It Could Happen Here - AI Minstrel Shows feat. Bridget Todd

Episode Date: July 30, 2025

Bridget Todd talks with Garrison Davis about how TikTok creators are using AI generated videos to make viral racist skits with digital blackface.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is an iHeart Podcast. I'm Ian Pfaff, the creator and host of the Uncle Chris podcast. My Uncle Chris was a real character, a garbage truck driver from South Carolina, who is now buried in Panama City alongside the founding families of Panama. He also happens to be responsible for the craziest night of my life. Wild stories about adventure, romance, crime, history, and war intertwine as I share the tall tales and hard truths that have helped me understand Uncle Chris. Listen now to Uncle Chris on Will Ferrell's Big Money Players Network on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,

or wherever you listen to podcasts. I knew I wanted to obey and submit, but I didn't fully grasp for the rest of my life what that meant. For My Heart Podcasts and Rococo Punch, this is The Turning, River Road. In the woods of Minnesota, a cult leader married himself to 10 girls and forced them into a secret life of abuse. But in 2014, the youngest escaped. Listen to The Turning, River Road on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your

podcasts. The stuff you should know guys have made their own summer playlists of their must-listened podcasts on movies. It's me, Josh, and I'd like to welcome you to the stuff you should know summer movie playlist. What screams summer more than a nice darkened air-conditioned theater and a great movie playing right in front of you. Episodes on James Bond, special effects, stunt men and women, disaster films, even movies that change filmmaking, and many more. Listen to the stuff you should know

summer movie playlist on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. So what happened at Chappaquiddick? Well, it really depends on who you talk to. There are many versions of what happened in 1969 when a young Ted Kennedy drove a car into a pond. And left a woman behind to drown. Chappaquiddick is a story of a tragic death and how the Kennedy machine took control. Every week we go behind the headlines

and beyond the drama of America's royal family. Listen to United States of Kennedy on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Coolzone Media. Welcome to It Could Happen Here, a show about things falling apart. And today the thing falling apart is the internet. And today we have a special guest episode with Bridget Todd. Hello, Bridget.

BRIDGET TODD So Garrett, it's kind of funny that we are talking just a few days after the Trump administration put out their woke AI executive order. GARRETT WOLFF Yes, I have not read this yet. I have to for next week's executive disorder. I'm not looking forward to it. I like that the cool zone team kind of sections off all the Trump federal nonsense, so you don't have to be mired in it all the goddamn time.

I still kind of am. I just schedule it throughout my week, I guess. There's certain days where I have to do it Yeah, you got a pepper it in you got a pepper it in well Yeah, not to give you a spoiler for when you dive into it yourself, but it's all nonsense Basically the Trump administration is saying that right now the biggest threat regarding AI is it being too woke and essentially telling folks who make AI tech leaders essentially to be more like Elon Musk and Grok and make sure that your AI

models the only AI models that we will accept in this country are the non woke ones won't ones that don't incorporate DEI would love to know more about what he thinks that means but that's a little preview for you. Fantastic you know seems like the most important issue facing our nation right now. Definitely, definitely. And so it's funny that we're talking about AI because I don't know if you're on TikTok, but there have been these kind of shockingly racist AI-generated videos all over TikTok to the point where I would say that we are witnessing the revival of the minstrel show using AI on social media. This is not a claim I use lightly. That is how extreme

some of this content is. I'm not on TikTok, but I think I've seen some of this content permeate across platforms. Certainly on like Instagram reels and even even bits of X, the Everything app. BOWEN LAUGHS I love that you call it that. That's the full name. BOWEN LAUGHS So for folks who don't know, I want to ground the conversation

in what a menstrual show is. So the menstrual show was a incredibly popular form of American theater and entertainment in the 19th century, where mostly, but not all white performers would wear blackface makeup to make themselves look like these exaggerated racist versions of black people and essentially portray very racist stereotypes of black folks being lazy buffoons. And a common trope in these

skits was black people trying and failing to gain American citizenship, because at the time black Americans did not have full citizenship. And so a big plot line would be like, oh, we had to take a test for citizenship, but we were too stupid to figure it out, or we spaced the date and overslept because we're very lazy. When these shows would depict black women, we were often shown as what you might think of as like a sapphire caricature, which is rude, loud, malicious, stubborn, and overbearing. Kind of like the angry black woman trope that you probably are familiar with in media today. So these skits were incredibly popular entertainment, but they also served the purpose of reaffirming political and social ideologies.

