https://arstechnica.com/ai/2023/12/ai-created-virtual-influencers-are-stealing-business-from-humans/
Brands are turning to hyper-realistic, AI-generated influencers for promotions.
AI-created “virtual influencers” are stealing business from humans::Brands are turning to hyper-realistic, AI-generated influencers for promotions.
And? Go ahead and automate my job. I will find something else to do with my life. Good luck btw my work is a bit more complicated than pretending to be famous and harassing restaurants for free food until I am 30 fat or both.
they are experimentally automating lawyers and doctors already, complexity is not the determining factor here.
what is that something else in life you are going to do when they start pitching us to compete against machines? i can bet my ass on the fact they will use it to devalue human labour as much as possible, and most people cant afford to survive as is.
The "they" are the wealthy executives and investors doing whatever they can to optimize every single penny into their pockets
In a way it is "the humanity doing it to themselves", but they sure aren't asking the average worker how they feel about it, or letting them have any easier time because of it. If enough work is automated, they'd rather fire people and have one person work for two while the second person starves.
in this specific case "they" are tech corporations, tech ceos and their respective shareholders which might include a part of the global burgeoise.
i think this tech would be used much differently if the rest of the knowledgeable people in humanity had a say/vote on it, besides financial interest.
Cool. So it's been 8 hours. How far have "they" progressed? Do I still have to go to work on Tuesday?
Sorry the influencer you follow can't get free stuff anymore.
You are naive to think stuff like this will change overnight. And you might be if you think you are getting singled out and spared.
I don't follow influencers nor do I have any traditional social media.
It's a well-known fact that most people think that all jobs can be automated except their own. Well, I'm distorting it a bit to extremes.
As for me, I know my job can be automated. Actually, I'm automating it a bit to make fewer mistakes and give fewer fucks. And I know that eventually there may not be a need for me if I don't change levels.
Fields and professions are persistent, particular roles humans perform in them are not.
Mixed up comments probably.
Anyway, to you my question is - why do you think such a migration would work? You are older than when you entered your current profession. And it's a competitive system, another people would have more experience than you.
That isn't your concern really, it is mine. Now how is it going with it? Am I going to work on Tuesday?
Or they're just not good enough and there are prettier ones out there? God forbis Rachel's only fans isn't top because maybe she's not that good at showing her pussy? Like anything in life, competition is a bitch.
Liking somebody for looks and such behavior only is not worse or better than disliking somebody for looks and such behavior only.
If that meant that you don't get my comment, then:
Gloating is bad.
It's not a bad thing that someone could live fancy without killing people or stealing or embezzling funds in some administrative position, or something of the listed indirectly.
Various shitcoin schemes go here too.
Coz influencers can be people lucking into it, with AI influencers it's mostly going to be brands cutting out the middlemen and making more money and reducing any chance of people receiving consequences of their actions as they can just delete that AI influencer and create a new one, whereas any human influencer will suffer the consequences even if very little for their actions
What makes you think they can't (and don't) just fire a human influencer and hire a new one whenever they feel like it now?
Whoah there: Who says AI influencers aren't the result of individual's honest work? You don't need an entire data center of computers to make your own AI influencer!
Don't assume there's a corporation behind every AI persona. It could just be one guy with a lot of VRAM getting creative with prompts in his parent's basement.
Well they are products of the tech industry, so they are inherently not honest or ethical.
Ah yes. Like that damn internet and those cursed devices people use to access it. Anyone using those is inherently not honest or ethical.
The internet is the worst mistake in human history. I’m surprised you’d use that as your example.
Right cuz blaming lobbyists and ad campaigns… that’s totally worked out for tobacco, guns, pharma and vehicle companies looking to shirk any accountability.
How about none at all? But you're probably right that real ones are better than ai. Although ai might be more ethical than some
First they came for the influencers, and I did not speak out, because I'm not an influencer..
Give them some talent and they're essentially movie actors. It's just another form of entertainment and as little as I care about influencers this won't stop with them. Anyone that appears on camera is fair game to be replaced.
There are some things I won't be disappointed to see replaced by automation. Transitions are not well managed in this regard (retraining is expensive after all), but many jobs I feel should be automated because they suck. Not really sure where influencers fall on this scale... Can't imagine it's great for your mental health.
I prefer to think of it as leveling the playing field. You don’t have to be a 20 year old woman with the right face and body ratios to be an instagram model anymore. Anyone can! Seems like true equality to me.
You just need to be a geek who can afford some 4090 and the software which produce the pretty lady.
You also need an eye for the right aesthetics and some marketing savvy, there's lots of pretty girls who still don't meet the cut for "influencer". Granted, being pretty and having marketing savvy is a really good recipe for success, but it still makes no guarantees.
