Speaker 1: There Are No Girls on the Internet, as a production
Speaker 1: of iHeartRadio and Unbossed Creative. I'm Bridget Todd, and this
Speaker 1: is There Are No Girls on the Internet. Welcome to
Speaker 1: another installment of our weekly news roundup, where we round
Speaker 1: up all the stories at the intersection of text culture
Speaker 1: and social media that you might have missed so you
Speaker 1: don't have to. And I am thrilled to be joined
Speaker 1: once again by my producer Mike.
Speaker 2: Mike, thank you for being.
Speaker 3: Here, Bridget, Thank you for having me.
Speaker 1: I wanted to first give a little bit of an
Speaker 1: update on a story that you and I covered together
Speaker 1: earlier this week about this wave of AI generated videos
Speaker 1: that are flooding TikTok right now that feature black people,
Speaker 1: typically black women, but some black men in these very
Speaker 1: over the top exaggerated racist ways, to the point where
Speaker 1: I argue they are essentially the new iteration of minstrel
Speaker 1: shows for the digital age. Minstrel shows were an incredibly
Speaker 1: popular form of entertainment in the nineteenth century where mostly
Speaker 1: white performers would wear black faces to make fun of
Speaker 1: black people and portray us as stupid and lazy. But
Speaker 1: they weren't just entertainment. They were also a way to
Speaker 1: affirm a political and social climate hostile to black folks
Speaker 1: after slavery. This is essentially what these videos on TikTok
Speaker 1: are doing, just using AI and we made that episode.
Speaker 2: We recorded it about a week ago on Saturday.
Speaker 1: It has not even been a full week, and already
Speaker 1: I have seen more and more iterations of these videos
Speaker 1: on TikTok. One of the hallmarks of these videos that
Speaker 1: we talked about in that episode, it was really a
Speaker 1: deep dive into where these AI generated videos are coming from,
Speaker 1: the historical context of them, the technological context of how
Speaker 1: they're being made, and what they say about our culture today.
Speaker 1: One of the points that we made is that AI
Speaker 1: generated content oftentimes gets more and more extreme, and so
Speaker 1: in just a week's time, I feel like the version
Speaker 1: of these videos we were talking about has already kind
Speaker 1: of been cranked to eleven in terms of the extremest
Speaker 1: qualities that I am seeing in this kind of content.
Speaker 3: Yeah, one hundred percent. After we recorded that episode, over
Speaker 3: the weekend, I created a TikTok account, which is not
Speaker 3: something that I'd had before, and my for you page
Speaker 3: was just filled with those kinds of videos and the
Speaker 3: ones that are there today. I looked just a couple
Speaker 3: of hours ago before we got on the mic. Here,
Speaker 3: there's so much more extreme than the ones that you
Speaker 3: and I were concerned about just like four or five
Speaker 3: days ago. So just more extreme. And they, like to
Speaker 3: be clear, they started off extreme and now they're like
Speaker 3: so over the top. I can't believe that I'm looking
Speaker 3: at a mainstream social media platform like TikTok and not
Speaker 3: some kind of like video powered four cham. No.
Speaker 1: Absolutely, So there's one in particular that I saw that
Speaker 1: I want to talk about now because it honestly, not
Speaker 1: only has the racism been to eleven, but it's gotten
Speaker 1: even more horrifying, if you can believe that. So one
Speaker 1: of the types of these videos that we talked about
Speaker 1: in that episode was what people are calling slave talk,
Speaker 1: which kind of shows these AI generated enslaved people imagined
Speaker 1: if they had social media and they were vlogging their
Speaker 1: experiences on the plantation. And so that is bad enough,
Speaker 1: end of sentence.
Speaker 3: However, the premise is insane to begin.
Speaker 2: It's noxious, it's it's terrible.
Speaker 3: Noxious is a better word.
Speaker 1: They have found a way to make it even worse
Speaker 1: because I saw videos where someone was making these slave
Speaker 1: talk Ai generated TikTok videos that showed an enslaved person,
Speaker 1: you know, using AI to demonstrate what their time on
Speaker 1: a plantation might have been like and having them say, oh,
Speaker 1: slavery wasn't that bad. I don't actually mind it. Being
Speaker 1: an enslaved person on a plantation isn't so bad.
Speaker 2: But they were.
Speaker 1: Utilizing TikTok shop to use these videos to sell a
Speaker 1: solar powered sun hat that has fans built into it,
Speaker 1: and so it was a an enslaved person being like, oh,
Speaker 1: my time on the plantation is hard, but this hat
Speaker 1: has made it so much easier. Go to my TikTok
Speaker 1: shop and my bio to buy this hat. Now, I
Speaker 1: will say enough people complained about this video that TikTok.
Speaker 2: Took it down, so it's no longer available.
Speaker 1: They're no longer selling this hat using a borrent AI
Speaker 1: generated enslaved people fan fiction.
Speaker 2: However, this is what I mean.
Speaker 1: I feel like this really, even just in a few
Speaker 1: days since we made that episode about this kind of content.
Speaker 1: The fact that somebody would put this kind of content
Speaker 1: on TikTok and then utilize this kind of content to
Speaker 1: sell a sun hat really just says a lot I mean,
Speaker 1: I guess I gotta say I'm happy TikTok took it down.
Speaker 1: But when I talked about the ways that I thought
Speaker 1: that this kind of content really said something about how
Speaker 1: extreme we are willing to go and how AI really
Speaker 1: allows us to do that at scale. When I made
Speaker 1: this episode, I didn't think it was gonna get this dark,
Speaker 1: and it got so dark, so fast.
Speaker 3: So dark, so fast, And something about using the technology
Speaker 3: to sell such a pedestrian item as like a solar
Speaker 3: powered sun hat with a little fan on it is
Speaker 3: like extra dark like it. It's so almost benign, built
Speaker 3: on such an absurd marketing premise that it's actually like
Speaker 3: unimaginably dark.
Speaker 1: It's pretty bad, and there's just something so dystopian about it.
Speaker 1: And you know, I made this point in our deep
Speaker 1: dive about this kind of content that it really bothers
Speaker 1: me that this is the use case for AI. We're
Speaker 1: being told that this is the lynch pin of our economy.
Speaker 1: It's going to be so important, it's going to transform everything,
Speaker 1: and the way that we are seeing it used is
Speaker 1: just so small and gross, making what I would argue
Speaker 1: is AI generated minstrel show content to sell cheap junk
Speaker 1: on TikTok shop.
Speaker 2: I just we're cooked. It's just it's bad. I will say.
Speaker 1: One pivot of this kind of content that I did
Speaker 1: see is in the wake of the news that the
Speaker 1: United States bombed Iran. So most of the content that
Speaker 1: we talked about in that episode was about how black
Speaker 1: women were being shown in this incredibly negative, racist, stereotypical
Speaker 1: light where we were aggressive, violent, loud, ghetto, all of that.
Speaker 1: But in the wake of the bonding of Iran, this
Speaker 1: video went viral that showed what I would have thought
Speaker 1: was an obviously AI generated black woman who is supposed
Speaker 1: to be a soldier who is celebrating this bombing with
Speaker 1: her other soldiers, and she's saying, you know, blessed, she's
Speaker 1: saying what sounds like a Bible quote, like are the peacemakers?
Speaker 2: It's paker.
Speaker 1: And so even though so much of the AI generated
Speaker 1: content that is flooding TikTok that depicts black women now
Speaker 1: is negative, what's also interesting to me is that I
Speaker 1: don't think it's a coincidence that they chose an AI
Speaker 1: generated black woman to be in this video. You know
Speaker 1: that I think is pretty clearly AI generated propaganda to
Speaker 1: make the United States like really excited about the fact
Speaker 1: that we bombed Aron. And when I saw this video,
Speaker 1: I thought, well, this is obviously AI. Like, no one's
Speaker 1: gonna think this is a real person. I have to
Speaker 1: kind of say, like, the comments of that video surprised
Speaker 1: me in that the majority of the comments that I
Speaker 1: saw did not seem to clock that it was AI,
Speaker 1: and it just I mean, I'm not saying anything groundbreaking here,
Speaker 1: but the ability of AI to generate propaganda at scale
Speaker 1: it was worrisome. And I think especially using black women
Speaker 1: as a symbol of that. I mean, I think whoever
Speaker 1: created that video chose to have it centered on an
Speaker 1: AI generated black women because I do think there's a
Speaker 1: narrative that people trust black women when it comes to
Speaker 1: political happenings, you know, the phrase of like trust black women.
Speaker 1: And so I think that it's interesting how black womanhood
Speaker 1: is used as this easy shorthand when you want to
Speaker 1: get people on your side of your propaganda video. But
Speaker 1: also you could swipe up and you could see a
Speaker 1: video of that same black woman being depicted in an
Speaker 1: incredibly demeaning, disrespectful, racist way. And so it's like, I mean,
Speaker 1: when do we get to have our humanity depicted. It's
Speaker 1: either we're this mouthpiece for like jingoistic, raw, raw American sentiment,
Speaker 1: or we're being compared two animals in racist AI generated content.