And so, you know, the dominant way that people consumed media regarding black people showed us as lazy, stupid, angry, loud, and importantly, not really able to conform to the dominant culture of mainstream, hardworking white Americans. That is obviously an incredibly powerful tool to uphold and reaffirm the idea that black folks should not be given full citizenship, should not be given full rights, cannot be integrated into polite white

society. And it almost kind of became this for their own good attitude that provided a polite justification for things like segregation. Well, like, oh, well, I've seen in minstrel shows that black folks are very lazy and stupid. So it's honestly for their own good that we treat them like shit in society. You feel me? Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's sort of like infantilization. Exactly. And so even though the minstrel show did die out, I would argue that we are kind of seeing a little bit of a comeback using AI in the digital realm.

And just like the minstrel shows of yesteryear were used to affirm political and social ideologies under the guise of just being entertainment, or just being jokes, or just being funny, I really think it's not a coincidence that we're also seeing the rise of digital blackface where non-black creators are using AI to create these viral racist skits that are steeped in black stereotypes and that they're really taking off all over social media today. That sounds not fun to hear about, but I'm excited for you to explain it to me.

Yes. So I will say initially, the first iteration of one of these videos that I saw was not really racist. It was made by a black creator, I think, trying to use AI to create sort of humorous skits. But when that first video took off, people on TikTok started using AI to create more and more extreme, more and more racist iterations of these kinds of videos, which is what we're seeing today.

So I will play a little snippet of an example for you. What's up, bitches? It's Bigfoot with hands the baddest bitch in the woods part time cryptic full time problem. Don't follow me if you scared to please. So this is a TikTok that got over 2 million views and it basically uses AI to generate this black woman stereotypical version of Bigfoot. And this account is so popular that it's generated so many copycats.

Like this is a format that is really hit with TikTok. There also is another kind of bucket of these that people call Slave Talk, where it uses AI to sort of reimagine enslaved people on plantations if they had social media and were doing vlogs. And so a lot of those videos were taken down by TikTok, which is, I think, good. But essentially, you would reimagine these AI-generated enslaved people

basically saying, oh, well, yeah, I do have to work out here in the cotton fields, but at least I'm going to get meals. At least I have a roof over my head, essentially really affirming the idea that slavery wasn't that bad. One of the more heinous examples that I saw of these that was removed from TikTok was a TikTok shop sponsored video that showed an AI generated enslaved person working in the fields wearing a solar powered hat with a fan in it. And basically he was like, oh, this work in the fields would be so horrible if I did not have this hat. And then there's a little link to the TikTok shop and you can buy the actual hat, which is just some really dystopian awful

shit. No, that is like quite literally is like evocative of like cyberpunk tropes that people I would assume would not want to use due to fears of insensitivity, but it's just on your phone, like, as like a real thing. Yeah, I completely agree, and I love that comparison. And I think, like, I would imagine if I were running a TikTok shop, that using the AI-generated image of an enslaved person,

I would think, like, oh, well, this is certainly not something that I would use to, like, sell some cheap sand hat.. But I mean, I think it is exactly what you're saying that I think that the extreme quality of these videos, people are just like, well, it'll get views and then I'll get more eyeballs on my TikTok shop. I don't think there's any kind of. Sure. Yeah. No, it's a very gross way of doing like outrage farming for engagement, I guess. Like, because surely they know that these are not going to like go over easy. Like I think a part of part of this is generating some some degree of attention based on it being offensive or extremely gross and knowing that people will like comment things of that nature.

