00:01:13.700I'm Elizabeth Smart, and these are the Survivor Files.
00:01:17.400Every week, I'm with survivors who live through the unthinkable,
00:01:21.100abducted, stalked, controlled, and nearly silenced.
00:01:24.740These are stories about what it takes to make it out alive.
00:01:28.800Listen to The Survivor Files with Elizabeth Smart on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
00:01:40.440There Are No Girls on the Internet is a production of iHeartRadio and Unbossed Creative.
00:01:48.560I'm Bridget Todd, and this is There Are No Girls on the Internet.0.51
00:01:51.280i am sad to say that i think that we are witnessing the revival of menstrual shows
00:01:58.320using ai on social media platforms like tiktok when you actually look at what menstrual shows
00:02:04.320were and the role they played in upholding the status quo back in the day and then look at
00:02:08.960what's happening right now with these ai generated racist videos depicting black women on tiktok
00:02:13.960the similarities are shocking now this is something i could talk a lot about as i was
00:02:19.520writing my thoughts for the outline for today's conversation, I said, oh, I'm at 10 pages. I'm at
00:02:25.84012 pages. And eventually we had to say like, okay, enough pages. Like this, you have to put a stop to
00:02:31.100this. This is too much. So here with me to get into all of it is my producer, Mike. Hi, Bridget.
00:02:36.260Thanks for having me here. I know this is a topic that you have studied, have a lot to say about.
00:02:42.880And so I am very interested to hear how what's going on on TikTok right now reminds you of what was happening with minstrel shows 100 years ago.
00:02:53.360Is that the right sort of time frame that we're talking?
00:02:55.500Like 19th century, 18th and 19th century.
00:03:00.040Let's start with what a minstrel show is for folks who did not spend all of their college years like pouring through this and obsessing over the minutiae of minstrel shows.1.00
00:03:09.660The Minstrel Show was an incredibly popular form of American theater and entertainment in the 19th century where mostly white performers would wear blackface to make themselves look like black people and portray really racist stereotypes that showed black people as like lazy, stupid buffoons.1.00
00:03:30.560A common trope in these skits would be Black folks trying and failing to become citizens, where they would fail in some kind of a humorous way because they were too stupid to figure it out or too lazy.0.99
00:03:43.760Like, there would be a test they were supposed to take, and they would oversleep and miss the date or something like that, and it was very much meant to be a source of humor at Black people's expense.0.99
00:03:54.900When these shows would depict Black women, we were depicted as what's known as the Sapphire caricature, which sort of shows Black women as being rude, loud, malicious, aggressive, stubborn, and really overbearing.0.80
00:04:10.760So kind of what you might think of as the angry Black woman trope in the kind of media that we still see today.0.59
00:04:16.240Now, while there were some black people who did perform in minstrel shows, ironically, putting blackface makeup on their already black faces to exaggerate their already black features, which I always found to be interesting that you'd have these black performers drawing an outline on their lips to make them look more black, even though they have black features.0.75
00:04:38.200I always found that to be kind of funny.0.58
00:04:39.760that is really interesting and it reminds me of this concept that you told me about in a different
00:04:45.380context the idea of simulacrum where there's like a copy of a copy and and then people will make a
00:04:53.680new copy that has features that never existed in the original but those new features become
00:04:59.740like the idea of what the thing is and that it kind of reminds me of that a little bit the idea
00:05:05.960that Black actors would apply makeup0.99
00:05:35.500You need, in order to feel like you're really experiencing that experience, you need it to be like this like hyper exaggerated way that you've already experienced it that's completely not what an actual Black person looks like.1.00
00:05:47.700I always found that to be so interesting.0.94
00:05:50.480And so while there were a few black performers who performed in minstrel shows in blackface makeup with exaggerated features, the overwhelming and vast majority of performers in minstrel shows were white actors wearing blackface makeup for the explicit purpose of portraying these racist stereotypes of black people.
00:06:11.520And it wasn't just entertainment, right? Like people would laugh in the audience. But you were telling me before the show about the important sort of functional role that these shows had.
00:06:22.720Exactly. So they were incredibly popular as entertainment, but they served this more important purpose of reaffirming and reestablishing the political and social ideologies of the time.
00:06:34.820And they really occupied this gray area that comes up a lot when we're talking about this kind of popular culture, this ambiguousness between humorous entertainment that's just like, oh, nothing to think twice about, doesn't really matter, isn't really that important, is not that deep, and the functional reinforcement of white supremacy.
00:06:54.160And it really reminds me a lot of how, like, alt-right members use memes today. Like, everything is couched in all of this irony and all of this plausible deniability and all of this kind of wink, wink, nod, nod, it's just a joke. But back then, the KKK was exploiting that very same ambiguity to permeate control as the 19th century gave way to the 20th.
00:07:15.340And so this kind of form of popular entertainment that people were just consuming mindlessly as like, oh, it's just a joke, yada, yada, yada, became a way of just reaffirming the status quo of Black people as, you know, other, different, less than, and not really worthy of full citizenship rights, things like that.0.99
00:07:37.860And so I would argue if the popular depiction of media involving Black people shows us as lazy, stupid, angry, loud, completely unable to conform to the dominant culture of, like, hardworking mainstream white Americans, that is such an incredibly powerful tool to uphold and reaffirm that, you know, Black folks should not be given full citizenship.1.00
00:07:58.680Black folks should not be given full rights.1.00
00:08:00.700Black folks cannot be integrated into white society, quote unquote.1.00
00:08:04.280And it's almost kind of becomes this thing of like, oh, well, it's I thought that I hate black people. It's for their own good. This attitude where it provides a kind of polite justification for things like segregation, like a black person would be overwhelmed if they had a had a job because look how stupid they are from what I saw in this minstrel show.1.00
00:08:22.720You could almost provide the kind of cover of these pretty grotesque political and social0.99
00:08:31.660It's so interesting to hear that history, like very tempting to think about the way
00:08:37.780the alt-right uses memes with irony and humor to give them that plausible deniability.