Speaker 2: There's no in between.
Speaker 1: No one is showing our actual humanity and any of
Speaker 1: this content.
Speaker 2: I guess as we I'll.
Speaker 3: Say, like when we first recorded that episode about a
Speaker 3: week ago, it was a problem that people were noticing
Speaker 3: and talking about, like, hey, what's up with all these
Speaker 3: strange videos? And it's only gotten worse. It is interesting,
Speaker 3: and you know, commendable that TikTok is taking some of
Speaker 3: these videos down, but you know that's not a solution
Speaker 3: on the same scale of the people who are putting
Speaker 3: these videos up, right, Like, if there are a thousand
Speaker 3: people creating a thousand of these videos every hour and
Speaker 3: putting them up, and only the most popular generate enough
Speaker 3: reaction and calls to take them down, the TikTok or
Speaker 3: whatever platform actually takes action, that's not effective solution. So
Speaker 3: it's gonna be really interesting to see what happens with this,
Speaker 3: Like it can't just keep going on and getting worse.
Speaker 3: Something's got to break.
Speaker 1: When I was doing platform accountability work and like working
Speaker 1: with the leaders at platforms like TikTok, who I used
Speaker 1: to sit down with regularly, some of the folks who
Speaker 1: worked there about their content moderation policies. That was the
Speaker 1: biggest frustration was that it was like playing whack a mole,
Speaker 1: and there's no whack a mole strategy.
Speaker 2: Like I thought we were doing good work, and I'm.
Speaker 1: Proud of the work that we did, but you know,
Speaker 1: one comes down to come up in its place, and
Speaker 1: so yeah, I think that it really demonstrates the need
Speaker 1: for TikTok to do something meaningful if they want to
Speaker 1: get a handle of this kind of content on their platform.
Speaker 1: And we have already seen this in the last few days,
Speaker 1: how much this content has taken off, become more extreme,
Speaker 1: become more racist, and really ratcheted up what they're doing.
Speaker 1: So I think it's great TikTok took this on video down,
Speaker 1: but that's certainly not going to be enough to turn
Speaker 1: the tides of this.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and we see that all over the place, and
Speaker 3: not just this category of videos, but like health misinformation,
Speaker 3: vaccine misinformation, political attacks, like whack a mole is not
Speaker 3: an effective solution. Whackable is like one step removed from
Speaker 3: just giving.
Speaker 1: Up, so we will put the link to our deep
Speaker 1: dive into AI generated digital blackface. I guess menstreal content
Speaker 1: on TikTok in the show notes.
Speaker 2: Check it out. I'm pretty proud of that episode, so
Speaker 2: if you haven't listened to it, please.
Speaker 4: Check it out. Let's take a quick break at our back.
Speaker 3: Now that we've got the easy breezy banter out of
Speaker 3: the way, should we get into the news round up?
Speaker 1: Well, I mean, speaking of horrible, noxious things, we have
Speaker 1: to talk about the absolutely enraging tragedy that happened last
Speaker 1: week in Minnesota, where Minnesota House Speaker Melissa Hortman and
Speaker 1: her husband Mark were gunned down in what authorities say
Speaker 1: was a politically motivated killing. She will lie in state
Speaker 1: at the Capitol Rotunda this week, a day ahead of
Speaker 1: their funeral. I mean, reading this was sort of like
Speaker 1: the saddest milestone, the saddest, most enraging milestone I've ever read.
Speaker 1: Hortman will be the first woman and one of fewer
Speaker 1: than twenty Minnesotans accorded the honor of lying in state
Speaker 1: at the state Capitol rotunda, Which something about that really
Speaker 1: horrified me. That in order to be the first woman
Speaker 1: to have this honor, she has to be murdered in
Speaker 1: an act of political violence.
Speaker 2: It makes me sick.
Speaker 1: And I know this happened a bit ago, but I'm
Speaker 1: still in I'm still as enraged about this as I
Speaker 1: was when I heard about it, And I think one
Speaker 1: of the reasons why I'm so enraged is how quickly
Speaker 1: we moved on from this story. You know, I would
Speaker 1: argue that a story in which a person committed what
Speaker 1: it's pretty obviously an act of like political violence and
Speaker 1: terror on multiple elected officials, the fact that that was
Speaker 1: like over and done within a few days just does
Speaker 1: not sit right with me. And it really just reminded
Speaker 1: me how much the mainstream media really just allows right
Speaker 1: wing influencers to set the agenda.
Speaker 2: They Once it.
Speaker 1: Was clear the attacker was a Trump supporter, the right
Speaker 1: wing media stopped talking about it because for a while
Speaker 1: they were like, the shooter was a Democrat, he was
Speaker 1: a leftist, da da, da da. Once they couldn't say
Speaker 1: that anymore, they just stopped talking about it. And I'm
Speaker 1: enraged at the way that the legacy media really just
Speaker 1: followed suit. You know, I knew I wanted to talk
Speaker 1: about this story today, so I was searching for some
Speaker 1: of the news articles written about it, and most of
Speaker 1: the most recent coverage I saw was either from local
Speaker 1: Minnesota press or global.
Speaker 2: Press, and I thought, how shameful, Like, aren't we ashamed?
Speaker 3: Yeah, it is shameful, like you say it. Really, I
Speaker 3: think demonstrates how thoroughly right ring influencers are just able
Speaker 3: to control the media right now, this isn't a story
Speaker 3: that serves them any longer. They thought it was for
Speaker 3: a little while. Senator Mike Lee made some really regretful
Speaker 3: comments in the immedia aftermath of the killings, But after
Speaker 3: it became clear that this was not a flattering story
Speaker 3: for the right, they just stopped talking about it. And
Speaker 3: once they stopped talking about it, apparently everybody else did too,
Speaker 3: and the media did as well. It really feels like
Speaker 3: a pretty major event we should be talking about. We
Speaker 3: just we aren't used to political leaders being killed in America.
Speaker 3: It's a very unusual and scary story, and the way
Speaker 3: that the media has so quickly moved on makes it
Speaker 3: seem normal and almost expected in ways that that are wrong.
Speaker 3: I think every American should be like really upset and
Speaker 3: concerned and horrified.
Speaker 2: I mean, I think you said it.
Speaker 1: I think that's the point of why you move on
Speaker 1: to normalize it, to normalize political violence against people who
Speaker 1: don't go along with the status quo. And I think
Speaker 1: in some of the commentary that folks have said, you know,
Speaker 1: Lee included, I think that's I think that's what they're
Speaker 1: trying to do. They're trying to say this is this
Speaker 1: is people should expect this. And you know, we've seen
Speaker 1: other and officials talk about how they were afraid to
Speaker 1: speak up, afraid to go against Trump. I think this
Speaker 1: is what they're afraid of, you know. And I think
Speaker 1: the fact that the media is essentially their doing that
Speaker 1: dirty work for them by saying, you're right, we will
Speaker 1: normalize it by not acting like it's a big deal,
Speaker 1: and then it becomes not a big deal. I think
Speaker 1: that you're right that this is a different kind of
Speaker 1: thing than what we're used to seeing in the United States.
Speaker 1: And the way that we have just so quickly moved
Speaker 1: into like, oh, this is normal. Maybe it'll get three
Speaker 1: days of coarbadge and we'll move on to something else,
Speaker 1: really is telling. And it also sparked another thing that
Speaker 1: we talk about on the show a lot, which is
Speaker 1: just you know, I was really thrilled to see that
Speaker 1: Mamdanie won the election in New York, and I'm sad
Speaker 1: to say that one of my first thoughts was, I
Speaker 1: hope he has security. I hope he's safe.
Speaker 4: Like it.
Speaker 1: That's not the way it should be. We should not
Speaker 1: be worried about the safety of elected officials and political
Speaker 1: leaders in this way. And one of the reasons I
Speaker 1: was interested in talking about this on the podcast is
Speaker 1: because it really brings up an issue that we talk
Speaker 1: quite a bit about, and that is just the way
Speaker 1: that our data privacy, or lack thereof in this country
Speaker 1: really does pose a specific threat to women and other
Speaker 1: marginalized folks in politics, in government, in just like local
Speaker 1: civic spaces, because how did the attacker find the lawmaker's address?
Speaker 1: Super shady data broker sites that in the United States,
Speaker 1: because of our lack of any kind of meaningful, functional
Speaker 1: data privacy laws, allow for anybody's information to be easily
Speaker 1: found online.
Speaker 2: If you're willing to pay for it.
Speaker 1: MSNBC published the items the attacker had on him during
Speaker 1: the murders, and it included photos of a notepad that
Speaker 1: they found in his car.
Speaker 2: With a long list of people search sites.