Exactly. And it's funny that you mentioned that because the AI component of this is sort of what makes this novel and new. But that kind of thing has been all over social media for the longest time. Sure. I remember how big stuff like skit culture was on TikTok. And I don't mean skits like Saturday Night Live or Portlandia. I mean skits where they are trying to get you to think this is somebody's cell phone footage of something that happened. But really it's like, well, that those are two actors. And there was a there was a type of these skits that would really take off on

TikTok, where it was purporting to be, oh, this is a parent who is going off on a trans teacher for trying to indoctrinate their kid. And all the comments would be like for them good for that mom yeah and then the screen flips and it's like oh well the woman you were just telling me is the trans teacher now she's the mom who is the next video yes exactly exactly no I like the ones that are set on airplanes where they all use the same airplane set and they get into like a fake fights on on airplanes using the same like five actors playing different roles. Yeah. And then if you look carefully in the background, you start thinking, well, airplanes don't

have those strip LED lights that you can buy on Amazon. This is not actually a plane. The TikTok lights in the hallways like five feet wide. Yeah. Exactly. And listen, I am not above getting taken in by those kinds of skits. And I guess like, I don't love the idea that someone will be dedicating energy and brain space to getting upset about a set of circumstances that never really happened.

But it's the internet. Come on, that's half of the internet. Yes. You know, I don't love it. But when the stakes are low and it's just like a random fight on an airplane, fine. When the stakes are higher and it's like, this is a skit meant to like attack or demonize

trans people, queer people, black people. That's where I'm like, well, what are we really doing here? The stuff you should know guys have made their own summer playlists of their must-listen podcasts on movies. It's me, Josh, and I'd like to welcome you to the Stuff You Should Know summer movie playlist. What screams summer more than a nice darkened, air-conditioned theater and a great movie playing right in front of you?

Episodes on James Bond, special effects, stunt men and women, disaster films, even movies that change filmmaking, and many more. Listen to the Stuff You Should Know Summer Movie playlist on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. From iHeart Podcasts and Rococo Punch, this is The Turning, River Road. River Road. I knew I wanted to obey and submit, but I didn't fully grasp for the rest of my life what that meant. In the woods of Minnesota, a cult leader married himself to ten girls and forced them into a secret life of abuse.

Why did I think that way? Why did I allow myself to get so sucked in by this man and thinking to the point that if I died for him, that would be the greatest honor. But in 2014, the youngest of the girls escaped and sparked an international manhunt. For all those years, you know, he was the predator and I was the prey. And then he became the prey. Listen to The Turning, River Road, on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

A foot washed up, a shoe with some bones in it. They had no idea who it was. Most everything was burned up pretty good from the fire that not a whole lot was salvageable. These are the coldest of cold cases. But everything is about to change. Every case that is a cold case that has DNA right now in a backlog will be identified in our lifetime.

A small lab in Texas is cracking the code on DNA. Using new scientific tools, they're finding clues and evidence so tiny you might just miss it. He never thought he was going to get caught. And I just looked at my computer screen, I was just like, ah, gotcha. On America's Crime Lab, we'll learn about victims and survivors. And you'll meet the team behind the scenes at Authram, the Houston lab that takes on the most hopeless cases, to finally solve the unsolvable.

Listen to America's Crime Lab on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. What would you do if one bad decision forced you to choose between a maximum security prison or the most brutal boot camp designed to be hell on earth? Unfortunately for Mark Lombardo, this was the choice he faced. He said, you are a number, a New York state number, and we own you. Shock incarceration, also known as boot camps, are short-term, highly regimented correctional programs that mimic military basic training. These programs aim to provide a shock of prison life,

emphasizing strict discipline, physical training, hard labor, and rehabilitation programs. Mark had one chance to complete this program and had no idea of the hell awaiting him the next six months. The first night was overwhelming and you don't know who's next to you and we didn't know what to expect in the morning. Nobody tells you anything. Listen to Shock Incarceration on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I think whether or not this kind of content,

like when it's AI generated, we're looking at things that never actually happened. Even though these circumstances and these situations never really happened, they still very much affirm the worldview of the people who are consuming it, right? And so if you are consuming a skit involving, whether it's human actors or AI generated black people, if that skit reaffirms your worldview

that these people cannot be trusted, these people are bad in some way, it kind of doesn't matter if it's real or not. You know what I'm saying? Yeah, yeah, totally. That's like the concept of like hyper reality, where you're trying to like blend the internet's exaggerated version of reality with our like physical lived existence and how these things start combining into each other to create this idea of reality in our heads that's more real than it actually is, to the point where we take things on the screen

to be more accurately reflective of what's going on in the world than what we actually experience in our day-to-day lives. And so much of that concept is what drives American reactionary politics. Exactly, and when you actually go into the comments of these videos, which in my opinion are very clearly AI generated, people are leaving comments.