00:08:44.400It feels new, but you're saying it's not new at all.
00:08:48.140You know, it's been going on for well over 100 years, maybe longer.
00:08:52.720Oh, that's the thing about white supremacy. Like, it seems new, but it's always a page from a very well-worn playbook just sort of reimagined for today. And I think that's exactly what we're seeing with the proliferation of AI being used to create what I would argue are the 2025 equivalent of menstrual shows today for the digital age.
00:09:15.780So even though minstrel shows in theater died out, I would argue that they are having a comeback today in the digital realm. And just like those minstrel shows of yesteryear were used to affirm political and social ideologies under the guise of it just being entertainment and it not being that deep.
00:09:33.860I think it is no coincidence that we are seeing the rise of digital blackface where non-black creators are using AI to create viral skits depicting racist black stereotypes all over TikTok today.0.61
00:09:47.860How did you come upon this? Because I'm not on TikTok. I haven't seen this. Tell me about these videos, Bridget.0.82
00:09:53.680So I think I've talked about it on the show, but I took kind of a deep break from TikTok after it was temporarily banned and then came back because I just kind of hated that entire thing.
00:10:03.060I hated how the platform put up that banner thanking Trump for, like, bringing back TikTok and his leadership.
00:10:09.060It felt it had big stunt energy to me, and I didn't like that.
00:10:12.920Also, by the way, semi-related, you might have saw in the news that Trump actually just recently pushed back the deadline to enforce a TikTok ban again.
00:10:22.300Now, remember back a few years ago when TikTok was, we were being told, the biggest threat to national security,
00:10:28.320so much so that it had to be banned via emergency legislation that the Supreme Court said was only
00:10:34.740justified because of the supposed severity of the threat. It don't seem like it's that big of a
00:10:38.880threat anymore. Something has changed because the deadline to enforce this ban has been pushed back
00:10:43.560twice and now a third time just last week, which really gives you a sense of how urgent it was.
00:10:48.580Apparently, during Trump's recent talks with the president of China, TikTok didn't even come up.
00:10:53.460So, like, that's how urgent of a threat it actually is.
00:10:57.240It's truly amazing to me how rapidly that went from the biggest issue facing the country to something that people don't even talk about anymore.
00:11:08.900Not to toot my own horn, not to get all Kara Swisher on y'all, but when they first started saying that, I said, this is a stunt.
00:11:16.040And here we are. I feel like that is coming to fruition.
00:11:18.880But in any event, that all left kind of a bad taste in my mouth.
00:11:22.440That aligned with the rise of TikTok shop, which I've talked about on the show before.
00:11:27.900I just basically was like, TikTok, the vibes are not vibing.
00:11:38.200And the first handful of videos I see are these over-the-top AI-generated video skits0.68
00:11:44.760depicting Black women in these very racist, stereotypical ways.
00:11:50.040And it really got me thinking about the ways that I'm seeing Black women and our identity show up more and more in AI-generated content and what it says about our culture, both online and off.
00:12:01.120So the first one of these videos I saw was actually not even that bad.
00:12:06.580I don't actually think this specific video was created to be like a digital minstrel show.
00:12:12.520However, I do want to back up because I think that you could argue that anybody who is using AI to generate content they put on social media is inherently doing something unethical.
00:12:23.060This was the argument that electrical engineer and AI ethicist Azariah Cole Shepard made in our episode that we'll link back to back in 2022 when all of these AI generated kind of futuristic looking selfies were all over Facebook.
00:12:38.000People were like changing their Facebook picture to be these AI generated images.
00:12:41.820She basically argued that anybody who is using AI to make art is inherently stealing from human artists, and there is no ethical way to participate in that.
00:12:51.060An argument that, frankly, I am personally sympathetic to.
00:12:54.320What's funny about that episode, though, going back and listening to it, is that she made this great point.
00:12:58.880this was back in 2022, that people should be very wary about feeding their likeness voluntarily
00:13:05.240into this random AI platform to generate like a cute Facebook picture, because that platform
00:13:11.680is definitely using your image to train their AI. This was back in 2022 when she was warning
00:13:16.800against this. And now here we are in 2025 and people are saying things like, wow, the AI is
00:13:21.980so good. It can generate these hyper-realistic depictions of Black women that I can't even tell
00:13:26.320ai and it's like yeah hon you you gave it your picture of course it can i think it's one of the0.86
00:13:32.040quirks of having done this show for five years because you get to really cover when people are
00:13:37.780warning about something and then five years later cover the inevitable fallout that's like oh the
00:13:42.180thing these people were warning about is happening now it makes me feel like i wish we'd done a
00:13:46.400better job of warning but i guess that's the nature of that episode we made that episode you
00:13:52.120know? We did what we could. So there are all kinds of reasons to inherently not love this specific
00:14:00.260use of AI. Like, even if this person is not trying to use AI to create, you know, racist depictions
00:14:06.920of Black women, which he says he is explicitly not trying to do, and it's pretty clear from his
00:14:11.220work that that is the case, there are all kinds of reasons to not necessarily love this dynamic,
00:14:17.520including what we know about the astronomical amount of energy that AI uses.
