Pitchfork is absorbed by GQ - is music for men？ Bridget hates self-checkout; Google still isn’t deleting abortion data; AI deepfake legislation – NEWS ROUNDUP
00:04:03.860So there's this thing, this trend on TikTok.
00:04:06.480I should say something about TikTok and also social media more generally is that you really never know if what you're watching is a skit.
00:04:14.980Like somebody is just making up a scenario that's never happened just to get engagement.
00:04:20.220And so I suspect that most of what I'm about to say is being done by people who are doing it on purpose to get people like me to talk about it.
00:04:28.200So I saw this trend, challenge, whatever on TikTok where women who were married to men were making a small mess of ketchup on their kitchen tables, calling their husband or their boyfriend in and being like, hey, can you clean this ketchup?
00:04:47.300And first of all, all the men are like, why are you asking me to clean up a random pile of ketchup
00:04:53.120that you made seemingly with intention because it's a perfect circle while also filming me?
00:04:59.380Like what's going on? But the challenge is, does your husband or boyfriend know how to clean up
00:05:05.180a pile of ketchup effectively? And would he do so if asked? And I got to say, y'all,
00:05:11.280the bar is in hell i was like so if you're if your man doesn't know how to do it embarrassing
00:05:17.700awful if your man does it and you're like wow my husband really knows how to clean up a pile of
00:05:22.940ketchup if i was the man i would be so insulted that you would think that like that like that
00:05:28.040like like hey ladies does your man clean up piles of ketchup on the table that like that's the
00:05:32.960marker of like a good confident man so just to repeat this back to make sure that i've understood
00:05:37.600it uh the woman will call her husband or boyfriend over look him in the eye while she squeezes out
00:05:46.660some ketchup onto the couch and then be like clean this already there oh it's already there
00:05:51.900okay so he comes in and she's like somehow through mysterious circumstances there's ketchup here
00:05:58.980i don't know what to do i need you to help me by cleaning it up and for some reason her phone is
00:06:04.700out and she's recording the whole interaction, which to me, if I, if I, it's like somebody in
00:06:09.120my household, actually that would never happen unless somebody was about to like give me happy
00:06:14.800news. I think, I don't think anybody in my life would ever be, be purporting to have a normal
00:06:20.400interaction with me while also filming me. No, that's a little strange, but like how does one
00:06:27.480screw up cleaning up a little bit of ketchup from the counter? Great question. So it is a
00:06:34.300fair amount of ketchup so it's not just like a dollop it's like a little pile of ketchup
00:06:37.820if you if i mean it's hard to explain but you if you ever had to clean something that's like
00:06:43.200pretty sticky off of a surface you know what i'm talking about you have to sort of come at it at a
00:06:47.100specific angle a lot of these guys are going at it from the top like they put a paper they put a
00:06:52.880single paper towel down on it which is already like the wrong tool for the job and then they
00:06:57.280sort of full hand palm it from the top and then move their hand around so essentially they're
00:07:02.980smearing it around is what they're doing they're like they're like finger painting with it at that
00:07:06.260point yeah like like wax on wax off from like the karate kid exactly um yeah so some of these men
00:07:13.140don't know how to clean ketchup off a table or they're pretending not to again whenever i'm
00:07:18.100watching tiktoks and i'm watching a seemingly mundane moment i'm i always been thinking like
00:07:23.340well why don't you have your phone why were you recording this like you like it has to be some
00:07:27.860sort of setup but in any event that is what's going on in certain corners of tiktok men either
00:07:34.760cannot clean ketchup off of a table or they're getting lots of praise and like oh what a good
00:07:41.540husband for knowing how to and being willing to clean up ketchup from the table we deserve better
00:07:47.900women deserve better frankly men deserve better everybody deserves better nobody wins in this
00:07:52.380scenario the bar is in hell maybe you need to or like we need to do a psa or something like
00:07:59.020create a little instructional video on how to clean ketchup off the table men is your wife1.00
00:08:06.600putting a phone in your face and asking you if you know how to clean up ketchup off a countertop
00:08:10.600don't worry it happens to a lot of us here's what you need to do
00:08:14.620i hope that's helpful we'll we'll we'll flesh it out we'll flesh it out in further episodes so
00:08:21.660that is what's going on on TikTok. Thank you for letting me to explain this to you. Do you feel
00:08:25.660like you're missing out by not having heard this discourse? No, I feel actually dumber having that.0.97
00:08:34.740Okay, let's... But thank you for telling me anyway. Of course. I do feel a little bit more
00:08:41.460informed. Okay, so let's move on to an update on a story that we talked about a little while ago.
00:08:47.140So after Roe was overturned by the Supreme Court, everybody was looking at tech companies.
00:08:52.400After all, in the days before Roe, abortion was criminalized, but we didn't all carry
00:08:57.120like surveillance devices with us in our pocket tracking our every move.
00:09:00.740So it really was a moment in time where tech companies really needed to step up or at least
00:09:05.780clarify and be transparent about how they would be saving data related to abortions.