Well, I mean, that's a whole other thing. Easy for you to say. Someone who spends their time researching what's going on on the internet. I'm not sure if Mima and Papa are finding these videos. They're going to be like, well, this one's obviously AI generated. No, and that's my point is like, I don't even think they're thinking about it that way. I don't think they care that it's not real.

In the comments of these videos, it'll be a video, an AI generated video of a black woman behaving in this very stereotypical racist way. And the comments will say, they're all like that. And it kind of misses the point of like, well, there's no they in this video because it's a generated.

This is just a computer puppet. This isn't real. Like, yeah, I completely agree. But I think when you see something online, whether it's obviously a generated or not, if it reaffirms your worldview, it kind of doesn't matter. It's the same reason why when there's like four legged veterans in AI slop holding a sign that says, everyone forgot about me, wish me happy birthday. Three billion likes on Facebook.

I mean, what do you think is going on there? I find that so fascinating. Oh, I mean, I'm not a psychologist. But I think it isn't just the simple reaffirming of someone's previously held view, people are very receptive to and we even see this with like, you know, with like fake news headlines, right? And people might point out that this story isn't actually real. And when people are confronted with this idea that they've been tricked by unreality, they'll be like, no, maybe this one isn't real, but it could be real. And that's what really matters is that this feels true. Not that it is true, but the fact that I feel it resonating is actually more important than any kind of physical

trueness out inside like the flesh world. That is honestly, that matters far less than how it impacts how I feel and how it reflects the world as I see it. So I did an episode of my podcast, there are no girls on the internet, all about the sort of weird economy of AI generated disinformation, essentially fan fiction that came out of the trial of Sean P. Diddy Combs. That sounds incredibly upsetting. It was so upsetting.

And the reason I looked into it is because, I have to be honest and say, one of these AI generated videos got me, right? It was a video that claimed that the late musician Prince was able to testify in Diddy's trial from beyond the grave and that they played a video that Prince made warning everybody that Diddy is this bad guy, right? I am probably the world's biggest Prince fan. So I was like, Prince always, like, it got

me. It totally affirmed what I want to be true, but it was all a lie. It's compelling. It's trying to like, it's trying to impact you emotionally, especially for people who like Prince, who miss Prince. This could be emotionally compelling, and that's that's what they're like intentionally going after I think that's that's why something that could work So well, it got me and when I looked into kind of how these videos are cranked out on YouTube

So basically any celebrity that you can imagine there is an AI Generated video on YouTube saying that they were somehow involved in the ditty trial and what's so interesting is in the comments of these videos That are again pretty obviously AI generated or not real and even the description of the YouTube account will say this is This for entertainment. Nothing here is supposed to be true. People don't read that part Basically, if you've ever had a bad feeling about a celebrity which who hasn't totally there was a video that affirms with that worldview, that is like, well, did you know they were involved in the Diddy freak-offs?

And everybody's like, I knew it. That person always gave me the ick. Fine, I knew it. I was smart enough to pick that up. Not everyone else was smart enough, but I was. And that's a whole other emotional feeling that is being targeted by these, like, AI slop creators, where they're trying to, yeah, like, affirm people's, like,

like, narcissism about their ability to judge the moral character of strangers. That is so it, because the people, the celebrities they choose, it's people that maybe you would have, like, I have no real reason for this, but I hate Kevin Hart. And so, in the videos, don't even ask me why, I don't even have a real reason, I just don't like him.

Well, he's short. He is short. There you go. Love to my short kings. I think one of the reasons I don't even ask me why. I don't even have a real reason I just don't like him. Well, he's short. He is short. There you go. Love to my short kings. I think one of the reasons I don't like him, this is just me especially, like he just does a lot of ads and you can't get on social media without his cryptocurrency ad, his draft kings ad. I just like hate seeing his face.