00:14:22.320Like, it's hard for me not to feel some type of way about0.99
00:14:25.160wanting to use this much energy to create a stupid skit on TikTok.0.95
00:14:29.780But in any event, the first one of these AI-generated skits0.99
00:14:33.400with Black women video that I saw really take off on TikTok
00:14:35.940depicted a Black woman in a mall when a white, older woman0.95
00:14:39.420comes up to her to confront her about her hair.
00:14:45.320death is seeking you at the bingo table i almost kind of get what the creator of this video is
00:14:53.140going for in this particular instance it's almost kind of an ai depiction of what the french call
00:14:59.840the wit of the the wit of the staircase which is a phrase i've always loved the idea that a black
00:15:04.900woman would have the absolute perfect retort to this rude white woman to put her in her place1.00
00:15:10.980Right. And I can actually see how this specific video that really jumpstarted all these other videos was actually an attempt to affirm things that I think are positive depictions of black womanhood, like us being quick with our words, us being poised, the idea of being able to read somebody and put them in their place with a clever retort.
00:15:29.620Like, hello, if you ever watched Dynasty, which if you're too young, ask your parents because they were definitely watching it.
00:15:36.420Diane Carroll's character as this like classy, wealthy, take no prisoners, Dominique Devereaux, always knew what to say to use her words to put like wealthy white ladies in their place while remaining poised and classy and wealthy.0.90
00:15:52.420Like, I think this is a video that is meant to evoke that aspect of Black womanhood.0.93
00:15:59.580And I think it is meant to make us feel good, positive, be like, yay, this AI Black woman really knew what to say to put this white woman in her place.
00:16:08.240It was created by a Black creator who said that he is interested in seeing more representation of Black identity in AI.
00:16:16.800I watched a little bit of a talk that he did at a conference about how to make money from AI,
00:16:20.960a point I want to come back to in a moment, but here's what he had to say.
00:16:24.000I remember when they were creating photos in artificial intelligence and they asked the
00:16:29.780artificial intelligence to create them four pictures of a beautiful woman. All four of those
00:16:36.500pictures were not African-American women. Let's say it like that. We're not. So I felt like I0.98
00:16:43.980needed to change that. So I decided to work with a lot of AI organizations and companies to help
00:16:49.940them create melanated people, to create hair textures, to make sure that they don't make our
00:16:58.840women look too aggressive, to put light on body positivity. All women have different shapes. All1.00
00:17:06.400women hair is going to be different. It's okay to have flaws. These are the things that I fight for1.00
00:17:12.560on a back end. So obviously, that sounds nice. And I am aligned with his overall point about
00:17:20.780more inclusion needed in any and all tech spaces. I'm broadly aligned with what he's saying.
00:17:27.980But personally, I am still uncertain. Like when I think about the kind of representation that I
00:17:35.100want in AI, I want more representation in terms of who is making decisions about how AI is made,
00:17:41.620how it is impacting people, especially marginalized people, I don't necessarily need or even want this
00:17:47.560to be translated into us being the ones who are depicted and thus being sort of consumed in AI
00:17:54.480content, because I feel that that really mirrors the exact same way that we're treated in media
00:17:59.400now, which I don't think is equal. We are historically the thing that is being consumed
00:18:04.080by others, while also historically not being in charge of the production or getting an equal share
00:18:09.700of the revenue of that thing. So just like in sports, film, music, etc. And I am not super
00:18:14.720interested in recreating that same dynamic using AI. So I want to be clear that I am talking about
00:18:21.100a Black person who makes content depicting other Black people using AI. Obviously, that does not0.94
00:18:27.960necessarily mean that this one creator is immune to harmful depictions of Black women. Let's not1.00
00:18:33.260forget, podcasts like Fit and Fresh are run by Black men, and they push some of the most harmful0.99
00:18:37.900lies about Black women that I've ever heard. But to be clear, I do not think this specific AI0.83
00:18:43.280creator is trying to use AI to depict Black women in a negative or stereotypical light to make fun
00:18:49.540of us. And again, to be clear, it's pretty clear from his work that that is not what he's trying
00:18:53.340to do. He's trying to do the opposite. But because that AI video got almost 10 million views and his
00:18:59.760platform on TikTok, the AI clapback king is growing because of that virality. Of course,
00:19:05.480This sparked several copycats who are now taking this kind of content to the extreme in ways that are like super, obviously, explicitly racist.
00:20:30.140I'm Eli Rallo, and every week we're connecting the dots between books, the internet, and the conversations everyone can't stop having.
00:20:37.260I'm going to have to look up this story. I'm obsessed. I'm obsessed.
00:20:40.740From best-selling authors and your favorite book talk creators to the latest pop culture moments, nothing is off the table.
00:20:46.780It's like if you can hide some real messages inside compelling characters, then that is a Trojan horse.
