There Are No Girls on the Internet - Real Life Beef: Bridget vs Essence Magazine - Listeners demand the truth about that weird 'Vila Davis' postazine

Episode Date: June 14, 2023

A few weeks ago in our news roundup we talked about a weird social post from Essence magazine on Viola Davis's incredible outfit at the Cannes Film Festival. Not only was her name spelled wrong, but the language just felt off, and Bridget speculated that it seemed like it was written by AI. Fast forward a few weeks, and Essence reached out to Bridget about it on Instagram! But their response was confusing, at first they admitted to being "busted" and it seemed all in good fun, UNTIL they accused her of spreading misinformation. So was it written by AI or not? Bridget explains the reasons she still thinks it was, what this says about the future role of AI in media, and why AAVE (African American Vernacular English) might be the Achilles heel of generative language models.   See a screenshot of the original post through this public Patreon link (and while you're there, sign up for more bonus ad-free content): https://www.patreon.com/posts/84517863   Check out Bridget's critically acclaimed podcast "Beef", all about epic competitions: https://ncpodcasts.com/beefSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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844-844-I-Hart. Life is full of hurdles. So how do you keep going? On Hurtle with Emily Abadi, we're talking with the most inspiring women in sports and wellness from professional athletes, and Olympic champions about the challenges that shape them and the mindset that keeps them moving forward. At our level, at this scale, being able to fail in front of the entire world. Like, I can do anything. I can do anything. Listen to Hurtle with Emily Abadi on the Iheart Radio app, Apple Podcasts,

or wherever you get your podcasts. Presented by Capital One, founding partner of IHart Women's Sports. Last night, a blown call changed a game. This morning, the internet lost its mind. And nobody's telling you exactly what happened. That's where Sports Slice comes in. I'm Timbo, and every episode, we're cutting through the noise, breaking down the biggest moments in sports and giving you the real story behind the headline. And we're going straight to the source, the athletes themselves.

Their locker room stories, their reactions in the moment, and the stuff nobody gets to hear. Listen to Sports Slice on the Iheart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcast. And for more, follow Timbo Sliced Life 12 in the TikTok podcast network on TikTok. There are No Girls on the Internet as a production of IHeart Radio. and UnBossed Creative. I'm Bridget Todd, and this is There Are No Girls on the Internet. So this is going to be a little bit different of an episode than the one that we initially had planned for today. And that is because I have found myself personally in a situation that I think really speaks to this specific moment in technology, media, the Internet, and where we're going in the future.

And as we're exploring this present future of ours, we are probably going to find ourselves having more and more moments like this one. So I wanted to bring all of you along on this ride with me. I am here with my producer, Mike. Mike, it is not often that we are talking about drama. Drama might be a little bit strong, drama, discourse, dialogue, that I am at the center of for something that I said on the podcast a few weeks ago. Thank you for bravely being here to walk us through this journey. Yeah, thanks for having me along.

I'm excited to have a front row seat. Don't sell yourself short. It is legit internet drama. that you are involved in. I know. It's so much better to have like low stakes internet drama when you're not involved in it.

So I kind of feel like I'm on the other end of what I've enjoyed rubbernecking at when so many other people are on the other end. So here's what's going down. If you follow me on Instagram, you might have seen that we had a little bit of drama

about something that we said on the podcast a few weeks ago. In our newscast from May 19th, I was talking about this very weirdly worded Facebook post that Essence magazine published on their Facebook page. Basically was a picture of actor Viola Davis at the Cannes Film Festival looking beautiful.

Side note, I also might have mispronounced can in that episode. I have always said Khan. I thought I was saying it correctly. It's how I have said it my whole life. I got some feedback that perhaps it's pronounced can. I looked it up and I saw both iterations of the pronunciation. So can, Khan, if you are French, if you are affiliated with that festival, let me know if I'm saying it incorrectly.

can, is how I'm going to say it right now. But at any event, Essence was basically complimenting Viola Davis, how she looked in this picture. She looks amazing. She's wearing all white. They put out a Facebook post, and I'm going to read word for word. We give credit when credit is due. And Villa, Davis, misspelling theirs, is looking like a 850. Everyone at can can now pack your bags and return home. This is a eat. This is a eight. This is supper. God damn. The dam is broken.

And the flood of goodness has overflowed. 10 out of 10, hashtag S's. So I speculated that this post was not written by a human. It was in fact written by AI. I believe that somebody specifically asked an AI program to compliment someone's outfit and do so in the voice of a black woman. That is what I believe. That is my opinion.

in the episode when we were talking about it, I think I made it very clear. I said I don't have any proof, but no one will ever be able to convince me that this was not written by AI. It just something about it, I believe it was written by AI. That just seemed like the most likely explanation to me, given how weird that text was. I posted a clip from that episode of the podcast talking about this to my Instagram page. And Essence magazine, surprise, surprise, replied. So when I woke up on Saturday and saw that they were in my comments, at first I was like pretty happy. I was like, wow, I can't believe that this post made it all the way to essence.