Sure. Yeah, yeah. And then in the AI generated video claiming that he was mixed up in the Diddy trials, every comment is like, I knew it. I always hated him. And that's affirming. People like feeling like they knew something that other people didn't see and they knew it early on. Well, and I think what's something that's similar to this that's happening right now, is there's a massive media campaign right now against Pedro Pascal with AI generated videos of him, like touching his female co-stars.

These videos have been digitally altered and it's in service of this big harassment campaign against someone who's like very vocally pro-trans rights. There's other possible reasons for why he's being targeted by these videos, but similarly it's trying to create this like an ick around Pedro Pascal using AI altered media and it's gaining a lot of traction right now. And it's something that people need to be like very, very cautious of. But yeah, it's trying to affirm whatever. Maybe you for some reason have never liked Pedro Pascal.

I can't imagine why. But if you find a video like this talking about how he's using a social anxiety diagnosis to inappropriately touch his co-stars, you're like, I knew it, I knew it. I never trusted Pedro Pascal. And I don't like that he's pro-trans rights. And you're like, there you go. They've completely got you. They've been able to, like, automate and monetize internet hate campaigns

against people that you don't know. Gare, literally right before you and I got on this episode, I saw a video on Reddit, and it's a scene from an episode of Always Sunny, where one of the guys is like essentially lifting D, the female lead up by her crotch. And the caption was Pedro Pascal when he feels anxiety next to his female co-star. And I remember thinking like, this is such a weird fucking video. Like what corner of the internet have I wandered into?

But I didn't I did not know that there are forces trying to make me get the it about Pedro Pascal. Yeah Coincidentally, he is someone who speaks up for LGBTQ rights. Yeah, you know progressive causes Palestine, of course Yeah, no, it's it's it's a it's a it's a huge thing sweeping the internet right now And I think it really goes to show how thing sweeping the Internet right now. And I think it really goes to show how kind of easily we can be manipulated using digital content, whether it's AI generated or AI manipulated or not. Like, our understandings of the sort of general temperature of what's going on are so much more tenuous than we think and so much more easily manipulated than we realize.

No, absolutely. No one is immune to propaganda. That is a great way of putting it. The Stuff You Should Know guys have made their own summer playlist of their Muscle Listen podcasts on movies. It's me, Josh, and I'd like to welcome you to the Stuff You Should Know Summer Movie playlist. What screams summer more than a nice, darkened, air-conditioned theater in a great movie

playing right in front of you? Episodes on James Bond, special effects, stunt men and women, disaster films, even movies that change filmmaking, and many more. Listen to the Stuff You Should Know Summer Movie Playlist on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. From iHeart Podcast podcasts and Rococo Punch,

this is The Turning, River Road. I knew I wanted to obey and submit, but I didn't fully grasp for the rest of my life what that meant. In the woods of Minnesota, a cult leader married himself to 10 girls and forced them into a secret life of abuse. Why did I think that way?

Why did I allow myself to get so sucked in by this man and thinking to the point that if I died for him, that would be the greatest honor? But in 2014, the youngest of the girls escaped and sparked an international manhunt. For all those years, you know, he was the predator and I was the prey. And then he became the prey. Listen to The Turning River Road on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. What would you do if one bad decision forced you to choose

between a maximum security prison or the most brutal boot camp designed to be hell on earth? Unfortunately for Mark Lombardo, this was the choice he faced. He said, you are a number, a New York state number, and we own you. Shock incarceration, also known as boot camps, are short-term, highly regimented correctional programs that mimic military basic training.

These programs aim to provide a shock of prison life, emphasizing strict discipline, physical training, hard labor, and rehabilitation programs. Mark had one chance to complete this program and had no idea of the hell awaiting him the next six months. The first night was overwhelming and you don't know who's next to you. And we didn't know what to expect in the morning. Nobody tells you anything. Listen to Shock Incarceration on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your

podcasts. A foot washed up, a shoe with some bones in it. They had no idea who it was. Most everything was burned up pretty good from the fire that not a whole lot was salvageable. These are the coldest of cold cases. But everything is about to change. Every case that is a cold case that has DNA right now in a backlog will be identified in our lifetime.