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00:21:03.860Listen to Pro Society on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
00:22:17.940so we're talking about these viral racist AIs featuring Black women that are all over TikTok
00:22:26.200and how the first iteration of one of these viral videos I actually don't think was meant to be
00:22:32.280racist but that other creators really bullied by the success of that initial viral video
00:22:38.440really took that format and ran with it went extreme with it and were absolutely trying to
00:22:45.620be racist now this is a tried and true thing that we have seen about the way that ai content takes
00:22:50.880off online like mike do you remember seeing shrimp jesus on facebook yeah i do that felt like a good
00:22:57.380use of ai better than this for sure so shrimp jesus was this ai slot that was all over facebook
00:23:04.980for a while uh and you know with ai people pump out all kinds of weird stuff something hits and
00:23:12.720then they just pump out more and more and more exaggerated versions of that first iteration of
00:23:17.460the thing that hit because they found success and they just want to like see if they can duplicate
00:23:20.920that over and over and over again so at first it's just an ai image of jesus christ riding a giant
00:23:27.280shrimp but at the end it's like jesus and he's entirely made out of shrimp and he has like
00:23:32.560lobster legs and crawdad arms and like little shrimpy crustacean disciples and stuff all around
00:23:37.620him like it's just like a more and more exaggerated version of that first thing that initially
00:23:42.520hit with a little bit of virality on social media and i feel that's like what ai is really good at
00:23:50.100just taking something and making it more and more extreme and absurd and it was pretty funny but it
00:23:56.320also felt kind of like harmless you know like jesus and shrimp were not actually being harmed
00:24:02.580in that series of videos well that's the thing like it's one thing when it's something that's
00:24:07.640nonsensical or silly, like a picture of Jesus made out of shrimp, it is another when we are
00:24:12.720talking about potentially harmful depictions of historically marginalized people that affirm
00:24:17.960existing political or social ideologies or stereotypes. So even though the originator
00:24:25.620of these kinds of videos is Black, I know for a fact that a lot of the people who are making them0.61
00:24:31.660now who are kind of taking, doing that sort of extreme version are not black. And I would call0.98
00:24:38.160that digital blackface where non-black people are using online tools like AI to depict black identity0.71
00:24:46.180in these highly racist, highly exaggerated, highly stereotypical ways that can be really harmful and
00:24:53.700also are used to reaffirm existing political or social ideologies or worldviews. Like I am super
00:25:00.780comfortable saying these videos are using this format to intentionally depict Black women and
00:25:06.100Black people in ways that are racist. It is not an accident. So let's watch a few more to get a sense
00:25:13.000of what I'm talking about. So this video is a take on the first iteration of that video that
00:25:20.500I talked about earlier. Look at me slam my curly wave blonde wig. That's not your natural color,
00:25:26.320bitch. The only color you should be worried about is which color palette they finna use on you at1.00
00:25:29.180the morgue home so it's the same setup a black woman walk an ai generated black woman being like0.76
00:25:35.640oh i love this hair some pretty egregious aave going on in this in this video but then a white0.99
00:25:41.860woman comes up to her says like that's not your natural hair color it ends in a threat of violence1.00
00:25:46.840and the black woman actually lunges at the white lady who is talking shit about her hair and so0.99
00:25:53.820Again, you can see how in the first iteration of that video, the woman is just able to like check the white lady who's talking shit about her hair with like a cutting phrase and go on about her day.0.99
00:26:06.660In this one, but not only is the woman more exaggerated, her response is like a threat of violence and a violent attack.0.97
00:26:14.540It's we've we've we've we've really ratcheted up the ratchet, so to speak.
00:26:19.240Yeah, and the thing that got ratcheted down
00:28:06.400Some of y'all think it's hard doing what I do.
00:28:09.780Some of y'all are also lazy, so that could be why.
00:28:14.400Masa got us working extra hard today, but that's fine with me as long as I'm getting dinner tonight.
00:28:19.860So that's obviously meant to show this idea that like slavery wasn't that bad and that enslaved people were actually happy to be enslaved,
00:28:27.880which is a very common trope that we saw in minstrel shows that was used to really try to convince people who might otherwise be abolitionists that slavery was actually good for black people.
00:28:39.220It gave them food. It gave them stability. It gave them housing.
00:28:43.200You know, they didn't really mind it. They were always like smiling and dancing and happy.
00:28:48.220And so it is very funny to me how A.I. is being used to say the literal exact same thing folks were saying to affirm that slavery wasn't that bad 200 years ago.
00:29:00.100And again, there was no joke there at all. Like it wasn't even trying to be funny.
00:29:05.260it was just serving that purpose exactly and so when people say oh it's not that deep it's just
00:29:13.820a joke again like i would love to i'm like missing the joke i'm not see i'm not seeing the joke
00:29:20.740now there was no joke some of these slave talk videos also depict enslaved people doing like
00:29:26.920very explicitly racist stereotypical stuff like eating watermelon and drinking grape kool-aid
00:29:32.460like over-the-top racist imagery. There's also AI videos of Black women eating lots and lots of0.56
00:29:38.960fried chicken as part of like mukbangs, those videos where you eat a lot of food, and even0.85
00:29:43.920AI-generated criminals vlogging violent crime sprees. So as bad as those are, I will say that
00:29:52.360not all of these AI-generated videos on TikTok are over-the-top explicitly racist skits. Some
00:29:59.300are just really stupid like ai versions of tyler perry morality plays i saw one where it was a1.00
00:30:08.160black mom telling her black daughter to wash the dishes and the black daughter was like no i don't1.00
00:30:12.780want to wash the dishes and it ends with her mom being like her mom her mom's funeral essentially0.88
00:30:20.300so it's a lot of like very simple morality play stories if i'm being honest like i hate to say0.94
00:30:28.380this but i'm sorry it's just true it's the kind of content that i know absolutely fucking hits
00:30:36.180with some people in my family like when i look at some of my aunties facebook feeds it's covered
00:30:42.360with this kind of ai generated morality play skits and they love it they don't care that it's ai they
00:30:50.280don't care that it's not real they just like to see their worldviews reaffirmed in these skits
00:30:57.580And again, I'm not talking about explicitly racist skits. Just if the worldview could be, kids don't have any respect today. You know, if that's a worldview you hold, if you're watching an AI generated garbage skit that reaffirms that, you're going to like it.
00:31:13.260And one of the reasons why I am not super surprised by how popular this kind of content has gotten is because of the absolute chokehold that skit culture on social media had even before the rise of the AI skit that we're seeing now.