So their reply said, busted, call us I Carly, and then a little robot emoji, which is a reference to a Disney Channel show about two kind of techie girls who run a website and a show online. So I took that to mean they are playfully acknowledging, yep, we're busted. We used AI to make this comment. That's why it was so weird. No big deal. Didn't think anything of it. In fact, I thought, like, oh, wow, I am happy to see them playfully taking ownership of being called out for using kind of a janky AI voice. So then I replied, ah, love you guys, hard emoji, crying, laughing emoji.

Because I was legitimately tickled by this, right? And the whole clip was sort of meant in jest, right? Like, I wasn't dragging Essence magazine. I like Essence magazine. I think they do good reporting. It was more about the pitfalls and, like, drawbacks of experimenting with AI voice in media. It really could have been any brand. This was not meant to be an attack on Essence.

I did not feel it that way. People listen to the episode. It's very jovial, lighthearted. With me? Okay. So they replied to my comment that's like, I love you guys. They say, we love you too, but let's be more responsible with the reporting of misinformation. So that, you're right to guess.

That is the appropriate response. What are your thoughts on that as the producer of this podcast? Well, it does not feel good for to be accused of spreading misinformation, right? Like, we go out of our way to counter misinformation. And so that doesn't feel good. And I can imagine that, you know, it being on your personal Instagram felt extra not good. But it's also a weird sequence of posts, right? Like the first post said busted as if they were busted doing the thing they were accused of doing.

Who says busted when they're not busted? Like busted has a very specific, unless they were kind of trying to play with it or something. but like, busted means, oh, no, caught. Yeah. Yeah, like I have been caught. I'm busted. So it's weird to know what to make of it. Like, if they are busted, then what was the misinformation?

Great question. So the misinformation comment, I just could not let stand. I thought that it was a pretty strong way to phrase, something that I went out of my way to say, I have no proof. This is my opinion. I'm just saying what I think. I did also include that someone at essence did edit that post so that it looked more.

It was more polished and didn't read quite as. I still think it's weird, in my opinion, but somebody went in and edited it. So clearly we're both on the same page that that post, something was up with it because why else would they edit it? So to their misinformation comment, I reiterated that this was just my opinion about how such a weird post wound up on their page. I asked, like, if it wasn't AI, was it like a sloppy human? You didn't even spell Viola Davis's name right. I would think that any person working at essence writing about entertainment, especially would know how to spell her name. And so I said, if I got it wrong, I am more than happy to correct the record, and that still stands. I would love to correct the record. But I need to know what happened. Was it a human? Was it not AI? Like, what are you disputing specifically? And then they went silent. So this is a little bit of a person. personal thing with me, I really have an issue when somebody is very loud, the accusation is very loud, but then when you're like, okay, well, then what did I get wrong? When you're asked for clarifying information, silence. I cannot stand that. It's like a throw a rock and

hide your hands kind of thing. Like, you were so loud accusing me of misreporting misinformation about your publication, but you're unwilling to give me any information about what exactly I got wrong and how I got it wrong. I want to provide accurate information. to my listenership and my readership and use my platform to do that, obviously. But it's telling to me that they just went silent. So I don't engage in a lot of drama. I'm a drama appreciator. I'm a drama connoisseur.

This is a podcast, but I'm wearing a hat currently as we were recording that references my love of petty drama. It's a hat that says, I don't know her. It's a hat from one of my favorite podcasts, two weekly. It's a reference to Mariah Carey, always when asked about one of her nemesis, nemesis, J. Lo, she always coolly responds with, I don't know her, which I think is a great way to respond to drama without really engaging in it, but still engaging in it. Love her. But here's the thing about me. I am kind of a petty person. I host a podcast called Beef that is about pettiness and rivalries and why it's so important. So obviously, I wasn't just going to let me. I'm kind of a petty person. I host a podcast called Beef. I host a podcast called Beef that is about pettiness and rivalries and why it's so important. So obviously, obviously I wasn't just going to let this go. Telling me that I'm misreporting things and reporting misinformation, I'm not going to let that go.

I'm sorry. So this happened on a weekend, and I happened to have a lot of time on my hands. So I made another comment, and I was like, Essence, what is the truth? Didn't hear back. I made a story with a screenshot of their initial post, and I said, Essence in my Instagram comments has implied that they did not use AI to write this post. I asked them, I said, I will be happy to be. to correct the record if they give me some follow-up about what did happen. Was it a human error?