00:09:10.860Google announced pretty soon after the Supreme Court ruled on Roe that they were going to
00:09:15.580be proactively deleting sensitive location data, like when somebody visits an abortion clinic from
00:09:20.300their search history. I believe, like if I'm mistaken and someone is like, no, that's not
00:09:26.880right, please correct me. My remembering of this event is that Google did this proactively, that
00:09:32.840they were not like pushed by a campaign. At the time, I was pretty plugged into like tech platform
00:09:38.660accountability campaigns at the intersection of, you know, platform accountability and gender
00:09:42.900justice. And so as far as I know, Google came out of the gate and proactively announced this.
00:09:48.240That was my understanding. But thanks to the advocacy organization Accountable Tech,
00:09:52.760we know that Google said they would proactively be deleting people's search history and location
00:09:57.600data when they visited abortion clinics. However, they just kind of didn't do that. So Accountable
00:10:03.400Tech did this really interesting test where they bought brand new Android phones, drove to abortion
00:10:08.700clinics and found that Google did retain that location information. So Google gave the usual
00:10:13.600song and dance, we care about user privacy, we're doing all we can, blah, blah, blah. And it said
00:10:18.580that the company planned to go along with changes to implement this change in location retention
00:10:24.040policies in early 2022, as promised. So what's the update here? Well, they really kind of haven't
00:10:30.940done that. Here it is 2024, and they're still, I guess, still working on it, still working at
00:10:35.680the kinks, whatever. Accountable Tech just released another study this week that found
00:10:39.740that the company still was not deleting all location history in all cases as promised.
00:10:46.400Though I will say Google's rate of retention has improved a little bit. So the rate of retention
00:10:51.820of location information decreased from 60% of tested cases, a measurement taken five months
00:10:57.360after Google's pledge, to 50% of tested cases in the most recent experiment. 50% like, it's like a
00:11:04.900coin flip of whether or not they're actually going to do it. Yeah, that's not a very good
00:11:10.280metric. When you started, I was like, okay, well, maybe there's like a couple edge cases
00:11:13.860that creep through. 50% is like, that's pretty embarrassing. So according to The Guardian,
00:11:20.200here's how they did this newest test. Researchers from Accountable Tech ran eight tests in seven
00:11:25.040states, Pennsylvania, Texas, Nevada, Florida, New York, Georgia, and North Carolina. In four
00:11:30.020out of the eight tests, the route to Planned Parenthood was retained in the device's location
00:11:34.400history, though the name of the clinic was Scrub. But it wouldn't be like that hard if somebody was
00:11:39.200really trying to paint a portrait about where you were. It really wouldn't be that hard to be like,
00:11:43.560oh, it was Planned Parenthood. Data on searches for abortion clinics was still retained in the
00:11:48.080web and activity history as in the researcher's first test. So that has not changed. Like when
00:11:52.680they first did this test, they were still, when you search for abortion clinics, that information
00:11:57.060was still retained in your web activity. It is still retained in your web activity in 2024.
00:12:02.180for. So the director of product of Google Maps, Marlo McGriff, disputed the findings of this
00:12:08.300study, saying, we are upholding our promise to delete particularly personal places from location
00:12:13.160history if these places are identified by our systems. Any claims that we're not doing so are
00:12:17.980patently false or misguided. So when I looked into this, it's very clear to me that Google
00:12:24.080is sort of nitpicking here. In one of the cases, they say that, oh, well, Google location services
00:12:30.240did not detect that visit as a Planned Parenthood specifically, so that it did not delete that
00:12:36.060location data. But it was a Planned Parenthood. So whether or not your location services or map
00:12:42.760or whatever clocked it that way, I don't know. It seems a little weird to include that in a case
00:12:48.860where you wouldn't have to delete the location services. Yeah. It seems like they're saying,
00:12:53.880like what that spokesman was saying is that they didn't detect that the location was a
00:13:02.240abortion clinic. And so they didn't delete the trip, but like detecting that the person has
00:13:08.940visited in abortion clinic is a big part of what they're saying that they're, they're doing right.
00:13:15.040Like it's like saying, Oh, we, you know, like they, they just totally didn't, they missed on
00:13:23.520half of the objective yeah and they're essentially using that as their excuse like i don't know why
00:13:30.920something about this this situation infuriates me because it's so ridiculous basically they out of
00:13:37.260the gate were like we're gonna do x and now they're like well we can't do x it's like well
00:13:41.580if you couldn't do it it's like exactly what accountable tech and abortion advocates are
00:13:45.760saying is that you're not you're doing a sloppy job of it and they're like well we agree we're
00:13:49.420doing a sloppy job one could say we're not even really doing it at all it's like well yeah that's
00:13:53.360what we're saying it's like it seems to me everybody is saying the same thing it's not
00:13:56.720getting done you know i've heard that google is very siloed and it's a bunch of little fiefdoms
00:14:02.780uh and i wonder if like basically what he's saying is that like well the the department that was in
00:14:11.600charge of this they did their part and they were just relying on the data from some other department
00:14:17.820that like wasn't involved in this so it's not our fault but like it's all google right like the whole
00:14:24.220thing that they said they were going to do of
00:14:27.180scrubbing data showing people visiting abortion clinics uh like soup to nuts the whole process
00:14:39.180of identifying that data and then scrubbing it it's all google right like this is not a good
00:14:46.320excuse. No, it's not a good excuse at all. And especially when we're talking about playing so
00:14:53.260fast and loose with something that can, let's be really clear, could get abortion seekers and the
00:14:58.940people who support abortion seekers arrested. We're not talking about something that is
00:15:02.880frivolous. We're talking about something that really matters. And so I think playing this
00:15:07.880weird blame game and using all these excuses really doesn't cut it for me when we're talking
00:15:13.780about something so serious that they proactively said that they could and would do. So according
00:15:18.900to Accountable Tech, it's about 50-50 whether or not this data is deleted or not by Google.