Speaker 1: Where anybody can basically use them to find the home
Speaker 1: address of anybody in the US. So we know that
Speaker 1: before he killed Hortman and her husband, he shot State
Speaker 1: Senator John Hoffman and his wife, Vette Hoffman first. So
Speaker 1: the gunman had notebooks in his car containing the names
Speaker 1: of more than forty five Minnesota state and federal public officials,
Speaker 1: including Hortman's name and her home address. Senator Ron Wyden
Speaker 1: said in a statement, the accused Minneapolis assassin allegedly use
Speaker 1: data brokers as a key part of this plot to
Speaker 1: track down and murder Democratic lawmakers. Congress doesn't need any
Speaker 1: more proof that people are being killed based on data
Speaker 1: for sale to anyone with a credit card. Every single
Speaker 1: American safety is at risk until Congress cracks down on
Speaker 1: this sleazy industry. And he is one one hundred percent correct.
Speaker 3: Yeah, And I mean, this is the most egregious possible
Speaker 3: example of the sort of harms that can happen when
Speaker 3: everybody's personal information is just out on the internet available.
Speaker 3: But there are so many other harms that are more
Speaker 3: common than murder, like people have their identities stolen, people
Speaker 3: get harassed, things that happen so much more routinely that
Speaker 3: do not reach this level. It shouldn't take like highly
Speaker 3: visible public figures getting murdered to call attention to this
Speaker 3: very serious problem. And yet here we are.
Speaker 1: No and this is not even the first time that
Speaker 1: this kind of thing has happened. So back in twenty twenty,
Speaker 1: this men's rights activist used information that he got from
Speaker 1: a data broker site to find esther Salsa, a judge
Speaker 1: who was appointed by Obama who had dismissed his lawsuit
Speaker 1: challenging the men's only draft. He used that information that
Speaker 1: he got from a data broker site to find and
Speaker 1: break into her home and shoot and kill her child.
Speaker 1: And So, if you're listening and you're thinking, well, certainly
Speaker 1: my home address is not on one of these shady
Speaker 1: ass sites. I have never put my address on the internet.
Speaker 1: I am so sorry to be the one to tell
Speaker 1: you this. Your address is probably on the internet, because
Speaker 1: how do people's information get on these shady ass sites.
Speaker 1: We did a whole episode about this with the founder
Speaker 1: of an organization that helps women avoid doxing, which we'll
Speaker 1: link to in the show notes. But if you've ever voted,
Speaker 1: if you've ever had the utilities turned on in your home,
Speaker 1: If you've ever paid a parking ticket, odds are your
Speaker 1: information is available for purchase online. And here's the kicker,
Speaker 1: it might have even been put there for sale by
Speaker 1: your local government.
Speaker 2: It is a travesty.
Speaker 1: It is disgusting, it is disgraceful, and it is dangerous.
Speaker 1: So the police found the list of eleven data brokers
Speaker 1: in the suv driven by the man who murdered the
Speaker 1: Minnesota state representative and her husband, and the list naming
Speaker 1: the data brokers also included notations about which sites were
Speaker 1: free to use and how much information they require to
Speaker 1: obtain detailed data about the individuals being searched. This is
Speaker 1: according to an FBI affidated So yeah, he just basically
Speaker 1: was able to go on to these shady people finder
Speaker 1: data broker sites to find this information and it led
Speaker 1: to two people being murdered. This is just so interest
Speaker 1: I mean, the lack of us having any kind of
Speaker 1: meaningful data privacy laws in this country can lead to
Speaker 1: people literally getting murdered.
Speaker 3: I think part of what makes this so maddening for
Speaker 3: me is just the fact that it doesn't need to
Speaker 3: be this way. As a society, we could choose to
Speaker 3: put privacy protections in place, but we don't. We've allowed
Speaker 3: tech companies and scammers who profit off of selling these
Speaker 3: data brokerage services, We've allowed them to convince us that
Speaker 3: it's already too late. We should just abandon the idea
Speaker 3: of privacy entirely and embrace digital nihilism. And I hear
Speaker 3: a lot of people of like my parents' generation, espouse
Speaker 3: these like digital nihilist ideas like oh, my data is
Speaker 3: out there, what does it matter? Blah blah blah, But
Speaker 3: it does, you know, Like either that or the idea
Speaker 3: that any attempts to protect privacy would be some version
Speaker 3: of overbearing regulation. It's going to stifle industry. But that's
Speaker 3: all nonsense, Like all of it. We don't have to
Speaker 3: choose between privacy and innovation. Lawmakers and regulators could put
Speaker 3: in place workable solutions to protect privacy, but for various reasons,
Speaker 3: we just choose not to.
Speaker 2: We don't have to live like this, like we deserve better.
Speaker 3: Yeah, we do, we deserve better. And they're like in Europe,
Speaker 3: they don't live like this. And people in California have
Speaker 3: protections that the rest of us don't have, Like there
Speaker 3: are models it's it's a choice to live like this.
Speaker 1: Melissa Wrtman and her husband should still be alive. We
Speaker 1: don't have to live like this. We shouldn't have to
Speaker 1: live like this.
Speaker 4: Let's take a quick break. That are back.
Speaker 1: Well, speaking of ways that we deserve better and ways
Speaker 1: that we don't have to live like this.
Speaker 2: Did you see.
Speaker 1: RFK Junior's big plug about wearables.
Speaker 3: He plugs the stupidest shit. Everything that comes out of
Speaker 3: his mouth is so stupid.
Speaker 2: But yes, okay. So, Health Secretary Robert F.
Speaker 1: Kennedy Junior announced one of the largest HHS campaigns in
Speaker 1: history his words to encourage the use of wearables to
Speaker 1: track health conditions. You might be asking, what's the wearable
Speaker 1: things like the Aura ring, the fitbit, rings, bands, watches,
Speaker 1: and even clothes that use tech to track human vital signs.
Speaker 1: It can track how many steps you take, your heart rate,
Speaker 1: how many calories you've burned, all that kind of stuff.
Speaker 1: So RFK Junior said that Americans buying wearables are one
Speaker 1: of the keys to his plan to making America healthy again.
Speaker 1: He said, we think that wearables are a key to
Speaker 1: the MAHA agenda making America healthy again. My vision is
Speaker 1: that every American is wearing a wearable within four years,
Speaker 1: they can see what food is doing to their glucose levels,
Speaker 1: their heart rates, and a number of other metrics as
Speaker 1: they eat it. He also tweeted that wearables put the
Speaker 1: power of health back in the hands of the American people.
Speaker 1: This is horseshit. This is absolute horseshit. And I say
Speaker 1: this as somebody who wears a wearable. I went through
Speaker 1: quite a lot of trouble to find one that I
Speaker 1: felt like was like the least smart, like the you know,
Speaker 1: if you've got a smartphone, like the opposite, the dumbest
Speaker 1: wearable I could find.
Speaker 2: But so I'm not anti wearable, but this idea that
Speaker 2: he could gut public health infrastructure and then move that
Speaker 2: responsibility onto individuals by saying it's our responsibility to buy
Speaker 2: a consumer product that monitors our health is absolute horseshit
Speaker 2: for so many reasons. First, philosophically, the idea that health
Speaker 2: and optimizing one's health means giving hundreds of dollars to
Speaker 2: a private company for them to be able to access
Speaker 2: sensitive information about your body and your health is absurd.
Speaker 2: I am not buying that.
Speaker 1: And so what these products sometimes monitor is so much
Speaker 1: more than like your heartbeat and how much you sleep.
Speaker 1: Kevin Johnson, the CEO of security testing and consulting at
Speaker 1: the company Secure Lab, said, we are not just talking
Speaker 1: about heartbeat. We're not just talking about your sleep schedule.
Speaker 1: We're talking about your location. We're talking about most of
Speaker 1: these apps tie into your contacts.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 1: So the fact that RFK Junior is saying that we
Speaker 1: should all be moving toward wearing wearables in four years
Speaker 1: and that that is going to be the ideal way
Speaker 1: for us to keep to take charge of our health,
Speaker 1: I completely reject the idea that giving more of my
Speaker 1: private intimate information to private companies and paying for the
Speaker 1: pleasure is me taking charge of my health and physically,
Speaker 1: wearables are notoriously not reliable. Seenet did a study and
Speaker 1: found that even good wearables, wearables that you that like
Speaker 1: have a pretty good reputation, are often an accurate. So
Speaker 1: if you're trying to like casually measure your sleep, casually
Speaker 1: measure your steps, casually measure how much calories you've burned
Speaker 1: in a day, fine, But if you are relying on
Speaker 1: a wearable in lieu of actual access to medical testing
Speaker 1: or information to meetingfullet monitor your health. No, bad, it
Speaker 1: does not work that way. Wearables and the kind of
Speaker 1: information they provide is simply not a substitute for a
Speaker 1: robust public health infrastructure.
Speaker 3: Yeah, not even close. It's it's such a joke. I mean,
Speaker 3: it falls apart in multiple ways. For one, his whole
Speaker 3: thing is like make America healthy again, where he wants
Speaker 3: to return us to some previous state of the glory
Speaker 3: days of health where people wearing wearables during that previous heyday. No,
Speaker 3: not at all. His big initiatives are like getting people
Speaker 3: to not take vaccines, getting people to eat more beef
Speaker 3: tallow and less seed oils, stuff like that. Like, none
Speaker 3: of these things are gonna be immediately visible by wearables.
