AI Impact on Media and Ethics

Meredith's husband 0:00

Do you want to talk more about AI ?

Meredith 0:02

Yeah , I do .

Meredith's husband 0:02

I feel like this is becoming the AI show .

Meredith 0:05

Oh , it's not . There are many other AI shows , but it is super relevant to SEL right now it is a monumental kind of shift . And we need to know about it .

Meredith's husband 0:15

Yeah , I think so . I also need to update , of course , the last two episodes that we did , because so many things have changed since then .

Meredith 0:22

Are you ?

Meredith's husband 0:22

serious . Yeah , of course you remember . So we talked about Sam Altman and OpenAI and how that safety team was being dissolved , yet they weren't saying anything because they had signed NDAs . Well , sam Altman came out like literally a couple of days after that story broke and says oh no , that's , we would never claw back money . He's also , from what insiders say , a master manipulator .

Meredith 0:46

Yeah , it kind of sounds like it .

Meredith's husband 0:47

Who needs to ?

Meredith 0:48

be in charge of everything .

Meredith's husband 0:53

And also one of the things that former board members and former employees have said now is he lies . He just flat out lies . That was one of the reasons he was fired from being CEO , as the board said he just flat out lies , huh .

Meredith 1:08

Who else I mean what ?

Meredith's husband 1:09

Anyway , also since our last episode about this there was the whole Scarlett . Johansson thing . Yes , they evidently approached Sam Altman and his team whoever approached Scarlett Johansson and said hey , can we use your voice as our new AI voice ? And she was like no , yeah , and they went ahead and did it anyway .

Meredith 1:32

Oh , the flames .

Meredith's husband 1:34

However , they have then reversed that . They've been reversing a lot of things . They reversed that . They took that down . They're no longer , I guess , using her voice . They said it wasn't her voice , but it like massively was her voice .

Meredith 1:46

Yeah , she said , even like her closest family thought it was her Her closest friends . Yeah , and family who know her voice .

Meredith's husband 1:53

I never heard it myself .

Meredith 1:55

You're really good at voices .

Meredith's husband 1:58

That's one of the things I'm oddly good at .

Meredith 2:00

Yeah , you can recognize .

Meredith's husband 2:01

That's why I collect the big bucks .

Meredith 2:04

You can . My husband has a very unique skill at being able to recognize voices .

Meredith's husband 2:13

Yeah , it's kind of amazing yeah .

Meredith 2:18

I don't know what it is . I from days gone by of being an actor . I can watch a scene in a show and know , oh , that was dubbed , that was dubbed , and you often don't hear that .

Meredith's husband 2:34

Sometimes I often do , but sometimes I don't . But I know the voice .

Meredith 2:39

But you can say oh , that wasn't that person .

Meredith's husband 2:42

You also know faces .

Meredith 2:44

Yeah , I guess .

Meredith's husband 2:46

Being a photographer , I think , is the basis for your , the foundation for your skill there , not being an actor . Anyway , let's get back to what we're talking about . What people came here to hear and not waste their time Also , we talked about , or I talked about , what I called the safety team I didn't remember the name of it Safety team .

Meredith 3:04

The team't remember the name of it Safety team .

Meredith's husband 3:05

The team of people at OpenEye , by the way they were they were past tense called the super alignment team .

Meredith 3:12

Oh boy .

Meredith's husband 3:13

Yeah it's , it's a , that's an Elon Musk ish .

Meredith 3:16

Oh , it's terrifying . Yeah , yeah , military .

Meredith's husband 3:19

Yeah , anyway , that entire team is gone , does not exist anymore . They just dissolved it because I guess so many people left either left of their own free will or were pushed out that it just doesn't even exist anymore . So there is no team of people or no group responsible at OpenAI for the safety of all of our futures .

Meredith 3:41

Wait , wait what . Whoa whoa , whoa whoa . So what does that mean ?

Meredith's husband 3:46

That means , from what I gather .

Meredith 3:48

We're fucked . Now wait , is this in this country or the world ? Because my guess is the EU are going to have far stricter regulations in place on this . That's my bet .

Meredith's husband 4:01

They might , but on the inside this company , nobody's job description is they might , but on the inside this company , nobody there , nobody's job description is concerned with like rolling these things out responsibly , in a responsible manner , even though even though the the whole mission statement of their company is like to benefit humanity .

Meredith 4:17

Yeah , isn't Facebook's as well ?

Meredith's husband 4:20

I don't know . That's how they keep it . That's how they keep a non . They actually do have a nonprofit status , openai . They have a nonprofit status although one of their subsidiaries is a for-profit company and I think some lawyers have brought cases against them saying , well , obviously , the for-profit portion of your company is telling the rest of the company what to do and you're just . You have a nonprofit , yes , but it is just- .

Meredith 4:46

For show .