00:31:28.780It is something I have been screaming about for a really long time, how people were making money off of creating skits on TikTok and Facebook that depicted things that never happened.
00:31:37.920And I'm not talking about obviously fictionalized skits like you might see on Saturday Night Live or Portlandia.
00:31:43.760I mean skits that you see on social media that are intentionally blurring the line between fiction and reality to try to get viewers to think they are watching footage that somebody captured on their cell phone of something that really happened, even though they're not, even though these are actors in a skit that's been set up.
00:32:00.660You've probably seen a million of these on social media and maybe not thought too much about it.
00:32:06.620Yeah, I have definitely seen these where it'll be like some kind of fake confrontation where somebody gets their comeuppance or has a really good rhetoric or something.
00:32:18.300Yeah, I don't know how common they are or if my phone just thinks that that's content I like.
00:32:22.340I always feel a little like guilty and dirty when I like that sort of like somebody got a comeuppance kind of skit.
00:32:29.420Like, I guess sort of similar to those morality plays that you were talking about.
00:32:42.240I am obsessed with Judge Judy because I love, I find the formula of someone getting, you
00:32:47.680know, getting comeuppance to be satisfying to watch over and over and over again.
00:32:53.000You know, I don't love the idea of people not being able to tell a real situation from
00:32:57.060a fake situation and getting legitimately worked up over a fictional scenario or whatever.0.94
00:33:02.220But I think there is a line where these skits go from really stupid entertainment that isn't hurting anybody to legit harmful.0.93
00:33:08.920And that line is when they are used to affirm a harmful existing worldview that actually ends up endangering marginalized people.0.86
00:33:16.580For instance, there was a very common skit format on TikTok for a while, but I've seen a lot less of it lately, go figure, where it was attacking trans people or like the idea of transness or queerness in classrooms.
00:33:31.880So these videos would purport to show situations that would be described as like mom has had enough of trans teacher pushing her agenda on her kid.
00:33:42.240And then it would show a woman coming in and yelling at a teacher who we are who we are as the audience is to assume is trans.
00:33:48.720But then you would see another video where you'd see that same woman that we were just told is an angry mom.
00:33:55.700But this time she's a trans parent who is yelling at a teacher for telling her kid the truth that there are only two genders or something like like these incredibly staged skits in staged classrooms that are meant to affirm sort of an existing attitude around trans folks.
00:34:14.500And again, you can't act like this kind of content is popping off in a vacuum
00:34:17.900because it is actually happening against the backdrop of trans and queer folks
00:34:21.960being threatened, targeted, criminalized, and so on.0.98
00:34:25.040So of course, skit after skit after skit that makes them look threatening or foolish0.84
00:34:29.340is going to be used to provide justification for the kinds of anti-trans bigotry0.79
00:34:33.320that we see today only masked as entertainment.
00:34:36.620So again, there isn't necessarily anything inherently wrong with this kind of content,
00:34:40.780But the issue is that people either can't tell that they're skits or maybe worse, don't even really care that they're skits.
00:34:47.180They are just thinking this is mindless entertainment on their phone and that the casual viewer is probably not stopping to think about the impact this kind of content has, especially if it is reaffirming a worldview that they already might hold.
00:34:59.100That's something we've talked about a lot on this show is like one of the most dangerous aspects of AI is the way it's facilitating a further breakdown of people's ability to distinguish what's real from what isn't.
00:35:14.700I feel like that comes up again and again when we're talking about the risks and harms that are currently existing on the Internet and essentially getting worse now that AI is getting so much better, so much cheaper and more accessible.
00:35:29.940Exactly. And so with AI, you can really create this kind of content at scale. And if you already think that Black women are loud, ghetto, violent, et cetera, et cetera, it sort of does not matter that these skits are obviously not real because they still reinforce that belief, whether they are real or not.
00:37:24.360They are abducted, stalked, controlled, and nearly silenced.
00:37:28.820But these aren't stories about what's taken from them.
00:37:32.280They're stories about what it takes to make it out alive.
00:37:35.900Listen to The Survivor Files with Elizabeth Smart on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
00:37:44.340If your bookshelf and your For You page are equally important to your personality, welcome home.
00:37:50.280This is Prose Society, the weekly podcast that's part book club, part group chat for thought daughters, pop culture obsessives, and anyone who thinks Pride and Prejudice and Love Island deserve the same level of discourse.
00:38:02.760I'm Eli Rallo, and every week we're connecting the dots between books, the internet, and the conversations everyone can't stop having.
00:38:09.860I'm going to have to look up this story.
00:38:13.000From best-selling authors and your favorite book talk creators to the latest pop culture moments, nothing is off the table.
00:38:19.400It's like if you can hide some real messages inside compelling characters, then that is a Trojan horse.
00:38:27.300Whether 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.
00:38:36.480Listen to Pro Society on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
00:39:01.480Why are they, all caps, so aggressive?
00:39:04.920And you know, as a Black person on the internet, I know exactly who they is in that comment.0.99
00:39:09.780And, like, even though this video was AI that does not depict any real human, Black or otherwise, it still reaffirmed the idea that Black women are like this.0.87
00:39:21.380And that commenter's comment just further reaffirms that to anybody reading that comment.0.99
00:39:25.900Now, I also, I mean, not to get too down the rabbit hole more than I already am because, you know, I can talk about this forever.
00:39:33.260Then I was thinking, like, is it possible that that comment is a bot?