A small lab in Texas is cracking the code on DNA. Using new scientific tools, they're finding clues and evidence so tiny, you might just miss it. He never thought he was going to get caught. And I just looked at my computer screen, I was just like, ah, gotcha. On America's Crime Lab, we'll learn about victims and survivors, and you'll meet the team behind the scenes at Authram, the Houston lab that takes on the most hopeless cases, to finally solve the unsolvable. Listen to America's Crime Lab on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you

get your podcasts. I'm happy that you used the word propaganda because that's what I really do think these AI generated, essentially menstrual show videos are. I think it's not a surprise that we are seeing them the same way that back in the day minstrel shows were very popular at a time when there was an active campaign of attacking black folks and saying they weren't smart enough and did not deserve full citizenship did not deserve rights all of that I think we're basically seeing the same thing today I think the rise of popularity of this kind of content is against the

backdrop of a very real attack on marginalized people from this administration. There was just this very meaty piece in ProPublica about how Trump and Musk, their doge stuff really was an attack on black women specifically, like black women with stable federal jobs. Totally. And that these attacks, essentially it was like you were able to smear black women, career civil servants as they were DEI hires, they were undeserving of these attacks, essentially it was like, you were able to smear black women, career civil servants, as they were DEI hires, they were undeserving

of these jobs, they really just deserve to be fired. And really, black women just became these easy targets for an administration hostile to marginalized people. So if we have all of that happening against the rise of this form of digital media that is using AI to reaffirm these stereotypes about black women that we aren't able to behave ourselves in polite society cannot figure out a way to solve conflicts without resorting to violence are loud and

obnoxious, then when you hear about real life human black women getting pushed out of their employment or attacked by this administration, you might think, well, maybe it's for the best because they're not suited for that work anyway, because of the kind of content that I have been consuming on TikTok. And I think it just reaffirms this worldview that real life human black folks are not self actualized human beings. We're just a collection of tropes and stereotypes and caricatures. I, I don't know what to say there.

Uh, but I agree. Yes. And I do think there's a kind of platform accountability question and all this because Oh, most certainly. Yeah, like one of the reason why we're seeing the rise of these videos is because of the recent introduction of Google's v03 creator. It came out about a month ago when it's Google's latest AI video generation model. And essentially, it's designed to create these realistic looking videos from text prompts.

And the thing that kind of makes it a step above is that you can incorporate things like synchronized audio, dialogue, sound effects, music. It is really taken off with creators online who are using this tool to create everything from these AI skits to AI influencers to AI mukbangs, you know, where people eat tons and tons of food. Oh, this is so upsetting. It is. And then like another kind of offshoot of this is you have people who use VO3 to make content like this and they get tons of views. And then they're like, oh, if you want to learn how to make this yourself,

pay me and I'll teach you how to do it, too. So it's like there's always a weird like MLM grift in there somewhere. That is the content creator classic as like a mid-tier influencer who's not like that good at what they do, but is able to supplement their income by offering courses to people to teach them how to make similarly subpar content. And it's interesting that we've reached the full AI automation aspect of this, right? This used to be a big thing among, like, YouTubers.

I was not aware that this is now a thing among, like, AI TikTok influencers, but that makes sense, because this is, like, the easiest thing to automate. So, of course, there's gonna be, like, an influx of people trying to make a quick buck on racist AI slop. It makes me so sad. And I do think I mean, when I guess I would be curious how Google feels about the fact that like this is what their their tool is being used for, right?

I wonder like, if leaders have a sense that this is harmful, not just harmful to black women like me who are depicted in this kind of content, but harmful for the internet as a whole. It makes the internet experience worse for everybody. And I guess I would imagine that like, Google probably doesn't care that this is what their technology is being used for. Like if I had a direct line to Sundar Pichai,

the head of Google, I would show him these clips and say like, is this what you had in mind for VO3 or is this a misuse of this tool that you just put out and unleashed on all of us? Yeah, and are you going to dedicate millions of dollars of research into stopping this from happening? No, of course not. They're not going to build comprehensive tools that prevent platform abuse like this. That's not going to happen as long as people are using it.