Meredith's husband 4:47

Again , yes for show being a manipulator . I guess that's what . And also , of course , after all this stuff comes out , sam Altman and his husband come out and say oh , we're donating half of our wealth to charity . And they do that yes , oh well , no , if they were to do it like lots , lots , lots of you know , it's completely non-binding . It just so happens that he says this right as he's taking on a world of shit in the media about being a terrible person . Zuckerberg did the same thing .

Meredith 5:17

Yes .

Meredith's husband 5:17

Oh , we're giving away 99% of our wealth to a foundation that we created and control .

Meredith 5:24

And benefit from who knows what it does .

Meredith's husband 5:26

Yeah , who knows what it does . Anyway , somebody summarized this all in a tweet . I bet they did . I don't , it was brilliant , and I don't reference tweet . Actually they're not even called they aren't tweets anymore . Are they what ?

Meredith 5:39

are they called Exes ?

Meredith's husband 5:40

I don't know , but anyway , this tweet I'm going to try to do this from memory , I don't have it in front of me . Oh boy , the tweet was sci-fi writer . That was the first one . Like it is , a Sci-fi writer says , and the quote is I invented the torment nexus in my latest novel as a cautionary tale . Okay , that was his quote .

Meredith 6:01

Right .

Meredith's husband 6:01

The torment nexus in capital letters . So it's a thing . I invented the torment nexus in my latest novel as a cautionary tale , Next line Tech company . So the tech company says this yeah , At long last we have created the torment nexus from the classic sci-fi novel . Don't Create the Torment Nexus , which I just think is perfect . That's just exactly what tech companies do , but I figured we'd take this in a positive direction .

Meredith 6:30

I was just going to say . The good news is… .

Meredith's husband 6:33

I know that's what you're going to say . So we're going to have to switch away from OpenAI and chat GPT , yes , and talk about the Google AI . Okay , so for a long , google's AI is called Gemini , by the way , gemini . So for a long time , one of the biggest problems that I have seen with Google and what you get as a user from search results is let's say , you do a search for air purifiers , you're researching air purifiers , you do a search best air purifiers , whatever In results , what you're probably going to see for a search like that is some ads , maybe some companies selling air purifiers , maybe some ads for websites that just tell you what the best air purifiers are , and then a whole bunch of websites , blogs , that just recommend different air purifiers .

Meredith 7:25

Or videos right the top 10 .

Meredith's husband 7:27

Well , the videos might be there , yes , also . Okay , but in the non-video results it's going to be filled with those articles , right , the first page , second page , there's going to be dozens , if not hundreds , of those articles . Now , what those articles are are affiliate sites . So they get affiliate sales . Now , some of those blogs are really great . They really do an in-depth review of the different air purifiers and they really do explain which ones are the best . The problem is that a lot of them also just figure out which one can they get the biggest commission from and that's the one they recommend first . Yeah , of course they list the top 10 . And I know this because you can go and check and figure out what kind of commissions are offered , how . You just go to the company that makes them and go to their affiliate program and see what commission they pay .

Meredith 8:14

Regardless , how are you going to trust anybody ?

Meredith's husband 8:16

Yeah , exactly so that's , the fact that Google search results are dominated by these types of articles is a big problem , and it has been for a few years , and I didn't know how Google was going to get around this , because it's kind of the way the system has evolved . It's I had no idea how , what was going to happen , that was going to resolve this . It looks to be that AI is going to help resolve this , okay .

Meredith 8:40

Now AI is going to be like this is the humidifier .

Meredith's husband 8:44

What's going to happen is AI is going to come back and say here are the different humidifiers , and then you can ask follow-up questions of AI and you can sort of drill down and get the information that way , never having to go to these affiliate sites . So these affiliate sites are going to be hurt big time . They're going to be . It's going to be very difficult for them .

Meredith 9:05

Will that then influence influencers ?

Meredith's husband 9:08

Probably not as much at least not yet because those guys are , those influencers , are using video more and they're probably also they're on Instagram and Facebook . They're on other platforms , so this is going to affect traffic to blogs and the CEO of Google has kind of apologized for this . Oh , that's nice . He knows , or he said he is empathetic to content creators who these current changes are going to affect , and he didn't name them as specifically as I am right now . I'm just kind of this is something that I haven't read exactly . Google has not said this , but as an observer and kind of somebody who knows a little bit Reading between the lines .

Meredith's husband 9:48

Yeah , I think this is a great thing . I would love to see those sorts of results as would I , because I'd like to know the truth .

Meredith 9:56

I'd like to know the truth I'd like to know .

Meredith's husband 9:58

Yeah , and people are probably rightfully . You know those . Those are companies . Now , those are not just individual . There are big companies that do this . Those companies are going to be hit and you're going to see stories about them complaining that google is hoarding all the traffic for themselves , because you're going to be able to do more and more right on Google without going to blogs .

Meredith 10:18

Oh , okay , right .