00:39:38.220like dead internet theory is this bots making bot content for bot commentators is it just like
00:39:45.700bots the whole way down it does make one crazy but also i don't think they're crazy for thinking
00:39:52.380that i there's a lot of bots yeah it's but maybe it doesn't even matter like if you know if some
00:39:59.240human reads that comment it still has an impression on them regardless of who wrote that comment what
00:40:06.940their intention was it gets pretty circular in ways that quickly become disorienting this reminds
00:40:14.820me this is on a side but on instagram i made a video about a like not trusting ai content and
00:40:22.740somebody left me a comment that was like i mean aren't pretty rich for you to say aren't you ai
00:40:27.340and i thought and literally i'm not even kidding for a minute i was like am i
00:40:33.740you would be the last to know like like that's that's what i'm saying like i was sort of like
00:40:40.780i thought i had a childhood and parents and like i thought i like had gotten blood drawn at the
00:40:45.660doctor but then i was like if you were ai you probably wouldn't know you were ai so that that
00:40:50.580comment was like am i ai and then i have to say i was weirdly sort of flattered that she thought i
00:40:57.040was ai that this is probably revealing all kinds of messed up ways about the way i think but i was
00:41:02.280like oh if i'm ai that means like my skin must be looking good and my hair must be looking good and
00:41:06.480i must be sounding you know well spoken or something i'm not making all kinds of ticks
00:41:11.360and likes and beeps and bloops like she must i must be really like on my game if she thinks i'm
00:41:16.660ai i don't know bridget i don't think aspiring to be ai is the right direction here i feel there
00:41:23.660might be some negative consequences of that i'm not saying i'm aspiring to be ai i just thought
00:41:29.560that thinking getting confused that i am ai because like ai doesn't get zits you know ai
00:41:36.700doesn't have like bad skin i was like oh this must be like i like i don't know i was i was
00:41:40.280weirdly flattered and it's probably not worth unpacking why that is let's just move on we
00:41:44.200need to move on this is uh unsettling it's just what an ai would say i feel like this every time
00:41:52.860i have to do a captcha i'm so bad at captchas oh you're bad at captchas to the point that i think
00:41:58.760that you are a robot it makes me wonder and the instructions often are like confirm your humanity
00:42:04.580and then i fail the test it's like deeply threatening and upsetting oh my god so i mean
00:42:11.920talk about like bots talking to bots i i'm ai i'm making a podcast with my bot producer
00:42:16.600like it it's all bots that the whole way down and it's all for that one human listener out there
00:42:23.320we know who you are this is all for you so even if these are bots you know responding to this
00:42:33.800commentary and it's all just bots the whole way down and you know there's no human black women
00:42:38.460being depicted in these ai generated viral videos that does not mean that they aren't saying
00:42:45.220something about our culture and just like that rise in popularity in minstrel shows was against
00:42:51.260the backdrop of a very real, very dark, difficult political and social climate for Black folks in
00:42:57.540the United States, coinciding with the rise of Jim Crow after the end of Reconstruction,0.90
00:43:02.400I would argue that these racist AI skits are taking off in popularity at a time when Black
00:43:08.560people's contributions to history are being literally erased at the federal level. Black
00:43:13.860women, Black folks, folks of color, we are all being attacked and threatened in new and increasing0.79
00:43:20.320ways every day. You know, there was this really meaty piece in ProPublica that I'll link in the
00:43:25.380show notes just because it's like a fascinating piece of journalism. And I love ProPublica
00:43:29.140about how Trump and Musk's Doge and all their pundits attacks on so-called DEI
00:43:35.320was really an attack on Black women with stable federal government jobs. And these attacks
00:43:41.200targeted and are still targeting the government careers of highly educated civil servants,
00:43:46.460Even though many of these people, their jobs didn't have anything to do with DEI, they were not connected or involved with DEI in any capacity, their careers were derailed under this false premise that they were diversity hires, despite having nothing to do with DEI, and instead have everything to do with just being Black women and becoming an easy target for an administration hostile to marginalized people, right?0.95
00:44:11.420And so if all of that is happening at the same time where we have this rise of this new form of digital media that uses AI to reaffirm hurtful, harmful stereotypes about black women like me, about how we're not able to behave ourselves in polite society, how we can't really figure out a way to solve conflicts without resorting to violence, how we really are like loud and obnoxious and stupid and aggressive and all of these things.
00:44:36.440When you hear about real-life Black women getting pushed out of their stable employment, folks might think, well, maybe it's for the best because they're not suited for that work anyway, just like we saw with the minstrel shows of yesteryear.
00:44:49.700I do think that this kind of content is not a coincidence, but this kind of content is rising in popularity against the backdrop of all of these other social and political attacks on Black women.0.58
00:45:00.140It's simply using AI to reaffirm this worldview that real-life human Black women are not self-actualized human beings,
00:45:08.320where it's a collection of tropes and stereotypes and caricatures who really don't have a place in, like, mainstream modern society.
00:45:16.140When you actually sit down and think about it, it's incredibly harmful,
00:45:19.780and I think it contributes to an incredibly hostile environment for Black women, both online and off.
00:45:25.500It feels like white supremacy has been ascended over the past few years, you know, in pretty scary ways. And AI is just being used to reinforce that. And there was a time when social media platforms were more aggressive than they are today, it seems, in fighting this kind of stuff.
00:45:48.220And we know that I think all of the platforms have really loosened or in some cases eliminated their moderation around this stuff.
00:45:57.860TikTok also in a weird, changing situation right now.
00:46:03.140But with these videos being so harmful, aren't they against TikTok's community guidelines?
00:46:13.020So these kinds of videos are not technically against TikTok's moderation policies because they do disclose that they're AI.