And thus social media has reached its apex.
After a decade plus of bombarding people with a mix of whatever they desire most and whatever causes them to become emotionally invested to the point of exhaustion, we see the pinnacle innovation of social media:
A literally completely fake person selling overpriced fashion I guarantee was made in a sweatshop, that nearly no one viewing 'her' can afford or look good in, who receives many thirsty comments praising her as if 'she' will be their friend or something, who in the process of doing all this also puts out of business actual human models who are simply fake in every sense of the word that is not literal.
It is basically the most perfectly capitalist thing I can imagine. Everyone loses except the capital owners.
I mean sure, maybe it will get some people whose entire personality is "I am pretty, worship me!" to think about doing something actually useful or learning and developing a real personality.
But... we are fairly far into the predicted cyberpunk dystopia now. No its not exactly as predicted, but shockingly close in many ways.
The average consumer of content cannot tell a bot or a fake person such as Aitana here from a real one, and there will just be another after news of Aitana in particular gets around.
At this point I would say that most humans have basically failed a reverse Turing Test.
Yeah, we really are steamrolling right into a cyberpunk dystopia, aren't we? Well, if we can even include the world "punk" there. It might as well just be cyber-capitalism in the end.
I disagree with the word "capitalist", but in emotion and general sense you nailed it.
Just a bit sad we're as a planet navigating Lem's "The Megabit Bomb" and of course "Summa Technologiae" so slowly.
I mean sure, maybe it will get some people whose entire personality is “I am pretty, worship me!” to think about doing something actually useful or learning and developing a real personality.
You'd be surprised.
Wasn't there a social media website that did a massive bot purge a while ago and most influencers found out that like 90+% of their audiences were actually bots anyway? sounds like this is just a logical conclusion and the rest of us can get on with our lives while bots entertain bots.
Are there any that are real in the sense that they contribute something of value to society?
Even doctors are liable to be replaced by AI. I don't know what counts as "something of value to society" to you, and frankly that's the sort of argument that is never worth having. But generally speaking, it doesn't get much more valuable for society than doctors.
If an AI can outperform a human doctor, isn’t that a good thing? We should always strive to improve survival for patients - it’s not about doctors jobs but patient survival and long term health outcomes.
I would love for doctors to become AI if the AI improves our growing health inequities and inequalities.
Part of the issue is that this rush to transition to AI is not done to increase quality of work, but to sav time and costs. If the point was to improve the treatment, keeping a human doctor plus AI might result in better outcomes. But AI or no AI, a for-profit medical system won't elliminate health inequalities.
It's also worth keeping in mind not all forms of work are actually enhanced by AI participation. Journalists aren't aided by language models that regularly hallucinate false informations.
Being a doctor would be a real job, but the only jobs I've seen actually getting replaced are things like clickbait content farms, scams, marketing, exploitive gambling-centric video games, and other such garbage. Unlike being a doctor it's never been hard to shit that stuff out into the world. And since these neural networks aren't actually that good, I'll believe they can replace doctors when I see it.
I've seen some pretty interesting images and some funny text but nothing that amounts to a big enough vision that it's something cohesive like a complete movie or a book. I've seen Joel Haver videos but those aren't made by pushing a button and getting a video.
Replaced implies humans are no longer writing or creating art, which obviously isn't the case. They just have more competition now.
Replaced implies some, likely many humans won't be able to compete and will be driven out of the field. Not by any other more skillful artist, but simply by AI output. Which is an inevitability. Some might say it's already happening.
I'll believe they can replace doctors when I see it.
And when that day comes we're not going back.
There's a flaw in this logic: things can be considered constructive and helpful but be entirely wrong.
I always considered this comic to be tongue in cheek, In practice it would not end up like this.
Can't you see us insulting them? We said a lot as we watched them descend into a dark hole never to return.
Let's define "stealing" and "business" here.
Influencers don't produce anything, nor do they add intrinsic value to products they promote. Not much business to that if you ask me.
They do already compete fiercely for brands' atention so every successful influencer by definition has "stolen" potential income from others.
If you want to split hairs, influencers' work is creating an idealised image that they project to peddle products. If AI can outmatch them in that regard, I see no problem with that.
The only problem I have with that is the notion that a company gets to consolidate funds that were previously going to an actual real person. Now, if we could rely on big business to pass on those savings to their customers and employees, that would be one thing. But we can't.
Got some installed LLM models, custom skins, simulated memories
We've got your convo... generated
(We've got artificial personalities)
Ok, I'm all for worrying about the impact of AI in jobs but... Living advertisements are easy to replace, what a suprise.