Speaker 3: Like wearables are fine, they're great. You know people who
Speaker 3: like them. I use one. It provides interesting information, but
Speaker 3: it's not gonna be the like huge difference maker in
Speaker 3: the health of a national public population.
Speaker 1: Honestly, it's not even worth me going down. That's sort
Speaker 1: of like it's so ridiculous on its face that getting
Speaker 1: into the specifics of how it won't work and why
Speaker 1: it doesn't make sense, it's almost not even worth it.
Speaker 3: Yes, that is exactly right. That's how, unfortunately, how we
Speaker 3: have to treat everything that comes out of his idiot
Speaker 3: mouth like. He just says such stupid stuff all the time.
Speaker 3: At first, I thought he was just like a dumb person,
Speaker 3: but I no longer think that. I think he knows
Speaker 3: exactly what he's doing. I think he is performing the
Speaker 3: like shapes of an informed health official, knowing full well
Speaker 3: that he is doing so deceptively. His references don't back
Speaker 3: up what he says. He talks in the same meeting.
Speaker 3: He'll talk about like demanding a gold standard for vaccines,
Speaker 3: and then he'll turn around and pull up a bunch
Speaker 3: of bullshit about wearables when like, there's no evidence that
Speaker 3: where you know, putting on wearables is going to improve
Speaker 3: the overall health of some population. There's zero evidence for that.
Speaker 3: He's just all over the place. And you're absolutely right
Speaker 3: that like engaging in his the things he says in
Speaker 3: good faith is a losing battle. It's like more whackable.
Speaker 3: Everything that comes out of his mouth is a goddamn
Speaker 3: mold that needs to be whacked.
Speaker 1: So I absolutely agree with you that I don't think
Speaker 1: he's just like a stupid person. I think, you know,
Speaker 1: with exactly what he's doing, and this is all part
Speaker 1: of a larger agenda. There is a very good episode
Speaker 1: of one of my favorite podcasts, Conspiratuality. It's at like
Speaker 1: I don't recommend other podcasts a ton on this show,
Speaker 1: but like, I will put the episode in the show
Speaker 1: notes because you need to hear it.
Speaker 2: It's it's so fascinating if you care about this stuff.
Speaker 1: But basically, they were saying that make America Healthy Again
Speaker 1: is really all about shifting public health from a public
Speaker 1: concern to a private concern that will be managed by
Speaker 1: a network of loosely slash, if at all regulated private companies,
Speaker 1: whether it's bogus health testing companies or supplement companies and
Speaker 1: now wearable. So I listened to that episode maybe a
Speaker 1: month ago, and I was like, that makes so much sense.
Speaker 1: That makes so much sense. And then lo and behold
Speaker 1: today he's like, oh, you know, everybody should be buying wearables.
Speaker 1: In four years time, every American should have a wearable.
Speaker 1: That's really what that's all it takes to make America
Speaker 1: healthy again. And oftentimes we'll have these make America Healthy
Speaker 1: Again influencers getting a cut of that, because so those
Speaker 1: influencers are now legitimately in the administration. So then you
Speaker 1: have situations like the administration's nominee for source in general,
Speaker 1: doctor Casey Means, who co founded a glucose monitoring company
Speaker 1: called Levels and sells a monitoring app as well as
Speaker 1: other kind of bullshit wellness products.
Speaker 2: And so that the whole idea is shifting the.
Speaker 1: Burden and responsibility of health from the public sphere to
Speaker 1: the private sphere selling. Instead of there being okay, like
Speaker 1: robust access to public health, robust access to healthcare, all
Speaker 1: of that, it's.
Speaker 2: Like no, no, no, no scam.
Speaker 1: Testing that is loosely regulated and supplements and also we'll
Speaker 1: make a little cut of that on the side.
Speaker 3: Yeah. And also these grifters have built their whole enterprise
Speaker 3: on a foundation of like flooding the zone with scammy
Speaker 3: information on social media and just overwhelming people with information
Speaker 3: and like shiny statistics and stories that like feel one
Speaker 3: way even though maybe they don't like actually connect to
Speaker 3: a deeper impact in terms of health. And the thing
Speaker 3: with wearables is that they produce a ton of information
Speaker 3: and it's it truly is a way of taking that
Speaker 3: scammy online universe of health misinformation that has so enriched
Speaker 3: these scammy people like RFK Junior and the whole network
Speaker 3: of his friends who sell supplements online. It takes that
Speaker 3: whole scammy information ecosystem and moves it offline onto people's
Speaker 3: bodies and into people's health. And it's bad. It's bad.
Speaker 3: We shouldn't do that.
Speaker 1: And there's been so much research in reporting about the
Speaker 1: fact that wearables and again I'm not anti way. I
Speaker 1: were one of myself to measure my physical activity in
Speaker 1: my sleep, Like I'm not anti wearable, but there's so
Speaker 1: much research about the fact that simply having more access
Speaker 1: to information about your vitals and your physicality does not
Speaker 1: actually make you healthier, and in some ways that level
Speaker 1: of surveillance actually might be perhaps counterintuitively, making you less healthy, right,
Speaker 1: And so more information is not always the thing that
Speaker 1: makes you healthier. And again, even if it were, wearables
Speaker 1: are not a substitute for having access to healthcare, being
Speaker 1: able to see a doctor, being able to get actual
Speaker 1: medical tests from a doctor, not some sort of scam
Speaker 1: testing company, actual public health infrastructure.
Speaker 2: And I just hate the way that.
Speaker 1: This has turned our health into just another thing these
Speaker 1: people can grift off, another way to scam.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I'm not anti wearable either. I think wearables are
Speaker 3: very valuable. And you know, if he were out there
Speaker 3: talking about the importance of wearables as part of a
Speaker 3: new initiative that's going to connect people and their bioinformatics
Speaker 3: with healthcare providers who will monitor them and help them
Speaker 3: make health decisions as part of some sort of cohesive
Speaker 3: plan to improve people's health, that would be something I
Speaker 3: would want to listen to. But there's no there's none
Speaker 3: of that follow through and what he talks about. He's
Speaker 3: just like, oh, people should have wearables. That's where it
Speaker 3: begins and ends.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's not a healthcare plan.
Speaker 3: No, it's not. That's a plan to sell stuff.
Speaker 1: Speaking of selling stuff, I have to talk about this
Speaker 1: story about Mattel and open Ai. So are you ready
Speaker 1: for an AI enabled Barbie Doll or an AI enabled
Speaker 1: Hot Wheels car? Because Mattel, a toy maker behind Barbie's
Speaker 1: and Hot Wheels, announced a partnership with open Ai that
Speaker 1: would result in AI products marketed to kids. So to
Speaker 1: be clear, we don't fully know what the product will
Speaker 1: be just yet. They're keeping it pretty tight lipped, but
Speaker 1: I already.
Speaker 2: Can tell you this. I hate it.
Speaker 1: One anonymous source told Axios that Mattel's plans for the
Speaker 1: AI partnership are still in early stages, so we'll probably
Speaker 1: no more soon. That source also said that the first
Speaker 1: product would probably not be marketed to kids who are
Speaker 1: under thirteen. You're probably thinking, Oh, they probably don't want
Speaker 1: harmful AI impacting very young kids.
Speaker 2: Don't get too excited.
Speaker 1: They're probably capping it at kids thirteen and up because
Speaker 1: of open AIS age restrictions on its API, which prohibits
Speaker 1: users under the age of thirteen.
Speaker 3: Yeah. And also, just because the company says that they're
Speaker 3: not going to explicitly market some product to kids, that
Speaker 3: doesn't mean that kids still won't see that marketing and
Speaker 3: still want that product and obtain and use that product.
Speaker 3: For example, vapes are illegal to market to kids anybody
Speaker 3: under the age of twenty one, and yet many high
Speaker 3: schoolers still use them. The most recent national survey suggested
Speaker 3: that eight percent of high schoolers are using them regularly. Right,
Speaker 3: and so, just because something's not going to be marketed
Speaker 3: to kids, that is no guarantee that kids won't use it,
Speaker 3: not by a long shot.
Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly, so.
Speaker 1: Ours Technica spoke to Public Citizens co president Robert Weissman,
Speaker 1: who really laid out just how potentially.
Speaker 2: Harmful this could be to kids.
Speaker 1: He said, Buttel should announce immediately that it will not
Speaker 1: incorporate AI technology into children's toys. Children do not have
Speaker 1: the cognitive capacity to distinguish fully between reality and play.
Speaker 1: Mattel should not leverage its trust with parents to conduct
Speaker 1: a reckless social experiment on our young children by selling
Speaker 1: toys that incorporate AI. So, when asked about the specifics
Speaker 1: of what this toy might be like, both Mattel and
Speaker 1: open Ai were like, it's gonna be fine, trust us,
Speaker 1: it's all good.
Speaker 2: Don't worry about it. We got it.
Speaker 3: Oh, why are we even talking about this? Then they
Speaker 3: said I was gonna be fine.