00:46:20.320However, TikTok's community guidelines do say that videos that traffic in stereotypes about protective classes are not eligible to be on people's 4U page recommendations.
00:46:31.220However, since these videos are all over my 4U page, TikTok is clearly not moderating these videos in that way.
00:46:38.220They could, but they're definitely not.
00:46:43.020I mean, I would argue that having a racist Bigfoot skit that depicts Bigfoot as a Black woman is probably not making your platform any better.
00:46:53.560You don't have to, like, say people can't make videos like that.
00:46:58.360I personally don't think people should make videos like that.
00:47:00.900But TikTok can allow people to make those videos, but they don't have to amplify them by putting them on people's For You pages, by allowing people to monetize them.
00:47:09.580like there are all kinds of ways that they can illustrate that this is not something that we
00:47:13.360think makes our platform a better space that is not that is not preventing people from making
00:47:18.880these kinds of videos if that's how they choose to spend their time absolutely because we're
00:47:23.580talking about the for you page the platforms are not neutral in deciding what videos get boosted
00:47:31.500and don't get boosted right like every single platform is making active decisions about what
00:47:37.640types of videos take off and don't. And so if you're seeing that Bigfoot video, it's because
00:47:44.120they are actively deciding to allow it to be boosted. And not only that, you know, as we
00:47:51.240talked about with the Jesus shrimp metaphor, when one of these videos gets 5 million views,
00:47:57.0806 million views, it only encourages other people to make similar videos. So by allowing it to get
00:48:03.880rack up lots of views on people's FYP pages,
00:48:06.800you are only ensuring that more people
00:50:51.820When I was 14 years old, I was kidnapped and held captive for nine months.
00:50:57.060I survived, and I've spent my life exploring how other people survive what should have destroyed them.
00:51:04.060I'm Elizabeth Smart, and these are the Survivor Files.
00:51:07.760I just remember this low, taunting voice next to my ear saying, shut up, don't say anything.
00:51:15.960Every week, I'm with survivors who live through the unthinkable.
00:51:20.240I knew if he woke up, without a doubt, he was going to hurt me.
00:51:24.840I started feeling that there was someone at the end of my bed, and I just started screaming.
00:51:32.460They are abducted, stalked, controlled, and nearly silenced.
00:51:36.360But these aren't stories about what's taken from them.
00:51:39.800They're stories about what it takes to make it out alive.
00:51:43.440Listen to The Survivor Files with Elizabeth Smart on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
00:51:51.220If your bookshelf and your For You page are equally important to your personality, welcome home.
00:51:58.100This is Prose Society, the weekly podcast that's part book club, part group chat for thought daughters, pop culture obsessives, and anyone who thinks Pride and Prejudice and Love Island deserve the same level of discourse.
00:52:10.280I'm Eli Rallo, and every week we're connecting the dots between books, the internet, and the conversations everyone can't stop having.
00:52:17.400I'm going to have to look up this story.
00:52:20.560From best-selling authors and your favorite book talk creators to the latest pop culture moments, nothing is off the table.
00:52:27.320It's like if you can hide some real messages inside compelling characters, then that is a Trojan horse.
00:52:34.460Whether 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.
00:52:44.020Listen to Pro Society on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
00:53:00.280Google's VO3 has really taken off with creators online trying to use this platform to create everything from AI skits to AI muckbangers to AI influencers.
00:53:10.960I am in a few spaces online for like women in AI, and so many of them are asking for help learning about how to create AI influencers that they hope they can monetize via brand deals or even AI OnlyFans models to do like explicit sexual content.
00:53:31.360Side note, OnlyFans doesn't actually allow AI content unless it's from a registered human creator in sort of that person's likeness.
00:53:39.960So you couldn't just theoretically make an AI OnlyFans model and then start raking in money on OnlyFans.
00:53:46.780However, other similar platforms do have different rules around that.
00:53:50.520But in a lot of these spaces designed for women and other people to learn about AI, so much of it is like, how can I create an AI avatar or influencer to make money?
00:54:03.040Like, people are treating this like a business enterprise.
00:54:06.540Makes sense. People would want to monetize this.
00:54:09.960And it seems like a good way to get rich quick if you could spin up a hundred or a thousand different influencers, all of them out there racking up followings and selling products.
00:54:20.120But are people actually making money from doing that?
00:54:25.040So there are definitely big name AI influencers who have been around for a long time, like the very first AI generated influencer, Little Michaela, who came out in 2016, who we previously talked about on the show.
00:54:37.600I am certain that she makes tons of money for the people who created her, which is a duo.
00:54:44.300She has done brand deals for huge brands like Chanel.0.97
00:54:48.360She's done like collabs with like human celebrities.0.99
01:00:44.240And basically he said that YouTube is doubling down on this as the big bet for the future of creators on the platform.
01:00:54.060And they're basically, for their shorts, for YouTube shorts, they are going to be partnering with Google's VO3 AI generator.
01:01:01.620So it's going to be like a one-stop shop for easily creating this kind of AI-generated video content.
01:01:08.820And so you're absolutely right that tech leaders are really betting on this being the future of the creator economy.
01:01:18.560Yeah, the creator economy without creators.0.86
01:01:20.980Well, so, you know, that black creator who made the first big viral Karen video that we were talking about, the one that I was like, oh, it's not so bad.
01:01:28.540He actually thinks that more people need to be using AI to make depictions of black women and black people that are not rooted in stereotypes.
01:01:36.800He actually created a kind of AI call to action, wherein these Black AI avatars all came together to demand better representation of Black AI avatars.
