Engulfed By AI
When modern AI software was emerging a several years ago, I remember Humble and Fred launching a lager with a local craft brewery. This brewery is now closing, but I don't believe there to be any correlation between these two events. To sell this beer on the podcast, Humble and Fred aired a jingle, and released a video, both generated by AI.
I remember hearing this jingle and thinking two things simultaneously:
- Wow - there's singing and instrumentation and the only human involvement was prompts by an animator regarding the lyrics
- I hate this
It left me cold... there was a complete lack of humanity. The guys were so real, and had generated so many human-generated parody songs and bits over the decades, at CFNY and beyond, but this was not that. Give me something from Amin Bhatia, Jamie Watson or Scary Bald Headed Pete Cugno. Give me something human.
Then, AI was everywhere. This slop was all over social media, it was on posters and book covers and podcasts. Today, if I smell AI as any part of a project, be it the cover art or promotional image, I just assume AI produced everything.
I was just catching up on the news via Google News and ended up on an article about Elliotte Friedman and the likelihood he'll re-sign with Rogers Sportsnet and it read as if written by AI. That's 2 minutes I'll never get back and a website I've now blocked.
For my podcast, Toronto Mike'd, I try to keep AI away from all of it. The promotional image is always an actual photo with the guest by the tree, I do my own research, drive the conversation in real-time with zero edits, and do live ads to promote my partners. I'm considering adding a line to the extro that I recently heard in the 500 Songs podcast. "No generative AI has been used in the recording of this podcast."
I might borrow that.