Speaker 2: Yeah, they were like, it's we got this, don't even worry.
Speaker 3: All right, next story.
Speaker 1: They both put out statements where they really glossed over everything,
Speaker 1: And I will say the statements kind of like said
Speaker 1: the right words to signal that they're like, don't want
Speaker 1: to harm kids with this product. What's also funny to
Speaker 1: me is like, how nothing the state the statement from
Speaker 1: open ai is. So in their statement they promise quote
Speaker 1: to bring a new dimension of AI powered innovation and
Speaker 1: magic to Mattel's iconic brands.
Speaker 2: Like I'm sorry, what does that mean? Like what does
Speaker 2: that mean? Like? Like break that down for me?
Speaker 1: It really is giving, Like it's Barbie but now she
Speaker 1: harnesses the power of AI or like but now she's
Speaker 1: got a new hat.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 1: It's just it just it doesn't It's like it says
Speaker 1: a lot while saying nothing. I guess is what I'm
Speaker 1: trying to say.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so curious what sort of toys are you gonna
Speaker 3: roll off? The MATEL assembly line? Empowered with AI whatever
Speaker 3: that means?
Speaker 2: My god.
Speaker 1: When I was a kid, my brother had a Teddy rubskin,
Speaker 1: which was the most terrifying item, probably of my entire childhood.
Speaker 2: I don't know if people have.
Speaker 1: Ever experienced teddy rubskin, but it was this nightmare bear
Speaker 1: that I think. You would put a tape. He had
Speaker 1: a tape cassette in his stomach, and you will put
Speaker 1: a tape in it, and the tape would play, and
Speaker 1: his mouth would move in this very natural, animatronic way,
Speaker 1: and then it would play the tape as if he
Speaker 1: was speaking, but it was you could tell he wasn't
Speaker 1: speaking well because it's like a stuffed animal, but also
Speaker 1: like it didn't sync up right, like I didn't look right.
Speaker 1: And my brother loved this fucking thing and it was terrifying.
Speaker 1: And I just hope for the sake of the next
Speaker 1: generation that they're not making some sort of AI enabled
Speaker 1: nightmare style Teddy reubskin where the mouth moves but it's
Speaker 1: fucking open AI chat gpt my god, nightmares just.
Speaker 3: Like feeding you sycophantic like narcissism fuel about how much
Speaker 3: smarter you are than all the rest.
Speaker 1: Oh my god, I mean have you seen that? I mean,
Speaker 1: I know you've seen it because we saw it together
Speaker 1: the movie Megan. Yeah, so I love Megan and it
Speaker 1: was probably the most fun I had at the.
Speaker 2: Theater of whatever year it came out. If you have
Speaker 2: not seen Megan, it's about.
Speaker 1: A toy like like a doll that is for kids,
Speaker 1: that is like AI enabled.
Speaker 3: But like it's basically this story. Yes, it's basically.
Speaker 1: This story, but also Meghan is cunty, like she like
Speaker 1: like it like it's this story, but she serves cunt Also,
Speaker 1: they're making a sequel, by the way, oh, which I
Speaker 1: will be like first in line to see.
Speaker 2: I'm sure. I'm sure it's gonna be terrible, but I'll
Speaker 2: be first some line to see.
Speaker 1: But I mean so that I'm glad you compared this
Speaker 1: because it is very I think that the movie Megan
Speaker 1: does present a version of like what this might be like,
Speaker 1: because we know so much about the ways that AI
Speaker 1: can be unsafe for adult even let alone for kids.
Speaker 1: Adam Dodge, the founder of a digital safety company that
Speaker 1: prevents cyber abuse called n TAB, pointed to a lawsuit
Speaker 1: where a grieving mom alleged her son died by suicide
Speaker 1: after interacting with hyperrealistic chatbots. He said, AI is unpredictable, sycophantic,
Speaker 1: and addictive. I don't want to be posting a year
Speaker 1: from now about how a hot Wheels car encourage self harm,
Speaker 1: or that children are in committed romantic relationships with their
Speaker 1: AI barbies, like come on a hot Wheels that convinces
Speaker 1: a kid to self harm?
Speaker 2: No, thank you.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it sounds ridiculous, but it's not outside the realm
Speaker 3: of possibility, right because it's people who are on the
Speaker 3: borderline of the danger zone already who are most susceptible
Speaker 3: to being harmed by products like this. And I think
Speaker 3: everybody should be concerned about privacy. Hopefully Mattel is gonna
Speaker 3: build in some good privacy protocols into their AI toy
Speaker 3: I guess I don't know. I would think long and
Speaker 3: hard about buying any of them for any kids in
Speaker 3: my life. But even aside from privacy, I think those
Speaker 3: other harms are even scarier. Like encouraging suicides. Obviously about
Speaker 3: the worst, but lllms are already causing mental problems for
Speaker 3: a lot of people. You know. Last week on the
Speaker 3: News Roundup, You and ed Zatron talked about chatbots falsely
Speaker 3: claiming to have therapy degrees and doling out therapeutic advice inappropriately.
Speaker 3: Who knows what harm might come from that. But there
Speaker 3: was another story that came out about the same time
Speaker 3: about last week about people just straight up losing their
Speaker 3: minds on Reddit. The moderators of a pro AI subreddits
Speaker 3: that they've had to ban over one hundred people who
Speaker 3: kept spamming the subreddit with claims about how they created
Speaker 3: a new form of God, are super intelligence. You know,
Speaker 3: all that sycophantic behavior and flattery from the chatbots just
Speaker 3: reflecting back what they what these people wanted to hear.
Speaker 3: It broke their brains and matel thinks that they can
Speaker 3: safely put that stuff in the hands of children. I
Speaker 3: don't know. I just don't buy it, Like yikes.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And I mean you make a good point, like
Speaker 1: we don't even fully know how AI is impacting adults yet,
Speaker 1: so why give why like encourage children.
Speaker 2: To be to be mixed up with this?
Speaker 1: And I do think it just I mean, we've talked
Speaker 1: about this on the show before, but just the sort
Speaker 1: of philosophical idea of shouldn't some things be protected like
Speaker 1: children and play, I think that's really sacred. And the
Speaker 1: fact that open AI sees this as just another thing
Speaker 1: to harness, another way to you know, mine, Our kids
Speaker 1: exploit their privacy, probably use whatever they're able to glean
Speaker 1: from those experiences with children to train their AI further
Speaker 1: for their own benefit. It just feels very exploitative. And
Speaker 1: I mean I would have thought for a society that
Speaker 1: so often gets up in arms about protecting the children,
Speaker 1: and nobody wants to protect kids more than me, But
Speaker 1: that is often our rally and cry when it comes
Speaker 1: down to it, we fucking hate children. We don't want
Speaker 1: to protect children. We will not do the bare minimum
Speaker 1: to protect children. The bare minimum is don't let open
Speaker 1: AI give them this technology that we already know harms
Speaker 1: adults and we don't even know that the full scale
Speaker 1: of that yet. That would be the very least we
Speaker 1: could do, and we're not willing to do it. And
Speaker 1: so yeah, I just I hate this. It reminds me
Speaker 1: a lot of the way that we know that social
Speaker 1: media platforms like Facebook knowingly harm kids, girls as young
Speaker 1: as thirteen, and continue to knowingly do so because it
Speaker 1: makes them a profit.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 1: I wish that we had a country where tech companies
Speaker 1: making more money was not as important as protecting our youth.
Speaker 2: But we don't live in that country.
Speaker 1: But we love to grandstand about protecting the kids when
Speaker 1: it's convenient. When it's just the bare minimum, we do nothing.
Speaker 3: More.
Speaker 1: After a quick break, let's get right back into it, Okay,
Speaker 1: So to say, really clear up top, this is one
Speaker 1: of those stories where I suspect I know what's going on,
Speaker 1: but I don't have any.
Speaker 2: Hard proof yet.
Speaker 1: So really I'm just asking questions about what the fuck.
Speaker 2: Is going on here? You got me?
Speaker 1: Yeah, And that is the question of is Spotify pushing
Speaker 1: AI generated musicians who do not actually exist, but acting
Speaker 1: as if they do exist, so I suspect, and lots
Speaker 1: of the Internet suspects. The answer is yes. So we
Speaker 1: have known that Spotify has had AI generated music on
Speaker 1: their platform for a while.
Speaker 2: It hasn't gotten much traction.
Speaker 1: It's been kind of a quiet under the radar thing
Speaker 1: because people don't really enjoy one hundred percent AI generated music. However,
Speaker 1: now it might be that they are pushing this music
Speaker 1: in some kind of shady ways while not disclosing that
Speaker 1: it's entirely AI generated and these bands do not exist,
Speaker 1: while kind of pretending like these bands are actually human.
Speaker 1: So Paul Bender, who is the basis for the Australian
Speaker 1: band Hiatus Coyote who I Love, released a new solo
Speaker 1: project called the Sweet Enoughs and Spotify pushed his new
Speaker 1: song to all of his followers. He has locked lots
Speaker 1: of followers on Spotify. The Spotify was like, Hey, this band,
Speaker 1: this guy who's in a band that you like, has
Speaker 1: a new solo project.