00:15:24.000They say, with the same odds as a coin flip, an abortion seeker's location data might still be
00:15:29.080retained and used to prosecute them. On top of that, as we've seen through the experiments,0.71
00:15:33.700Google still retains location search query data and likely other incriminating data as well,
00:15:38.200from email to Google search data. Yeah, it's not great. This is a pretty big deal that I think
00:15:44.340already has had pretty big implications for folks who need abortions. The company receives and
00:15:49.860responds to tens of thousands of law enforcement requests for data from its vast troves of user
00:15:54.720data and complies with 80% of those requests with some level of information. This is according to
00:15:59.800Google's transparency report. And on top of that, law enforcement agencies and police have started
00:16:05.020to make increasing use of this new category of search warrant called reverse search warrants.
00:16:09.520The Guardian says in that category are geofence location warrants, which police use to come up
00:16:14.940with a list of suspects by seeking out information on all users whose devices have been detected
00:16:19.880in a certain place at a certain time. Many activists worry law enforcement would use
00:16:24.600these search warrants to collect data to find and prosecute or investigate those seeking abortions.0.96
00:16:31.860I do have some, like, good-ish news from this update.
00:16:35.020Google has announced that it planned to change the way that it stores location history data for all users in a way that could render responding to geofence warrants effectively impossible.
00:16:44.600The changes include storing location data on users' devices by default, encrypting any location data that is backed up to Google's cloud storage, and deleting location data after three months.
00:16:53.400So this is sort of good. Like it's a sort of a good way to get around that particularly invasive search warrant process. However, as Accountable Tech points out, we are talking about a company, like the reason we're talking about Google today is because they have shown themselves to be kind of slippery about what they say they're going to do and what they actually do when it comes to our data, right?
00:17:15.580So can we trust them to do this thing that sounds kind of like a step in the right direction?
00:18:39.280So if you feel like Google search has gotten worse lately and like just overall less useful, full of garbage, you are not wrong because now we have the data to confirm that.
00:18:50.200A new study from German researchers at Leibzig University and the Center for Scalable Data Analytics and Artificial Intelligence were trying to answer the research question, is Google getting worse?
00:19:01.400To answer this question, they examined almost 8,000 product review queries on Google, Bing, and DuckDuckGo for a year.
00:19:09.280Researchers worked off reports that a torrent of low-quality content, especially for product search, keeps drowning out any kind of useful information in Google search results.
00:19:19.560And what they found pretty much confirmed that.
00:19:21.900A significant amount of the results found in response to product-related queries were outright SEO product review spam.
00:19:28.080So just, like, garbage, ads, stuff, like, people who are taking advantage of SEO to, like, get their stuff at the very top of Google Search, it is so annoying.
00:19:39.960So basically, Google Search, especially for products, is all SEO spam now.
00:19:46.240Like, Google Search is just really difficult to use for some types of queries.
00:19:52.880and you know it's so interesting that seo has basically ruined google search uh you know people
00:20:05.720one of the big things people were talking about a couple months ago when you know chat gpt came
00:20:11.780out and everybody was all abuzz about generative ai was the idea or concern about generative ai
00:20:19.780producing content that gets released in the world and then training on that content like a snake
00:20:25.580eating its own tail thing uh and i feel like we already kind of have that with google search
00:20:33.680uh just returning in a lot of cases garbage results that are just optimized for seo where
00:20:42.780uh like we didn't even need generative ai to turn the internet into a snake eating its own tail
00:20:51.860of low quality information right like we we humans did it ourselves well you know who does not agree
00:20:58.780that their search platforms are becoming on is it oroboros is that the name of that snake eating
00:21:04.560its own tail oroboros or don't don't quote me on that pronunciation of it uh but you know who
00:21:11.840doesn't agree. We all know the snake. You know what I'm trying to say. It's the morning. Give
00:21:14.700me a break. You know who doesn't agree that that's happening? Is it Google? It's Google.
00:21:21.080So they're really taking a lot of heat in this episode. I got to say, a Google spokesperson
00:21:25.360told Mashable that the study does not reflect the overall quality and helpfulness of search.