People who make actual interesting and/or funny videos, those that require personal work and are a direct result of the creator's skills or interests, are not really at risk of this.
Wow, a bunch of assholes just getting paid for showing you free stuff they got, pretending to be relatable and your friend while evading their taxes in Dubai, may be out of business. And think of those parents who won't be able to exploit their kids by getting them free toys and exposing them to the whole world!
I don't think I will lose any sleep over this.
People who make actual interesting and/or funny videos, those that require personal work and are a direct result of the creator's skills or interests, are not really at risk of this.
AI has created entire episodes already. Of South Park and Seinfeld, by hobbyists. It's not high quality today, but Pika AI just got released and with the pace of updates we will get to replacing everything soon.
They've chosen series with huge amounts of existing content to imitate and got bad stuff from it. I am not too worried for people making more personal content.
Yeah, maybe some time in the future you'll get infinite serial AI content with basic entertainment value. I'd say half of Disney productions already got there without needing AI, just shotgun writing. And lots of people are already bored of it all and now only look for the good stuff.
It'll be a good while before an AI generates an Oscar-winning script or a whole movie but most movies and TV shows are very formulaic. Would it really be that surprising if AIs were generating the entertainment equivalent of Hannah Montana in a few years? Or the latest Hallmark Christmas special (LOL)?
My guess is five years: That's how long it'll be before we start getting a flood of half-decent AI-generated shows/movies. Where the script is good but the animation/video are "a little off".
I mean, come on: There's so many successful TV shows and movies that are total shit! You think AI can't do better with just the tiniest bit of evolutionary improvements (and better hardware)?
Edit: I expect AI videos to be a revolution! Where we finally break free from the Hollywood and "big mega" cookie cutter stories. It'll give creative people the power to make the movies they want without heavy-handed censorship and executives that require everything dumbed down for the lowest common viewer.
(tbf that's not a really high bar. These companies ask writers to NOT take any risk with their writing so to not "rock the boat" so to speak)
If your job is easy, then it'll probably get replaced with AI eventually. What's easier than being an influencer?
If you only do the easy part, then yes that’s infinitely replaceable. Being a pretty face is exactly that, and AI can do that all day long.
Being actually entertaining and engaging, though, is a different story, and AI is struggling to pick that up. And of course teams of corporate marketers continually fail at this.
But yes, the “job” of “being attractive on the internet” can now be outsourced to machines.
Right, but for corporations once you mention the lack of risk that your AI influencer will rape some kids or turn out to be something equally horrible the equation becomes infinitely skewed in the AI's favor.
So, what I'm saying is, rule34 people gotta get to work making all those AI do horrible things and we'll be back to expecting our brand shills to have a heartbeat.
Clearly you haven’t spent 3 minutes playing with StableDiffusion. AI has already plumbed the depths of human awfulness.
AI is improving by leaps and bounds. I've fiddled with Stable Diffusion for over a year and I've seen it go from mostly random, highly deformed, blurry Polaroid quality images to high def, lifelike, in almost any pose imaginable images. And the same improvement goes for non-photo quality images too. Highly-skilled illustrators with degrees are mostly fucked. This whole "but I'm so much more efficient" argument doesn't hold water in our economy. Producing 3X more doesn't mean people consume 3X more, it means you're 3X overstaffed.
Now for streamers and influencers I'll admit some of them have cardboard personalities and are easily replaced. Someone like JSE (I don't watch much so sorry if my references are dated) is a little more animated than average so that's gonna be harder to replicate, but does it need to be replicated in order to steal views? Jack is one man and he can't stream 24x7 and many would prefer an "always on" streamer to someone with better content but available intermittently.
Hell, look at Amazon. It used to be filled with name brand products that you could rely upon because reputations were at stake. Now it's an endless sea of cloned and relabeled products that are between decent and total crap, but is that hurting Amazon's bottom line? Nope. The stuff is crap but it's cheap, readily available, and it arrives in 24 hours. Who needs quality???
TL;DR - AI doesn't need to be good, it needs to be good enough, and when it breaches that threshold you'll see quality content creators go into overdrive to keep up or pack it in because the effort is no longer worth the payout.
I mean yeah it is heartbreaking how artists are going to be FURTHER devalued in society 🙃
So much of the job is face tuned and post-productioned anyway. And what are you even doing? Unboxing videos? Soy face in front of a sports car or a machine gun?
The real job of the modern influencer isn't sitting in front of a camera. It's all the SEO and brown nosing and cross-posting to raise your brand profile.
In a media economy where everything is online is it any wonder that an AI video in a feedback loop with a bunch of AI controlled bot "users" is going to max out on a platform that only knows how to reward these artificially manipulated metrics?