Speaker 2: Here's the song.
Speaker 1: Only one problem, this was not his song and in
Speaker 1: fact he never authorized this. He said it was some
Speaker 1: of the most insanely clunky, amateurish, bizarre pieces of audio
Speaker 1: I have ever experienced. And then it happened again the
Speaker 1: next time with a distorted mumble wrap track that appeared
Speaker 1: in his Spotify profile. That another which he said, quote
Speaker 1: basically sounded like crazy Frog era eurotrash. Gotta say that
Speaker 1: kind of makes me want to like it, doesn't make
Speaker 1: me not want to hear it.
Speaker 3: It's not a genre I'm familiar with, but I am
Speaker 3: curious about.
Speaker 1: Crazy Frog era euro trash is not a genre you're
Speaker 1: familiar with.
Speaker 3: Yeah, am I missing out?
Speaker 1: I think you might be missing out. So in the
Speaker 1: following days a fourth track surface. So he was convinced
Speaker 1: these songs were AI generated and it made him realize
Speaker 1: just how easy it was for platforms to do this,
Speaker 1: to create AI generated music and then push it out
Speaker 1: to his followers, lying saying that it was him. He
Speaker 1: spoke to the Australian outlet ABC and said that he
Speaker 1: realized how easy it was to create an AI generated
Speaker 1: song and upload it to an artist's profile within ten minutes,
Speaker 1: with zero hacking or authentication required. A track can be
Speaker 1: cleared and approved to be released in five to seven days.
Speaker 1: The whole process is effectively functioning on an honor based system,
Speaker 1: which he says is incredibly inappropriate for the music industry
Speaker 1: one of the slimiest, most parasitic places in the universe.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's wild. I had no idea that. So, like
Speaker 3: I could just upload a track and be like, oh,
Speaker 3: this is this is the new Ariana Grande track.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you can upload a track of you like farting
Speaker 1: into a microphone and being like, this is the new
Speaker 1: AREAA just dropped it. Spotify will be like sure, okay, yeah,
Speaker 1: that's according to Paul Bender, that's how it works. So
Speaker 1: this was back in twenty twenty.
Speaker 4: Right.
Speaker 2: The story gets even weirder because.
Speaker 1: Now we might have another AI generated band being populated
Speaker 1: via Spotify's curated listener playlist.
Speaker 2: The band is called the Velvet Sundown, which that name.
Speaker 1: Kind of made me like something about it says a
Speaker 1: the fact that it's like very close to the Velvet Underground,
Speaker 1: like it just.
Speaker 3: Oh, I went down the rabbit hole, Like there's this,
Speaker 3: Oh my god, great story about this. I don't want
Speaker 3: to like scoop your thunder here.
Speaker 2: But so.
Speaker 3: It's the name comes from this video game from like
Speaker 3: ten years ago, this like super uh like low profile
Speaker 3: video game there's released on Steam. It's like a murder
Speaker 3: mystery on a cruise ship and the tagline is something
Speaker 3: like like you can't trust anyone and nothing is what
Speaker 3: it seems, and it's like, what a perfect name? AI bad?
Speaker 2: This is some like taunting letters to the police. Oh J.
Speaker 1: Simpson if publishing a book called if I didn't nonsense like,
Speaker 1: this is some.
Speaker 2: Like do you know what I'm saying?
Speaker 3: Like, Yeah, listeners should really uh read that piece that
Speaker 3: we're gonna link to about the Velvet Sundown. It is
Speaker 3: truly an interesting, weird little rabbit hole.
Speaker 1: Okay, so I did not find that information about the
Speaker 1: band's name, but I did do a deep dive. I
Speaker 1: am confident in saying that, in my opinion, this band
Speaker 1: is AI generated. There is just there is not a
Speaker 1: stitch of evidence that this band exists outside of music
Speaker 1: streaming platforms. They say the names of the individual musicians
Speaker 1: wink wink.
Speaker 2: Who are in the band. Did a Google on them.
Speaker 1: There's not a stitch of evidence that any of them
Speaker 1: has existed ever online. I know that I sound like
Speaker 1: freaking Charlie and always Sonny. There is no Pepe Sylvia.
Speaker 1: But I am confident in saying that, in my opinion,
Speaker 1: there is no Velvet Sundown. This band doesn't exist. All
Speaker 1: of the names that they have given to us are
Speaker 1: made up. All the images that they give us are
Speaker 1: AI generated. Like, well, we'll put it in the show notes.
Speaker 1: But like when you look at this image, it's like,
Speaker 1: this is an AI generated band, Like.
Speaker 2: These are not real people.
Speaker 1: Well, now that doesn't necessarily mean the band is fake,
Speaker 1: Like you bet this could be their like visual style.
Speaker 1: This is an AI generated band. This band don't exist.
Speaker 1: Like I'm I'm very confident in saying that. So, this
Speaker 1: band has more than three hundred and twenty five thousand
Speaker 1: monthly listeners on Spotify, and it's not only on Spotify,
Speaker 1: it's also on Amazon Music, YouTube, and Deezer and other
Speaker 1: streaming services. So questions about this band first gathered steam
Speaker 1: on Reddit and then later TikTok, where people were wondering
Speaker 1: why this random band with an obviously AI generated image
Speaker 1: and zero footprint across all of social media was being
Speaker 1: included on Spotify's curated playlists. So Velvet Sundown have one thousand,
Speaker 1: five hundred and thirty three followers on Spotify, but three
Speaker 1: hundred and twenty five thousand, three hundred and eighty eight
Speaker 1: monthly listeners at the time of the publishing of this
Speaker 1: like really good deep dive article on music Ally. Their
Speaker 1: bio on Spotify includes a very glowing quote from the
Speaker 1: music magazine Billboard saying, quote they sound like the memory
Speaker 1: of something you never live and somehow make it feel real,
Speaker 1: which a Google search suggest has never been published by Billboard. Ever,
Speaker 1: that is a that is not a quote, it is
Speaker 1: it is.
Speaker 2: Attributed to Billboard. Billboard has never published it.
Speaker 1: And also again like if you were making a fake band,
Speaker 1: it's like, oh, they sound like a memory of putting
Speaker 1: it doesn't exist, Like what are you trying to say?
Speaker 2: I mean?
Speaker 3: That is like the best description of AI I have
Speaker 3: ever heard.
Speaker 2: It really is. It absolutely is.
Speaker 3: It feels like a memory of something that I never experienced.
Speaker 2: But somehow it feels real.
Speaker 3: It feels real, it feels right.
Speaker 1: So their music is on the streaming platform Deezer, which
Speaker 1: is actually kind of helpful because that service has been
Speaker 1: developing technology to identify AI generated music and tag it publicly. So,
Speaker 1: according to Deezer, some tracks on this album may have
Speaker 1: been created using AI.
Speaker 2: So for me, it's case.
Speaker 1: Closed, right, So we'll link to this music Ally piece
Speaker 1: that they did a very impressive deep dive and they
Speaker 1: found that on Spotify. Essentially, these potentially AI generated bands
Speaker 1: and songs are getting lots of play from being featured
Speaker 1: on the Spotify playlists. If you use Spotify like I do,
Speaker 1: you know, their playlists are a big part of the platform.
Speaker 1: In my opinion, it's like the only thing that sets
Speaker 1: it apart from other music streaming platforms. But essentially, this
Speaker 1: fake band is being included on playlists that they have
Speaker 1: really no business being on. For instance, a bunch of
Speaker 1: their songs are on a Spotify playlist for the OC soundtrack.
Speaker 1: Remember that Fox show Orange County, Oh My God, which,
Speaker 1: by the way, I watched every episode I had, I
Speaker 1: had the soundtrack. They put out a CD for that show.
Speaker 1: That's that's how That's how deep into the trenches I.
Speaker 2: Was into this.
Speaker 1: So the OC was a show that was sort of
Speaker 1: known for its music, and like big important moments of
Speaker 1: the show would have like a song, and that song
Speaker 1: would be like the hit song for the rest of
Speaker 1: the week. So they have a playlist, it's like an
Speaker 1: OC playlist which includes all of the famous musical moments
Speaker 1: from the show like Phantom Planet, Image and Heap, Jeff Buckley, Oasis,
Speaker 1: and in t two tracks from the Velvet Sundown, So
Speaker 1: that means that thirteen point three percent of the entire
Speaker 1: Orange County playlist on Spotify is Velvet Sundown, a potentially
Speaker 1: AI generated band that don't exist, which is also especially impressive.
Speaker 1: Music Ally points out given that the show The OC
Speaker 1: ran from two thousand and three to two thousand and seven,
Speaker 1: while both of the Velvet Sundowns albums today came out
Speaker 1: in twenty twenty five.
Speaker 2: That's suspicious.