Meredith's husband 10:21

But what I have said previously is if you are a photographer and somebody is looking , you know Google is not going to prevent that traffic from getting to your site and hiring a photographer . Google is not going to come out and be your photographer , like , that's not the type of thing that they're trying to do , right , yeah .

Meredith's husband 10:42

So what I thought might be useful for photographers is , if you don't want to be the Scarlett Johansson of photography , let's say you don't want your images because you're as a photographer , you've got images on on your website , right , correct ? So ? So AI , chat , gpt and Gemini and all these things they can source your information and they use it for what they call training purposes . Now again , I think a lot of photographers don't like this .

Meredith 11:09

I can understand why .

Meredith's husband 11:11

Because you could say , let's say you could probably go to ChatGPT and say , create a family photograph in the style of Meredith Zinner photography , and it would do that . Now , if you go as Meredith Zinner and say , do not use my material for training purposes , my understanding anyway is it would prevent that . Okay . So there are a couple ways you can do this , and this is changing all the time . Okay , so , if you're listening to this tomorrow , it's probably new options .

Meredith 11:45

Hopefully in our favor .

Meredith's husband 11:49

So I would encourage you to take this as a starting place and do some research .

Meredith 11:53

Yes .

Meredith's husband 11:54

Because who knows , a month or six months from now , who knows what's going to be available Now ? First , there is a company called Glaze .

Meredith 12:02

Glaze , glaze Like donut , yes , g-l-a-z-e .

Meredith's husband 12:06

And what they do is you can . I don't know , I've never gone through the process , but they were one of the first and they are the most well-known company to be doing this . It was started in Chicago , I think , by a couple yeah , by like a couple professors , oh and they offered this thing and they didn't know how much demand there was going to be . They released it and they had like 4 million downloads in 24 hours .

Meredith's husband 12:28

It was crazy so it has gone and again , I don't know the exact process , but what they can do is they can take your images and before you post them online , they make what they call pixel level changes . So they change the pixels in such a way so that the image will be confusing to AI bots . It will look the same to users , but it will be too confusing to AI programs so that they can't ?

Meredith 12:52

Are AI just going to learn how to get around that instantly ?

Meredith's husband 13:00

Eventually , but yeah , but Glaze will keep updating , I would imagine . And that's why I say go out and research , because who knows what's going to happen in a week or a month or six months .

Meredith 13:04

Right , I would just think somebody would create something . Whatever they do , then this does

Protecting Your Work From AI

Meredith 13:08

and that does .

Meredith's husband 13:08

I believe there are other tools out there now that do this . Glaze , I think , was the first . Check them out first . I can't recommend them I've never used them Right but check it out . If it's something you're interested in , you might want to do this . Another option is you can go straight to the AI companies . You can go to OpenAI and request and I'll put this link below . You can request that they do not use your material . Now it seemed that Scarlett Johansson requested that they do not use her material and they did anyway .

Meredith 13:39

So I don't know how good it is .

Meredith's husband 13:41

But there is a link , you can go to Might as well . The downside is you need to do it for every single day every image . If you have 10 images on your site , you need to submit 10 of these forms . Now , the form is not that difficult , but you need to provide the link and a little description for each and every image .

Meredith 14:02

Is there an AI action that you can use to do that for you ?

Meredith's husband 14:07

I doubt it , but if I were a photographer and I had some images that were really exemplary of my style , let's say some images that were really good they're really like what you would say oh , those are really Meredith's dinner photos I would probably go and enter those .

Meredith 14:25

Especially if you're on the first if you're on .

Meredith's husband 14:28

if yes , these are just the images on your website , especially if they're on your homepage . So you have , you have blogs that are that are just the images on your website , especially if they're on your homepage . So you have blogs that might have a whole bunch of images . By the way , it's probably also a good idea to help protect your clients , oh , boy , this is going to be a lawsuit .

Meredith 14:44

City Time to revise your contracts .

Meredith's husband 14:49

Actually , that's not a bad idea . You should probably say , yeah , I don't . It's like somewhere in your contract something to the effect of I don't have control over AI . Anyway , I would do that . There is something you can do as an individual artist to protect your work . I think it's the time is now .

Meredith 15:10

The time is now if you want to look into that . What was that other piece of good news ?

Meredith's husband 15:14

No , that was the good news , I know . The other piece of good news . I read some stats about OpenAI , yeah , and it seems that so far they polled people in all . I don't know not every country , but some of the major countries , people in the US and the EU 40 something percent of adults had never even heard of chat GPT and only I think it was like five or six or seven percent use it on a regular basis . So it's still not a widely adopted thing yet .

Meredith's husband 15:44

If you I , as I've said before , it's if you can learn how to use some of these things to your advantage . It's kind of a superpower in terms of like productivity .

Meredith 15:54

Yeah .

Meredith's husband 15:54

That's something else I would encourage you to do . Yeah , right now . Tomorrow it's going to be too late .