Well, yes. Looking at human beauty without deep communication and intelligence is similar to playing video games when you want a Matrix-like simulation of our world. You just feel that it's all textures put onto polygons drawn on your screen and there's no magic behind it.
Human beauty is harassing restaurant owners for free food in exchange for exposure
https://www.insider.com/australian-influencers-slammed-for-asking-restaurant-for-free-meals-2022-3
Go ahead and be an apologist for this
Downvote for completely missing the point of my comment because of positive connotations with the word "beauty".
Downvote for keeping spewing something incomprehensible in response to a comment elaborating another comment.
Even if we accept that one can argue like most people in the Web, with two teams and fighting in the right direction, and not be considered an ape, - then you still got even that direction wrong.
As for your question (I suppose it was rhetorical and intended to look edgy), I don't know any "influencers". But of good-looking girls I know those I could really like could as well wear Mandalorian armor at all times.
Did you ever show up to a gym in body paint and make a big show about being kicked out?
Forgive me for being entirely unsympathetic, but I would not call being an “influencer” a “job”.
The same could be said about a lot of sources of income. It's subjective what is considered a job.
Even as a job it's highly overpaid. Hardly any "work" or "skill" involved yet makes millions in some cases.
Yeah just enough people get rich to make you think you have a chance at the same thing. so you start making more content for the site but when you make it it's for free lol.
Are you a boomer?
Just because you don't like or understand something doesn't mean it's not a job. I think it's a bit ridiculous myself but at end of day it's no different to being a celebrity for whatever reason and it's still a job.
It's odd where people draw the line. It's pretty much the same as previous generations fawning over radio personalities and all the Oprah's and such. To me, modern influences are equivalent to radio/TV hosts - personalities which are paid to promote and market products and lifestyles. Just because there's now more and more specific niches for them, doesn't make them any less valuable in the people's lives who enjoy them and their content.
Nope: mid 30s, politically progressive, software engineer.
I don’t like people who make a living off of simply “being famous” either - e.g. the kardashians.
I understand exactly what an influencer is and does. I just don’t like what they do, because the vast majority of what successful influencers do is to aggressively perpetuate some of the worst aspects of social media, as well as rampant consumerism and unbounded capitalism in general.
Remember when we used to shame people for "selling out"? Now we have an entire generation or two who can't sell out faster enough. Crazy.
The thing is that I don't really think anyone does, it's a buzz word construed by traditional media to let them draw hate on to modern competition without admitting they're even worse.
Fit example Kim Kardashian is an influencer unless she's on old media then she's a celebrity, Hank Green is an influencer on tiktok but if was on traditional media he's a science educator... None of these jobs are new it's just that they're not controlled by corporations to the same degree so the rich have invested some money in making you hate them.
For people like me that hadn't heard bout the theory.
"The dead Internet theory is an online conspiracy theory that asserts that the Internet now consists mainly of bot activity and automatically generated content that is manipulated by algorithmic curation, marginalizing organic human activity"
Here's the summary for the wikipedia article you mentioned in your comment:
The dead Internet theory is an online conspiracy theory that asserts that the Internet now consists mainly of bot activity and automatically generated content that is manipulated by algorithmic curation, marginalizing organic human activity. Proponents of the theory believe these bots are created intentionally to help manipulate algorithms and boost search results in order to ultimately manipulate consumers. Furthermore, some proponents of the theory accuse government agencies of using bots to manipulate public perception, stating "The U.S. government is engaging in an artificial intelligence powered gaslighting of the entire world population". The date given for this "death" was generally around 2016 or 2017.The theory has gained traction because much of the observed phenomena is grounded in quantifiable phenomena like increased bot traffic. However, the idea that it is a coordinated psyop has been described by Kaitlin Tiffany, staff writer at The Atlantic, as a "paranoid fantasy," even if there are legitimate criticisms involving bot traffic and the integrity of the internet.
I mean, it's not that much of a conspiracy, especially if we consider human bots to be bots and not humans.
About the "coordinated" part being false and paranoid - well, it generally works, coordinated or not.
This is a problem for the whole internet. I've made a long version of my argument here, but tl;dr as companies clutter the internet with cheaper and cheaper mass produced content, the valuable places will also get ruined. There's an analogy to our physical world: Because we build cheap and ugly cities that roughly look the same, the few places that are beautiful and unique are also ruined, because they're just too valuable; everyone wants to go there. I think that we're already seeing beginning, with pre-existing companies like Reddit that have high quality human-generated content walling themselves off more and more as that content becomes more valuable.
People's identities become fully commodified then a technology is invented to simulate it. Late stage capitalist dystopia things.
