I find them in the 66 books of the Holy Scriptura. G*d Almighty never changes. He is immutable. His moral truths never change either.
God has written their laws on the hearts of men, but it takes thinking to discern them and higher education to rationalize them away. The Sophists were, after all, sophisticated.
I scrolled through a bunch of these images on X and thought most of them were hilariously funny. Only the gory ones struck me as offensive and unfunny. One post on X was telling. Responding to someone's condemnation of the lack of filtering, they said, "These people would put a filter on pencils and paintbrushes if they could."
Most of the images were of Harris and Trump. If we can't make fun of our politicians, I don't recognize this country anymore. Grok sort of democratizes political cartoons. Now you don't need to be able to draw!
Kat makes a good point about how we've survived for generations in a world where we had to sift through text and images and determine what is real and what is not. This has always involved examining context, sources, and corroborating evidence. Really nothing new here.
I understand that it is hard for humans to understand the quality of the tremendous change and dangers that come from AI and underestimate what bad, deep-pocket actors can do with it. Unfortunately it's not as obvious as the invention of nuclear bombs that changed the way war could destroy everything.
First we had nuclear bombs...now we have AI. Neither scenario has 'good' government regulations or are governed well.
From the beginning of photography there have been fakes or posed shots touted as candid images. Matthew Brady manipulated scenes for his compelling Civil War photographs. We will all be fooled some of the time. Critical thinking skills may minimize how often we are taken in. It would be lovely if everyone told the truth and we could trust everything we see and read. The brainwork that goes into the simple act of reading about a politician’s policies is enough for many of us to give up.
I remember watching a movie in high school civics class that taught us how to be educated voters. One of the things educated voters did was read newspapers that outlined the issues and read the politicians’ materials. Thinking about the issues and discussing them with others would help the voter decide how to vote. The underlying values of the movie were that we could trust journalists to tell us the truth and politicians may slant their materials but they would focus on their platforms.
I don’t have a lot of faith in American voters ability to see through the fog of dreck and to vote thoughtfully.
I am angry at the selfishness of this country’s political, tech, finance, and all other leaders. I am angry that they make me feel helpless and stupid are have savvy tools with sophisticated operators at their disposal to push me further in this direction.
Newspapers today, along with mainstream broadcast media and social networking sites like google, Tik Tok, facebook and instagram, are the chief sources of misinformation. This is why alternative news is growing so fast. The Free Press is one example.
The reason why people are afraid of Grok is because education in this country is so piss poor that less than 10% of the population, including 100% of our political class, have any critical thinking skills.
This is why homeschooling , classical education, and solid parochial schools are booming. Putting children in public schools today should be considered to be child abuse.
You can quickly become frustrated by the security constraints of AI tools that think your requests are too racy. The typical Hollywood blockbuster couldn't get through the censors of the most common tools, but as somone who has worked in technology, I understand that once you release a tool into the world, it can be used in ways you didn't imagine.
So you think the image of Kamala Harris carrying Trump's baby is funny? What happens when it is someone harrassing you or your daughter?
Disregarding copyrights is fun until it's your intellectual property being stolen.
Then there is Social Contagion and influence. There was a spat of young women and adolocents that started displaying symptoms of Tourette Syndrome because they were following on online influencer.
https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/its-catching/202110/the-girls-who-caught-tourettes-tiktok
A man says to his friends, "I'm so angry at my wife I could kill her."
His friends tell him to settle down.
What if he is chatting to an AI symptoms that enflames his rage instead.
There are so many ways AI could influence people in way it doesn't understand or in ways its programmers do.
People are spending hours everyday trying to hack and game these systems. The problem with lax permisions is not the expected ussage.
Thank you. This is the most thoughtful comment I have seen so far in this discussion here.