00:21:30.380And they also emphasize that the study only focuses on a narrow set of search queries,
00:21:34.980namely product search. Again, it is wild to me that they're like, well, yeah, of course product
00:21:40.660search sucks like is that is that that big of a deal like they're almost like using like they're
00:21:46.860almost like confirming what people are saying what people are saying is like yeah you can't0.91
00:21:50.140use google to search products anymore without getting a bunch of ads and they're like well
00:21:53.360that sure if you only count product search it's like well that's what they're saying it seems like
00:21:57.480we agree yeah i mean in in fairness to google right like there are a lot of categories where
00:22:03.400it works really well right like i i use google search all the time in a lot of cases it works
00:22:08.540well. Product search, it's terrible. And it is kind of interesting that the category of search
00:22:16.900where it fails is the one category where people are trying to sell stuff, right? Isn't that
00:22:24.100interesting? So we've been picking on Google a lot in this episode. I will throw them a bone.
00:22:28.380So the study did show that Google results did improve a little bit to some extent between the
00:22:34.260start of the researchers experiment and the end, but still they found an overall downward trend in
00:22:39.380text quality in all three search engines. And then when you add in things like AI generated spam,
00:22:45.000this is only going to get worse. Like this is going to be a problem that if they don't
00:22:49.460really take some action on, it's just going to result in Google being garbage. Like whenever0.93
00:22:54.500I'm searching for a product, I'll have to search like ninja coffee maker Reddit. At least I used
00:23:00.240to do that, but I don't know. I don't know the state of Reddit these days, whether or not that's
00:23:03.240to remain a viable strategy to actually get real information. But it should not be this hard to get
00:23:09.880real good information curated by a human on the internet. It's wild to me that this is where
00:23:15.640we're at, that you have to do so much just to get real, honest information online.
00:23:22.020Yeah. Adding Reddit in the search terms when you search Google is definitely a useful thing to do.
00:23:28.940So relatedly, I mean, this isn't part of this Google story, but it's just an interesting thing.
00:23:34.400I was talking to somebody the other day who's like a digital strategy person, and they were talking about SEO and how much it's changed in recent years where SEO used to be all about Google, right?
00:23:47.240Like optimizing your website so that it would show up in Google results.
00:23:50.180now that's still a big piece of it but people are also optimizing their sites to show up in
00:23:58.460social media platform results so like searching facebook searching twitter searching uh tiktok
00:24:05.940um and i thought that was like a really interesting change from you know google being
00:24:12.880basically the only game in town for search to uh that no longer being the case
00:24:19.380In 2022, there was new reports that, particularly with Gen Z, younger folks, TikTok had already overtaken Google as the new search engine.
00:24:28.720So people are definitely using social media sites as search engines now.
00:26:45.120okay so speaking of young people in the internet quick heads up on this story because it is pretty
00:26:51.760disturbing it's an issue that i feel very strongly about i talk about it a lot and it infuriates me
00:26:56.680and that is ai generated deep things so if you listen to this show you probably already know
00:27:02.160that when it comes to technology we are really failing our kids in particular our young girls
00:27:08.100unchecked tech harms routinely befall on young girls. And they're just supposed to deal with it.1.00
00:27:14.260They're just supposed to be like, yep, now this is a whole new category of harm that you have to
00:27:18.020absorb and there will be no accountability or recourse for it. Unacceptable. And when it comes
00:27:22.860to AI, that is no different. So this week, a New Jersey high schooler named Francesca Manning,
00:27:28.580a teenage victim of non-consensually sexually explicit deep fakes, joined Representative
00:27:33.320Jo Morel from New York to share her story and advocate for a bipartisan bill that would
00:27:38.300criminalize sharing deepfakes at a federal level. So this bill, called the Preventing
00:27:43.040Deepfakes of Intimate Images Act, was first referred to by the House Judiciary Committee
00:27:47.420back in December 2022, but since then, no further action has been taken. And this lawmaker,
00:27:53.680Morel, is trying to reintroduce it. So the bill would criminalize the non-consensual sharing of
00:27:58.700sexually explicit deepfakes and create a right of private action so that victims who are depicted
00:28:03.480in these images would be able to sue the creators and distributors of those deepfakes while also
00:28:08.800remaining anonymous. Under this proposed law, damages for sharing deepfaked images without
00:28:13.980consent could go as high as $150,000 and imprisonment of up to 10 years if sharing the
00:28:20.000images facilitates violence or impacts the proceedings of a government agency. That's
00:28:24.880really important, I think, because oftentimes with deepfakes, sometimes they're used to terrorize
00:28:31.280individual people. Sometimes they're used to disrupt a political campaign or disrupt an
00:28:37.100election. And so I think it is important to have that bit in there. So Francesca's story is truly
00:28:43.360heartbreaking. Boys in her school, like a group of boys, created and traded AI-generated deepfake
00:28:50.420nude images of her and about 30 other girls in her class back on October 20th. And I think it's
00:28:56.680an important reminder that AI is threatening and harming women and girls right now. Like this is
00:29:03.060not some faraway conceptual threat down the line. It is happening. It is here. Women and girls are
00:29:09.320already paying a cost for that technology and for the fact that it's been allowed to just run1.00
00:29:16.100rampant unchecked. So according to the Dutch AI company, Sensity, 96% of deepfakes online are
00:29:23.740non-consensual deepfake porn. Surprise, surprise. The vast majority of which targets women. So this
00:29:29.680is a gender justice issue. It is a issue about sexual violence. It's an issue about consent.