01:02:00.220But making racist slaves videos or having us Black women prompts to fight white old ladies is just a bit too much.0.98
01:02:05.880I'm going to enforce others to make more prompts like me.0.99
01:02:09.360Stop sitting around and get into AI and make more prompts like us and to help show Black beauty.0.99
01:02:15.500We can use AI to make Black women prompts, just to show beauty and Black women doing positive things.0.50
01:02:21.740Thankful for being created from a prompt because AI just don't like to show many melanated women
01:02:25.960and feel like AI still holds some type of oppression on Black culture.
01:02:30.060See, people use AI to make us look bad, but we should look good.
01:02:35.180Even talking about this kind of makes me feel like I'm stoned.
01:02:41.600Like, I just don't know how I feel about this.
01:02:44.360And I guess I do want a future where we can expect thoughtful AI depictions of ourselves that are not rooted in harmful racist stereotypes.
01:02:54.940So I applaud this creator for being interested and invested in the way that Black folks are depicted using AI.0.77
01:03:01.140However, I also want a future where we can expect better for ourselves than just a more thoughtful, nuanced depiction of ourselves in this AI that we know is displacing and threatening actual Black folks in places like Tennessee because they use so much energy.0.99
01:03:18.180I don't know that this is the kind of representation that I actually want when it comes to AI.0.74
01:03:26.700I'm glad he is starting the conversation, but something about this just doesn't feel like liberation to me.
01:03:35.880So it seems like Google's new tool is allowing this to happen.
01:03:40.380Do you see them doing anything to try to rein this in?
01:03:43.440So this was a question that was posed by the TikTok creator Robert Tolpe, whose video really helped me in like working through and thinking through all of this.
01:03:52.080He said that he didn't really see Google doing anything about this because there is nothing that might impact Google's bottom line financially, nor provide them any kind of meaningful bad press.
01:04:03.360Even though there are certainly ways that Google could keep their platform from being used to create this kind of imagery.
01:04:09.580Maybe not entirely, but there are some guardrails they could do.
01:04:12.280I get that it might not be super simple. Like I remember when Dali first came out, the guardrails were really over the top to the point where it was difficult to get it to generate any images of black folks at all. So clearly that's not the right solution. But facilitating infinite copycat videos where each copy gets slightly more racist and extreme than the one before it is not a solution either. It's like the opposite of a solution.
01:04:34.020And as a company who is making this kind of technology, Google really does have the responsibility to make sure that it's not being used to, like, increasingly harm us.
01:04:42.200And I guess that is one of the reasons I wanted to make this episode.
01:04:45.300I think that the leaders at Google know this kind of thing is like being used to harm marginalized people.1.00
01:04:52.600But it's not like black women really have a loud voice when it comes to technology.1.00
01:04:56.500So what kind of bad press could it really get them, right?1.00
01:04:59.980I think that is the calculation being made. But I think that they should be legitimately embarrassed that this kind of technology that they are making and banking on being the linchpin of the future of our global economy is being used to create this kind of garbage right now.
01:05:15.120Like, why are we not associating Google with these racist AI Black Bigfoot videos that Google is being used to create?0.87
01:05:24.140Like, it is their creation, right?0.95
01:05:25.660Like, why are we not associating these two things?
01:05:29.840Like, if I had a direct line to Sundar Pichai, the head of Google, I would show him these videos and I would ask him if this is what he has in mind for the use of this tool.0.96
01:05:40.020And does he think that creating AI, Bigfoot, as these racist caricatures of Black women like me, is making the internet a better place for Black women like me, who are human and actually have to show up on the internet every goddamn day?0.94
01:05:54.820Like, that is the question I would ask him.0.86
01:05:56.560Do you think that your platform is being used to create a better internet for me?
01:06:01.480If anybody knows him, my DMs are open.
01:06:03.440And it really does remind me of minstrel shows, because when minstrel shows were going on, it wasn't just the theater itself, right, that was a big part of it, but it was also an entire manufacturing enterprise where people made very good money selling racist blackface figurines as novelties.
01:06:25.740The New York Times spoke to David Pilgrim, the founder of the Jim Crow Museum of Racist Memorabilia at Ferris State University in Michigan, who said they were everyday objects which portrayed black people as ugly, different and fun to laugh at.
01:06:38.460They were, in a word, propaganda. And that is exactly what I think these AI generated racist videos are.
01:06:46.720people love to talk about racism like they're talking about fucking just a vibe in the air0.94
01:06:51.880right as opposed to a system that specific people are personally perpetuating because they are0.89
01:06:58.080making money from it and i simply do not see how google letting creators make this kind of content
01:07:04.060is any different and we should be talking about it exactly like that
01:07:07.140got a story about an interesting thing in tech or just want to say hi
01:07:14.880you can reach us at hello at tangody.com you can also find transcripts for today's episode
01:07:19.440at tangody.com there are no girls on the internet was created by me bridget todd it's a production
01:07:24.300of iheart radio and unbossed creative jonathan strickland is our executive producer tari harrison
01:07:29.080is our producer and sound engineer michael amato is our contributing producer i'm your host bridget
01:07:34.000todd if you want to help us grow rate and review us on apple podcasts for more podcasts from iheart
01:07:39.960radio check out the iheart radio app apple podcast or wherever you get your podcasts
01:07:44.880if your bookshelf and your for you page are equally important to your personality
01:08:00.440welcome home pro society is a weekly podcast that's part book club part group chat for anyone
01:08:06.680who thinks pride and prejudice and love island deserve the same level of discourse each week
01:08:11.200We're connecting the dots between books, the internet, and pop culture
01:08:14.240with your favorite writers, book talk creators, and plenty of overthought opinions.