Speaker 3: It's one of the really interesting things that hit me
Speaker 3: as I was like reading about this band, because like,
Speaker 3: it's just a very interesting story, and it's nice that
Speaker 3: it's not like fucking up kids or like destroying democracy,
Speaker 3: So it feels like kind of a nice thing to
Speaker 3: engage with. But I had never thought about the power
Speaker 3: that the people who are creating these Spotify playlists have,
Speaker 3: Like it's a lot of power to shape what music
Speaker 3: people are listening to, and I guess I had just
Speaker 3: never thought about it. I don't know, maybe I'm like
Speaker 3: late to the party, but I kind of feel it's
Speaker 3: like an under the radar thing.
Speaker 1: Oh, there is absolutely a lot of power in terms
Speaker 1: of curating these playlists. I've heard from bands who will
Speaker 1: randomly get a song added to a playlist and it's
Speaker 1: like that song represents like more streams than they've ever
Speaker 1: had in their career. Now, Spotify don't have the best
Speaker 1: reputation when it comes to paying artists, So I don't
Speaker 1: know if that, like that probably translates to like, here's
Speaker 1: two dollars because they don't pay artists very well. But
Speaker 1: if this whole saga with this AI generated band that
Speaker 1: doesn't really exist is to say anything about it, I
Speaker 1: think Spotify is probably trying to find a way that
Speaker 1: to see if they can sidestep human artists altogether. Right,
Speaker 1: Like one little pesky thing about humans is that we
Speaker 1: really do prefer to be paid for our work.
Speaker 2: And so I think if they're like, how can.
Speaker 1: We cut out this whole humans liking to be paid
Speaker 1: for their labor thing? And obviously Spotify would be doubling
Speaker 1: down on AI because they're CEO Daniel Eck just announced
Speaker 1: a seven hundred and two million dollar investment in Helsing,
Speaker 1: a German defense tech startup that develops military drones and
Speaker 1: AI battlefield software. Which you know what I think when
Speaker 1: I think like Spotify and like music and streaming.
Speaker 2: I think military drones and AI battlefield software? Sure, who doesn't.
Speaker 3: Why does everything have to be military drones?
Speaker 1: Yes, everything is military drone. Everything is AI and military.
Speaker 1: It went from everything's computer to everything is AI and
Speaker 1: military drones.
Speaker 3: God damn?
Speaker 2: Okay, well, can will you indulge me? Can we talk
Speaker 2: about Jeff Bezos' wedding?
Speaker 3: Do you think he has some drones? Oh?
Speaker 2: I haven't heard about any aboudy you know they're in
Speaker 2: the mix somewhere.
Speaker 3: All right, Yeah, let's talk about Jeff Bezos' wedding. Is
Speaker 3: it going really well? Does everybody love it?
Speaker 2: It's going?
Speaker 1: I mean, I'm loving gawking at what a train wreck
Speaker 1: it's been. So Jeff Bezos is marrying his partner Lauren
Speaker 1: Sanchez this week, which, by the way, for people who
Speaker 1: watch Housewives, you like, when I first saw her picture,
Speaker 1: I was like, damn, is that Mia Thornton from Housewives?
Speaker 1: Look up a picture of Mia Thornton and look up
Speaker 1: a picture of Lauren Sanchez. They could be sisters. They
Speaker 1: look so much alike.
Speaker 3: Wow.
Speaker 1: So the wedding is scheduled for June twenty six through
Speaker 1: June twenty eighth in Venice, Italy.
Speaker 2: So first of all, just.
Speaker 1: Have to applaud what attacking menagerie of fucked up rich people.
Speaker 2: Bullshit, this whole thing has been.
Speaker 1: Like when you look through the way that Lauren Sanchez
Speaker 1: and Jeff Bezos met, it's very scandalous when you look
Speaker 1: through who's coming to this wedding, Like, the whole thing
Speaker 1: is just a I mean, it should really put to
Speaker 1: bed that wealthy people like wealthy wealthy people have taste,
Speaker 1: have refinement, have poised, because this is the tackiest menagerie
Speaker 1: I have ever seen. And I love attacking menagerie. Like
Speaker 1: I'm not even saying this as somebody who's looking down
Speaker 1: on this, but even for me, I'm.
Speaker 2: Like, wow, these people are trash. And you know who
Speaker 2: else agrees with me?
Speaker 1: The entire country of Italy, because the Italians are celebrating
Speaker 1: these nuptials by.
Speaker 2: Welcoming them with waves of protests.
Speaker 3: Yeah, the Italians people known for rejecting all things tacky.
Speaker 1: I mean, do you know how tacky I mean as
Speaker 1: an Italian? Do you know how tacky you have to
Speaker 1: be for the Italians to be like you need to
Speaker 1: leave too much, it's too gaudy, it's too much.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's too gaudy, it's too much. Yeah, as an
Speaker 3: Italian American, you have to really work to earn that.
Speaker 2: So activists with Green Peace, No Space for Bezos, and
Speaker 2: a UK based group called Everyone Hates Elon.
Speaker 3: It's a pretty good name for their group.
Speaker 1: They have all been making their displeasure known this week
Speaker 1: with a large banner unfrilled in Saint Mark's Square meeting
Speaker 1: if you can rent Venice for your wedding, you can
Speaker 1: pay more tax, which like fair point, like honestly, like
Speaker 1: I would love to see I would love to see
Speaker 1: somebody dispute that, like freaking yeah, understatement of the century.
Speaker 3: Like what if instead of renting Venice for their wedding,
Speaker 3: everybody in America got health insurance?
Speaker 1: Yeah, or like yeah, we eradicated poverty, we ere eradicated
Speaker 1: childhood poverty. So they actually have already had one victory,
Speaker 1: and that is forcing Bezos to change the venue for
Speaker 1: the wedding.
Speaker 2: Reception.
Speaker 1: Organizers for No Space for Bezos told the BBC that
Speaker 1: they had gotten the venue moved to the Venetian Arsenal
Speaker 1: after threatening to fill the canals with inflatable crocodiles, flamingos,
Speaker 1: ducks and unicorns so that none of their I don't know,
Speaker 1: superyachts or whatever could get through.
Speaker 3: I mean, I have to say that does actually sound
Speaker 3: kind of fun. Like maybe not the dream wedding that
Speaker 3: Bezos and his bride had imagined, but like I hope
Speaker 3: they still filled the canals with inflatable crocodiles, flamingos, ducks,
Speaker 3: and unicorns. I think that might be nice.
Speaker 1: Ooh, I almost wonder if we should do a deep
Speaker 1: dive into jeff Bezos and Lauren Sanchez's relationship because it's
Speaker 1: too I'll just say this for folks who for if
Speaker 1: you know, you know, it is so juicy, Like one
Speaker 1: of the juiciest bits of it is the fact that
Speaker 1: the text messages that they were sending to each other
Speaker 1: while jeff Bezos was fully married were published by the
Speaker 1: National Inquirer. And I mean it's like one of my like, like,
Speaker 1: it's a text that I have sent in Jess many times.
Speaker 1: I love you A live girl is one of the
Speaker 1: texts that Jeffrey Bezos sent to Lauren Sanchez when they
Speaker 1: were like running around behind their partners.
Speaker 3: Is back A live girl.
Speaker 2: A live girl.
Speaker 1: That also was like what for, what's the alternative, like
Speaker 1: what kind of girl you running around.
Speaker 2: With that were not alive? I have many questions.
Speaker 3: I guess it was a dig at his wife.
Speaker 1: I don't know, so, yeah, maybe we should do a
Speaker 1: full deep dive into their relationship because it's fascinating to me.
Speaker 2: But in getting them to move.
Speaker 1: Where their wedding was going to be, the group no
Speaker 1: Space for Bezo said, we are very proud of this.
Speaker 1: We are nobody's we have no money, nothing, and we're
Speaker 1: just citizens who started organizing and we managed to move
Speaker 1: one of the most powerful people in the world, all
Speaker 1: the billionaires out of the city. Now, a greenpeace organizer
Speaker 1: said that it wasn't so much about protesting these two
Speaker 1: specific people, but more what they represent. The riches live
Speaker 1: in excess while others endured the consequences of a climate
Speaker 1: emergency they did not create. And I have to say,
Speaker 1: living in DC, we were going through a historic heat
Speaker 1: wave and I did have this moment where I was
Speaker 1: reading about this wedding and the huge environmental impact that
Speaker 1: it is that it will definitely play and just like
Speaker 1: getting this note from my local government that was like, oh,
Speaker 1: in a heat wave, the best temperature to set your
Speaker 1: air conditioner at is seventy eight, and I was like,
Speaker 1: the hell you say seventy eight, my ass, And I
Speaker 1: just had this moment of like, why are brokies like
Speaker 1: me expected to sweat it up in our one bedroom
Speaker 1: apartments with our window units in our box fans while
Speaker 1: he's able to have this lavish, voluntary wedding display was
Speaker 1: seemingly no regard to how it might impact the climate.