00:29:34.420You know, I beat this drum a lot that tech issues are gender issues, they're race issues,
00:29:39.400they're identity issues. And this is a story that I think really makes that clear.
00:29:42.300It poses a very real threat to our democracy. It does not just threaten the women and girls that are depicted in these images. It threatens all of us and makes us all less safe and secure.
00:29:52.220Because if women can't run for office or participate in public and civic life without being depicted in sexualized, AI-generated content that depicts them, we will not have a representative democracy, right?0.96
00:30:04.940We will not have a society where everybody can make their voice heard, where everybody can participate equally in public and civic life.0.99
00:30:12.980And so it's an issue that impacts us all, not just the women who are depicted.
00:30:17.000One note about this is that we're talking specifically about AI-generated deepfakes right now because we're talking about this legislation.
00:30:23.460However, this kind of thing is not new, right?
00:30:26.900Bad actors have already been doing this for a very long time without AI, like before AI was super ubiquitous.
00:30:33.120A few years ago, there was an image circulating online of a woman topless in her bathtub vaping, and it's a picture of her feet, but in the picture, you can see her faucet, and there's a blurry, reflected image of this woman topless.
00:30:48.720If you look close enough, because you know how creeps will zoom in on a photo if they think there's some chance of nudity in it, if you zoom in enough, you can see a topless, naked woman in the reflection of the faucet in this picture.
00:31:00.320And so this picture was making the rounds on social media with people saying that it was AOC.
00:31:05.980However, in reality, I think it was actually Sidney Leathers.
00:31:09.400If you don't know who Sidney Leathers is, Sidney Leathers was the woman who was involved in Anthony Wiener's, the first iteration of Anthony Wiener's text scandal.
00:31:24.280So the image was actually her, but they were like, oh, this is a picture of AOC topless and naked in her tub, even though like it was barely a picture of Sydney Leathers topless and naked in her tub.
00:31:35.780Like if you're zooming in and like enhancing and enhancing and enhancing just to see a new topless woman, debatable on whether that is a top, like, come on, you know, that's really on you.
00:31:46.180Like, don't put that on her. Does that make sense? You know what I'm saying?0.61
00:31:49.860So this is what's called a cheap fake, which is exactly what it sounds like, a cheaply manipulated piece of content. Maybe it's as simple as something as like mislabeling what that content is. So saying, oh, this is AOC, not Sydney Leathers. That is how like low budget and cheap, cheap fakes can be.
00:32:08.760So it's not always AI, right? So AI is not the reason why people are creating this kind of misleading content. However, AI makes it so easy and so fast and so cheap for anybody to do it, right? It might have taken some effort to make a believable cheap fake of a girl in your high school class who you want to sexually humiliate. But with AI, anybody can do it easily.
00:32:35.980Francesca Manny, the high school student who was targeted by these deepfakes, I really
00:32:41.160got to give it to her because she worked with this lawmaker and advocated and talked about0.95
00:32:46.200her experience to help raise awareness about this law.
00:32:49.180She says, the issue is pretty black and white.
00:32:51.600No kid, teen, or woman should ever have to experience what I went through.
00:32:57.020I'm here standing up and shouting for change, fighting for law so no one else has to feel
00:33:02.000as lost and powerless as I did on October 20th. The glaring lack of laws speaks volumes. And when
00:33:08.360you have a high school student having to advocate to protect people in this way, something is really
00:33:16.720wrong. I give it up to Francesca. She sounds amazing. Francesca, if you're listening, come
00:33:22.440to the show anytime. We support you. But she should be getting ready for her prom and hanging
00:33:27.560out with her friends and reading magazines and playing sports and like doing things that high
00:33:32.220schoolers are supposed to be doing. It kind of breaks my heart that she has to be working because
00:33:37.380this is work in this way to advocate for a system where kids like her aren't harmed like this. Like
00:33:43.180this, this should not be on her, a child to ask adults whose job it is to keep her people like0.99
00:33:49.200her safe, who've just done fuck all. It infuriates me. She says, our voices are our secret weapon and1.00
00:33:55.780our words are like power-ups in fortnight my mom and i are advocating to create a world where being
00:34:01.180safe isn't just a hope it's a reality for everyone whoo francesca girl thank you for
00:34:07.240what you're doing i am so sorry that we have failed you yeah i mean i'm i it's it's an issue0.91
00:34:14.520that really pisses me off because it's just so fucked up and she really shouldn't have to be0.92
00:34:22.760doing this. And it also seems like it should be a no brainer that there should be some action on0.99
00:34:29.420this bill that was introduced in December of 2022. It's been over a year and no action. Like
00:34:36.240everybody's constantly yelling their heads off that we need to save the children. Here is a
00:34:43.000bill that would help protect children from what I would imagine nearly all reasonable people would
00:34:53.180agree is like a harmful bad thing. So the lack of action on this bill is like puzzling and
00:35:02.780infuriating. Hopefully we'll see some action on it. Agreed. So I did want to talk briefly about
00:35:09.980this OpenAI story. OpenAI, the company behind ChatGPT, we did a whole episode about their CEO,
00:35:17.740Sam Altman, being fired and then rehired and all of that. Well, they quietly changed their
00:35:23.040terms of service to remove language forbidding the use of its technology for military purposes.