And then people are hearing about it and it's spreading. Like that's what they want. If there happens to be offensive use cases of it, if anything, that's good because that drives engagement. It gets people to know about the product. And I think that's another one of the reasons why Trump's executive orders on AI that we saw early. Woke AI.

Woke AI, I mean like, I will be the first person to admit that we have very deep problems when it comes to AI. Anybody who listens to Better Offline knows this. Like, this is not a secret. AI is often biased. AI is often wrong because it is trained on us, humans, the bias little fucks that we are, right? And so that shouldn't be a surprise to anybody.

I also will say, like, some of the solutions of how we fix that are complex and not super simple. But what's Trump's executive order, he basically is signing an order saying all AI must be objective. It must adhere to the objective truth of the United States. And it's like, well, who determines that? Who determines the objective truth of the United States? The President? I mean, if you ask Trump, yes, him. And I guess that's the thing that pisses me off is that there actually are complex issues

and problems when it comes to AI. But this executive order just is like, oh, the problem is that it's woke. The solution is me signing an executive order saying no woke in AI. And rather than getting any kind of actual solution or having the conversation, we just get fucking nonsense. No, it is worrying for multiple levels, including the fact that the president thinks he is the orbiter of objective truth and thinks he can legislate that or thinks he can executive order that into being

by either, you know, benefiting or punishing tech companies who follow his policies. Yeah, I mean, spoiler alert for that executive order. That's exactly what he's saying. And, you know, you used the word propaganda earlier, and that really is, if there was, like, a thesis statement of what I wanted to say in this episode, is that that is exactly what I think is going on here.

It really does remind me of minstrel shows, because even though minstrel shows back in the 19th century were this popular form of entertainment, it also was an entire manufacturing enterprise where people made very good money selling racist blackface figurines as novelties and all of that. David Pilgrim, the founder of the Jim Crow Museum of Racist Memorabilia at Ferris State University in Michigan put it like this. They were everyday objects which portrayed black people as ugly, different and fun to laugh at.

They were in a word propaganda. And I think that's exactly what's going on here. Like people like to think about racism as if it's just this thing that hangs in the air as opposed to a system that specific people are personally and intentionally perpetuating because they are cashing in on it. I don't see how Google letting creators use their tools to create content like this is any different. No.

Yeah, that is exactly what's going on in my book. That's flatly, that's just like one to one. You're using tech to create unreal depictions of racist characters to please audiences to reaffirm their own their own biases to reform their own racism and You're monetizing it and you're automating it to create hashtag vital moments Like it's it's the most explicit and like gross blatant form of this that I have like seen like I think Robert, a few years ago, reported on people using AI to make true crime videos of animating victims of crimes or murder victims

and talking about how they were killed or something, which is very gross and very, very disgusting. But this sort of organized racist video propaganda stuff can lead to a lot more like actual like real world damage. I completely agree. I mean, those true crime videos, I remember that. Imagine if your kid was murdered and then 20 years later, someone is like, oh, I've made an AI depiction

of your murdered child telling their story. No, yeah, it's evil. But I think the damage that can do is kind of limited. The damage that this whole altered reality where racism can get affirmed leads to, I think, a lot more actual political and personal consequences. Completely agree. And I also think just taking a step back in the conversation about AI, we're all being told how the proliferation of AI is going to be the linchpin of our economy.

It's so important. It's going to change everything. And then you actually look at some of these use cases that are taking off, and it's like, well, was this really worth all the fucking climate degradation to make this racist AI version of a Bigfoot that looks like a black woman? No more rainforest, but at least we get racist Bigfoot. So...

Oh, my God. Well, Gary, I think that's a good place to end. Thank you so much for letting me rant at you about this. I really appreciate it. Where else can people find your work, Bridget? Well, you can listen to my podcast, There Are No Girls on the Internet. You can listen to my other podcasts with Mozilla Foundation about ethics in AI called IRL and you can find me on Instagram at BridgetMarianDC.

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