Speaker 1: I will say I love how people are kind of
Speaker 1: generally protesting jeff Bezos, Like there are specific issues and
Speaker 1: specific groups that people are protesting about, like the environmental
Speaker 1: impact of this wedding, which is massive Bezos's aerospace investments,
Speaker 1: but also just like generally anti Bezos being in Italy
Speaker 1: and anti Bezos in general, just like we don't like him.
Speaker 1: I saw we were watching that video that was set
Speaker 1: to the Bo Burnham.
Speaker 2: Song Jeffrey Jeffrey Bezos.
Speaker 1: And it was a video of them just unfer like
Speaker 1: a massive banner that said Bezos with a big red
Speaker 1: X through it, just like we don't like him, Get
Speaker 1: him out of here.
Speaker 3: Yeah, there's even like the names of their organizations that
Speaker 3: you just read. It's funny how personal these protests are.
Speaker 3: It's just like we don't like him personally, we don't
Speaker 3: want him here, and I get it. I do hope
Speaker 3: that once the honeymoon is over that some of this
Speaker 3: energy gets channeled into like demanding change in the global
Speaker 3: system that just keeps funneling an ever increasing proportion of
Speaker 3: the world's wealth into the pockets of a handful of
Speaker 3: olive arts. Like I love seeing the signs and messaging
Speaker 3: that focus on taxes for that reason, you know, like
Speaker 3: the one that just says Bezos with a big X
Speaker 3: over it. I get it. That is satisfying, But like
Speaker 3: the ones that focus on taxes and climate feel like
Speaker 3: they had the more enduring political message, like forcing him
Speaker 3: to move his wedding to a more secure, yet still
Speaker 3: intensely opulent than you. It's a nice reminder that these
Speaker 3: people are not all powerful. But I think like a
Speaker 3: real victory for the people will be getting able to
Speaker 3: pay his fair share of taxes.
Speaker 1: So you don't think the slogan Bezos colon, we just
Speaker 1: don't like him, that's not compelling to you.
Speaker 3: It's a good start. I think it's a good start.
Speaker 3: It gets the people going. But we can't stop there.
Speaker 1: Bezos colon, He rubs us the wrong way. So the
Speaker 1: guests to this wedding include that people like Bill Gates, Oprah,
Speaker 1: of course Gail, She's never gonna like turn out an
Speaker 1: event like this, climate activist Leonardo DiCaprio, which like, come on,
Speaker 1: Barbara Streisan, Eva Longoria, Robert Pattinson, and Orlando Bloom.
Speaker 2: Allow me a quick diversion on our Lando Bloom. So,
Speaker 2: Orlando Bloom was.
Speaker 1: Very recently, up until recently, in a relationship with the
Speaker 1: singer Katy Perry. They have a child together, and I
Speaker 1: don't know who at the Daily Mail has it out
Speaker 1: for Katy Perry so much, because this Jeffrey Bezos wedding
Speaker 1: is really being used to highlight that her relationship with
Speaker 1: Orlando Bloom is over, and that the reason why that
Speaker 1: relationship is over is because of the fallout from her
Speaker 1: panned spaceflight that she took with Jeffrey Bezos. It honestly
Speaker 1: kind of sounds like Bezos is like ruining her life.
Speaker 1: This is how Ola Magazine reported on it. Katy Perry's
Speaker 1: recent journey to space may have only lasted eleven minutes,
Speaker 1: but the aftermath has gone on for much longer in
Speaker 1: her personal life. The pop Star and her longtime fiance
Speaker 1: Orlando Bloom are reportedly facing a rough patch after an
Speaker 1: explosive argument over her Blue Origin space flight.
Speaker 3: An explosive argument.
Speaker 1: So that spaceflight was poorly received, we'll say, And it
Speaker 1: sounds like, according to these like gossip rags, maybe she
Speaker 1: like ruined her marriage and now she's being publicly excluded
Speaker 1: from like the rich asshole spectacle wedding of the year.
Speaker 1: Like I know people that are down on Katie Perry
Speaker 1: right now for whatever reason, but it genuinely sounds like
Speaker 1: Jeff Bezos is ruining her life.
Speaker 3: Damn. So she wasn't even invited to the wedding. She
Speaker 3: got to go to space but then it was like
Speaker 3: you can't come to Venice.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean that would be another good deep dive
Speaker 1: is that space flight.
Speaker 2: I did read an article where she was like, oh,
Speaker 2: I wish that.
Speaker 1: I think our big mistake was letting the video footage
Speaker 1: that we took from the space flight go public.
Speaker 2: And it's like, well, literally, what did you think they
Speaker 2: were taking video footage for? Like what of course people
Speaker 2: were to see it? Like what did you say?
Speaker 3: Yeah, it wasn't like a scientific mission.
Speaker 1: So this wedding seems involved. Wired reports that exclusive private
Speaker 1: parties are playing at secret locations and smaller islands of
Speaker 1: the lagoon, and it's an event that will leave its
Speaker 1: mark on Venice, including in terms of the environmental impact
Speaker 1: and the possible inconvenience it could create for the city's
Speaker 1: transit infrastructure. Guests will arrive on eighty private j and
Speaker 1: travel aboard more than thirty already reserved water taxis, yachts
Speaker 1: and gondolas. According to some official sources, flights from New York,
Speaker 1: Los Angeles, London, Paris and Dubaier planned not to mention
Speaker 1: luxuryats coming to Venice, with moorings already planned between different points.
Speaker 2: So there is an argument.
Speaker 1: That this wedding could potentially help Venice's local economy conveniently enough.
Speaker 1: Can you guess where that has been reported that this
Speaker 1: wedding actually is a good thing because it's going to
Speaker 1: help support Venice's local economy.
Speaker 3: Uh. The Bezos Daily Newsletter, I.
Speaker 1: Mean essentially the Washington Post, which is owned by Bezos.
Speaker 1: The Post declared that about eighty percent of the produests
Speaker 1: and services come from local Venetian suppliers. I don't know
Speaker 1: if that's true, but it does kind of feel like
Speaker 1: me saying there are no girls on the internet reports
Speaker 1: that Bridget Todd is actually really nice to everybody all
Speaker 1: the time and is super smart, you know what I mean,
Speaker 1: Like convenient that the paper that you own says your
Speaker 1: wedding that everyone hates is actually good.
Speaker 3: It's nice. That's a you know, they've just got their
Speaker 3: own take.
Speaker 1: But in all the pictures of famous celebrities arriving at
Speaker 1: this wedding, I will say, like you can kind of
Speaker 1: see from the pictures that everybody is sort of like,
Speaker 1: oh why am I like, like like I don't know
Speaker 1: if I should be here. With the picture of Tom
Speaker 1: Brady with his like hat really low, Oprah doesn't look
Speaker 1: too like nobody looks thrilled to be going to this wedding,
Speaker 1: And it does sort of make me happy that people
Speaker 1: are really spotlighting the ways that you know, celebrity, even
Speaker 1: celebrities that say the right thing, sometimes really just care
Speaker 1: about other rich celebrities, like they don't really care about us.
Speaker 1: They will go to Jeffrey Bezos's wedding, you know, they
Speaker 1: will probably be at a table with Avanka Trump, who
Speaker 1: is definitely gonna be there. The Kardashians are going to
Speaker 1: be there, Like I don't know, I hope this is
Speaker 1: if that picture of Ellen DeGeneres from the Grammys with
Speaker 1: all of these different celebrities that like famous celebrity selfie,
Speaker 1: if that was the welcoming in of celebrity culture of
Speaker 1: the digital age. I hope the images of celebrity sort
Speaker 1: of shamefully attending this like spectacle, this like rich asshole
Speaker 1: sepectacle is the nail in the coffin of celebrity worship
Speaker 1: online because I do think that like the tides are
Speaker 1: turning because nobody wants to sit in their hot ass
Speaker 1: one bedroom apartment during a heat wave and watch Jeffrey
Speaker 1: Bezos yat in and fly in every celebrity on the
Speaker 1: planet for his taxi ass wedding. Well, Mike, thank you
Speaker 1: so much for being here. Be sure to follow us
Speaker 1: around the web. I'm on Instagram at Bridget Marie DC.
Speaker 1: I'm on TikTok at Bridget Marie and DC, and we're
Speaker 1: trying to grow our YouTube presents. So if you like YouTube,
Speaker 1: check us out there at there are no girls on
Speaker 1: the Internet. Thanks so much for listening, and I will
Speaker 1: see you on the internet if you're looking for waste.
Speaker 1: To support the show, check out our March store at
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Speaker 1: interesting thing in tech, or just want to say hi?
Speaker 1: You can read us at Hello at tangody dot com.
Speaker 1: You can also find transcripts for today's episode at TENG
Speaker 1: Goody dot com. There Are No Girls on the Internet
Speaker 1: was created by me Bridget Tood. It's a production of
Speaker 1: iHeartRadio and Unbossed Creative edited by Joey pat Jonathan Strickland
Speaker 1: is our executive producer. Tari Harrison is our producer and
Speaker 1: sound engineer. Michael Almado is our contributing producer. I'm your host,
Speaker 1: Bridget Todd. If you want to help us grow, rate
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