00:35:27.880The new terms of service still forbid the technology being used to make weapons specifically,
00:35:32.080but other military or military adjacent purposes are now fair game. This change follows a newly
00:35:38.380announced collaboration between OpenAI and the U.S. Department of Defense. So this policy change
00:35:43.720really continues this trend of Sam Altman and OpenAI as they embrace this profit-making potential
00:35:50.260of relaxing the company's sort of original lofty ideas. I think initially OpenAI was meant to be
00:35:56.220a nonprofit and they had this sort of like, at least stated, kind of like altruistic sounding-ish
00:36:03.540goal. Now they're like, no, we're trying to make money. We're trying to get paid, y'all. Like,
00:36:07.700that's what it is. Let's just call it what it is. So just two months ago, we watched the internet
00:36:12.500pretty much meltdown when the nonprofit board of OpenAI, which a Wired article from this summer
00:36:17.120describes as responsible for making sure that the drive for revenue and profits will not overwhelm
00:36:22.140OpenAI's original idea, fired Altman for allegedly not staying true to its idealistic mission.
00:36:28.400The firing didn't take. Within days, he was back and many of the other board members were out.
00:36:33.220We're really witnessing this evolution where we see open AI going from this organization that has this ethos of, like, free and open and non-military to exclusive enterprise licenses and, yes, military.
00:36:46.700It kind of reminds me of, not to, like, keep picking on Google in this episode, but, like, it's like every story has been like, you know what?0.99
00:37:18.660So I will say OpenAI's collaboration with the Department of Defense, it does sound like they are stopping short of using their AI tech to build weapons in this case.
00:37:29.340However, it does sound like this week they moved a step closer to having their technology be used to build weapons. We already know that AI is being used by the Israeli military to identify targets for bombings in Gaza. They use a system called the Gospel, which I'll just move on. I have a lot to say about that name, but we'll just move on, which the Israeli military has said allows them to identify enemy combatants and equipment while reducing civilian casualties.
00:37:54.820That's what they're saying. However, a fact that we just know to be true about AI is that it is super janky and gets things wrong consistently all the time. And so if you're saying like, oh, no, no, we're actually doing a good thing by using this AI because it helps us reduce civilian casualties.
00:38:11.440And we know with certainty, because of the AI technology, that the people that we bomb are actually enemy combatants. Don't worry. If the lynchpin of that is the AI technology being effective, we know it's not effective. So that doesn't really work. And it really does sound like this whole system is likely kind of being used to justify killing civilians because AI identified them as combatants.
00:38:37.860So this whole situation is yet another reminder that technology is not neutral, and that the decisions made by people who make technology have huge implications. And with all war and conflict, it really is a gender justice issue.
00:38:51.480Okay, so we have to talk about this kind of funky AI racing ambassador thing. So this week,
00:39:00.040the Formula E motorsports team Mahindra launched Ava Beyond Reality, an AI-generated female
00:39:07.600presenting AI ambassador for the team. So as far as I can tell, Ava was an existing AI influencer,
00:39:14.800and she was going to be used to publicize this racing team. The team's fans hated it. Like,
00:39:21.480clear, loud, instant, negative feedback. They hated it so much that the entire thing was
00:39:27.680basically scrubbed from the internet in less than 48 hours, according to Car and Driver magazine.
00:39:32.920So the racing company did kind of release an apology on Instagram. They said,
00:39:37.740nurturing diversity, inclusion, and innovation is at the heart of Mahindra Racing. Our AI
00:39:42.480influencer program was designed with this innovation in mind. Your comments hold tremendous
00:39:46.640disvalue, we listened, understood, and decided to discontinue the project. So like, grand opening,
00:39:51.960grand closing for their AI lady ambassador. So I think one of the reasons why this got such
00:39:57.420negative feedback is that there are real live human women in racing, but these women are often
00:40:02.780sidelined and marginalized in the sport. According to Karin Driver, fewer than 5% of elite level0.85
00:40:08.340pilots identify as women. So it sort of seems like this team would rather create an AI generated
00:40:15.420fake woman than actually amplify a real living and breathing human woman who does exist in the
00:40:22.380sport. What's really interesting is that Karin Driver did a deep dive into this AI influencer's0.95
00:40:27.240social footprint, and they found that she posts about things like shoes and self-care. So Karin
00:40:33.080Driver suspects that this AI ambassador was actually like a clunky marketing attempt to
00:40:39.220appeal to women. Sometimes when people are using AI, the story that we talked about with the
00:40:45.880tech conference that was using a fake AI ambassador for their tech conference,
00:40:53.420it's clear to me that that was an attempt to appeal to men. A lot of the way that she presented
00:40:58.480was like, this is about men. This AI racing ambassador, according to Karin Driver,
00:41:04.120might have actually been an attempt to market to women.
00:41:08.940The photographs, shoes, clothing, selfies seem drawn from the same kind of influencer-style
00:41:13.920sponsored content theme so common from accounts that advertise toward women, in this case,
00:41:18.940paired with your standard AI girlfriend imagery.
00:41:21.480That's from Hazel Southwell, longtime Formula E correspondent.
00:41:25.620And yet, the text that accompanies them doesn't appeal to women at all.
00:41:28.960It feels very much like some type of outside marketing agency deal gone terribly wrong.
00:41:34.120That is an interesting distinction that like, for that tech conference, it was an AI generated woman who, I guess it wasn't an AI generated woman, right? It was like a, like you said, like a cheap fake where they had a model, an actor.
00:41:51.280uh honestly i i'm not even comfortable saying that like i have i have not i have yet to get
00:41:58.000to the bottom of what's going on there people should listen to that episode because it is if
00:42:00.560you haven't listened to it because it is wild we'll put it in the show notes but like i'm not
00:42:03.980even comfortable saying in every instance it was a human woman in some cases i believe it was ai
00:42:10.220generated and this guy just thought we wouldn't notice um in some cases i think it's a handful
00:43:06.620So I will say like the thing that really kind of sticks in my craw about this is that it
00:43:12.040does actually sound like this team has a history of like trying to do good things and like trying
00:43:16.600to be pretty inclusive. They've done campaigns on the past where they highlight like actual human
00:43:21.420women in the sport. So it seems like they didn't even really have to do this, this grift with the
00:43:26.500AI woman. This point from the car and driver piece really nails it. The entire Ava Rose debacle waves
00:43:32.240a big red flag at situations where inclusion and diversity are swept up by a marketing machine
00:43:36.760intent on piggybacking on the latest tech trends without consideration for the human dynamics that
00:43:41.920make up the sport. It's encouraging that the backlash was widespread enough to make Mahindra
00:43:46.020rethink Eva Rose. And we can only hope that the next company that thinks programming diversity
00:43:50.800is better than hiring diverse employees takes note. And that to me is really the point. It's
00:43:56.640a silly story, yes, but that is the nugget of thing that we should really be taking away is that
00:44:01.180when companies are like, oh, we want to do something that involves a woman or a person
00:44:06.480of color or somebody to highlight, if you use AI, that is a gig that an actual marginalized human
00:44:15.100does not book and does not get paid for. We did an episode about this a while back, but
00:44:19.700a lot of these AI influencers, even if they're women, like there's one that's really famous,
00:44:25.860it's like a Black woman model, that is run by a white man. And so it's a lot of times these,
00:44:32.400When you book an AI to be an influencer or talent in some way, that is a gig that is money that a human person from that background is not getting. And so particularly in situations like this one, when human women already feel marginalized, to use a fake woman as an ambassador rather than amplifying one of those real human women who feel sidelined sometimes in this sport doesn't sit right with me, right?
00:44:57.200Like actual inclusion has to involve actual humans from the identity that you're trying to include.
00:45:03.220And it's one of my worries about AI more generally that it will just be used to further displace and marginalize people who are already marginalized.
00:45:10.720Like you don't get credit for working with a woman in a male-dominated space if that woman is not even real, if she's AI.
00:46:48.780It's like if you can hide some real messages inside compelling characters, then that is a Trojan horse.
00:46:56.680Whether you're looking for literary deep dives, smart pop culture conversations, or a community of readers who love to think a little too much, you're in the right place.
00:47:05.860Listen to Pro Society on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
00:47:48.780Now, when Tor described it as, quote, the best path for the brand so that our coverage of music can continue to thrive within the company, that kind of makes it sound like Pitchfork must have not been successful.
00:48:07.220Pitchfork has the highest daily site visitors of any of our titles.
00:48:10.920Their higher consuming segments generate more unique page views by volume than any title.
00:48:15.080This despite scant resourcing, especially from corporate, well-placed in a post-scale era, or at least was.
00:48:21.940So I should be clear that I don't have insight into exactly what is going on here and why this decision was made.
00:48:27.940If I was a betting woman, I would say that it has something to do with the recent unionization effort by Pitchfork staff, and it was confirmed that eight of the staff who were laid off were union members.
00:48:39.240The United Musicians and Allied Workers Union released a statement saying the mass layoffs at Pitchfork are union busting.
00:48:46.880So I have my suspicions of what's going on here, but I don't have any special insight, so I can't really say.0.80
00:48:53.980Damn, I had read that Pitchfork was being folded into GQ.
00:48:59.260And yeah, I just assumed it was because people weren't reading it, weren't looking at it.0.98
00:51:26.100If folks want more detail, maybe I can go into it. It's not that exciting. Aren't all bad drug trips the same in a kind of way? So Pitchfork definitely occupies a certain soft spot in my media diet.
00:51:40.680It's like a pillar of not just music journalism, but like journalism in America, right?
00:51:46.940Like how many national publications are there that like focus on music and culture the way
00:51:58.180It's pretty sad to see that just folded into a lifestyle brand and not just a lifestyle
00:52:03.640brand, but like a lifestyle brand marketed to men.
00:52:07.060And I think, you know, Pitchfork, when they first started, they got a lot of heat for really only covering like white indie male artists. But by the end, they were doing what I found to be like really inclusive coverage. And yeah, it makes me sad to see them folded into an explicitly a men's magazine.
00:52:27.820And I can only imagine that whatever the next iteration of Pitchfork is, is going to be hollowed out. And so I think it feels like the end of an era for Pitchfork, but also an end of an era for media and criticism more generally. It feels like if you are not in media or media adjacent, I cannot stress to you enough how tenuous it feels right now.
00:52:49.320like every day there is a new round of layoffs announced in media and also
00:53:42.300Throughout the industry, features and reporting and music reviews have taken a backseat as companies push for more social media and video content.
00:53:49.720What has filled the vacuum left behind by actual music criticism is a loose collection of YouTubers and influencers who feed slop to their younger audiences and fan communities that engage with music solely through their obsession with a particular pop act.
00:54:02.520This has all helped produce a mass of music fans who don't understand the value of criticism and outright detest being told that things they like might suck.
00:54:10.640Even worse, it has helped destroy what scant opportunities remain for obscure or up-and-coming musicians to find an audience.
00:54:17.060It's harder than ever to make it big without a co-sign from Drake or Taylor Swift.
00:54:20.920And stuffing one of the few music publications left that swam against all these currents into GQ's stuffy environments isn't going to help things.
00:56:22.220out this high quality stuff uh sounds like we're either axed or or laid off uh because they were
00:56:31.080wanting to agitate for better wages better conditions or something uh and i'm sure that
00:56:37.040the people creating those youtube videos you know the stands the the whoever uh they're probably
00:56:44.080doing it for a lot less compensation than those professional writers if any compensation
00:56:51.600And I think you're so spot on. And when you fold the threat of AI replacing journalists and writers and people who make interesting stuff, like it's clear to me that what suits, you know, executives thought they had in Pitchfork was a brand.
00:57:10.760And so what was important, what was valuable was the brand name, Pitchfork. What was not adding value in their kind of myopic view of things was the writers who actually do the thing, the people who write, the people who do the interviews, the people who make the thing.
00:57:24.920They're like, oh, we can outsource that with AI. That's not, you know, I don't know this to be specifically true for Pitchfork, but I think that that is the larger trend I'm seeing media go toward, that the people who actually make the thing that bring an audience, what they do is replaceable.
00:57:41.660What they do can be replaced by AI or somebody who's not making any money or just some teen on YouTube or whatever. And what's actually important, what actually makes money is the brand. And I don't think that is going to work out. I don't think, I think what actually puts butts in seats and eyeballs on pages is good writing, is good content, is thoughtful writing.
00:58:01.960And I think that, and honestly, like, I was kind of going on a deep dive with this.
00:58:17.860Someone was like, so then why do this?
00:58:19.740She basically was like, because rich people don't read, because rich people buy things, they kind of hate the things that they acquire.
00:58:29.200They don't understand the things that they acquire.
00:58:31.300And the only way that they have to engage with the things that they get ownership over is to crush them because they don't understand them and they have a weird kind of disdain for these things that they buy.
00:58:45.700And we've seen that time and time again. Here in the DMV area where I live, a wealthy person just acquired the newspaper, The Baltimore Sun. And first day in the office, people are meeting the new owner for the first time.
00:58:57.520And what does he do? Stand in front of a room and denigrate the people who now work for him,
00:59:03.660being like, all of you don't know what you're doing. You don't know how to write. We should
00:59:07.720be doing more social media, more listicles, more engaging content. What you're doing is worthless
00:59:14.160and valueless to me, this company that I just bought. And so I think that she's onto something
00:59:19.360that there is a deep, deep disdain when wealthy people acquire things that people like. I was
01:10:43.200Yeah, I look forward to hearing what people have to say.
01:10:45.460Mike, thank you so much for being here, as always.
01:10:47.900I guess I'll see you at that janky-ass Target self-checkout line trying to buy wine.
01:10:53.580Yeah, I'll wave to you while you're setting up camp over in the human cashier line.
01:10:59.580I'll bring you some water, maybe some magazines.
01:11:02.380And listeners, thank you for joining us.
01:11:03.820So there's another story that we didn't have time to get into,
01:11:06.740that former Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg is leaving Facebook's board.
01:11:11.040So I figured it was a perfect excuse to tell kind of a wild story about the time that I actually met Sheryl Sandberg IRL and how she basically crushed my faith in feminism.
01:11:22.520So check it out ad-free on the Patreon at tangody.com slash Patreon.
01:11:27.260So we'll see you there and see you on the internet.0.99