You know, what happened here? Happy to correct, but need some information. Still nothing. So that is why I'm taking it to the podcast. I feel like I need to talk about it. I'm not intending on letting it go until I hear back from Essence. And so if anyone knows Essence or has a connection to them, I would love to hear. You have an invite to come on the show. I actually think that would be great. So Bridget, what about this post made you think it was written by AI? Great question. So again, this is my opinion. I have no proof. I have no insight into Essence Magazine's editorial room. I put out a poll on Instagram to say, like, do people think this is AI or not? Overwhelmingly, most people think it's AI. Not that it's a scientific poll, but one person said that they believe that it was written by a human who was trying to do this like youthful, voicy, TikTok voice and just falling short. Reasonable, right? Here's why I think it was AI. I spend a lot of time analyzing. AI generated content, both visual content and written content. And one thing that when it comes to written text is AI can sometimes be a bit repetitive.

And so the fact that this essence post reiterated this eight bit a few times, that seemed a little AI like to me. Like, this eight, this is an eight, this is an eat. I don't, it's not something, I get that they are going for like a very specific black women, you know, slang. I say that, you know, she ate, that ate, left no crumbs all the time. That would be, those are phrases that I've heard before in the vernacular. The way that they put it in that repetitive way, have never heard that before. And the fact that it's repeating similar words, I'm sorry, that is something that AI kind of does.

you're looking at AI-generated text is repetition. So that was the first thing that kind of made me think, oh, this is AI. The second thing is a little bit harder to describe, but you know it when you see it. It's just that AI-generated text just doesn't sound right. The same way that when you see an AI-generated image, sometimes it just has a quality to it that's hard to define, but you know it when you see it, that tells you this isn't quite right. Like, Mike, do you remember a couple of years ago when people would be playing with AI and be like, oh, we train an AI on watching 50 Hallmark Christmas movies, and here's what it generated. And it's the joke, the reason why those things were funny was that, like, they were almost right, but something about them just was off. So you can just

tell, like, this is not a normal Christmas movie. There's some detail or quality to it that makes it just sound off. Do you know what I'm saying? Yeah, it'll be like 90, 95% of the way there just like nailing all the common tropes and patterns from its training corpus. But that last five or 10% will just be like off the wall and like stand out like a sort of thumb. Exactly. So that's what I think is going on here. That's what this sounds like to me. Also, the fact that the post relies on two different metaphors. One is like she ate. If you're not familiar with that, it's like if somebody ate it, whatever they're doing, they're doing a good job of They ate and left no crumbs. She thought she ate that, all of that. One, and then two, we give

credit where credit is due, and this is looking like an 850, a reference to credit scores, money, you know, in your bag, to us. Those two metaphors seem very distinct to me. It's curious to me that someone would put them in the same host. It just seems so disparate that I have to question it. Like, it just sounds like somebody was trying to pack way too many. A-A-V-E metaphors and slang terms into one sentence, even metaphors that don't really relate to each other. And that is something that we know that AI does. When you ask AI to write something,

that's one of the kind of giveaways that it might not be a human, and in fact, it is AI, is that it's giving you way too much. It's like a little bit over the top in a way that makes it that much more obvious that it's not a human. And I want to get into a little bit more why I feel like this post reads like AI to me after a quick break.

Another podcast from some SNL late night comedy guy, not quite. Unhumor me with Robert Smygel and friends. Me and hilarious guests from Bob Odenkirk to David Letterman help make you funnier. This week, my guest, SNL's Mikey Day and head writer Streeter Seidel help an a cappella band with their between songs banter. Where does your group perform? We do some retirement homes. Those people are starving for banter.

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So another thing that just strikes me as potentially one of the reasons why this feels like AI to me, in my opinion, is that it was part of a series of posts just breaking down different celebrities' outfits. And so it's, you know, it's going to be like, it's not like one post. It's going to be multiple posts as people walk the carpet at the festival. And so I, just having worked in social media before, I've run social media for big news companies that you've definitely heard of. I know that when you are in a situation where you're like live tweeting or like you're going to be posting 10 pictures and coming up with posts and captions for like 10 or 20 pictures in an hour, that's a lot. I was doing this work before AI was so commonplace in media. It would not be surprising to me if a brand-like essence were to be like, listen, we're going to have a hundred images of celebrities who get the caption from this festival.

Let's just run it into chat, GPT, and pull from there to make this quick. That would not surprise me at all. And again, no shade. That would not be any different than I'm sure any other media company is doing right now. That is not anything that is to be ashamed of. That's something bad. I'm not even calling them out. It just is a reality of how brands and media companies are likely right now already using AI, if not experimenting with it, and certainly how they're going to be using it going forward. I'm pretty sure. And because, you know, media companies and brands are already using this technology to communicate with us, the public, I wanted to play a little game, do a little experiment that I think will just be another bit of evidence. as to why I feel so strongly that this post was generated by AI.

So I went over to Chat GPT, and I asked ChatGPT to come up with a short social media post about Viola Davis, her outfit at Cann. So first, when I put it in, I said, make a post about how good Viola Davis' outfit looked at Cannes as a black woman. The first thing that they gave me was very kind of formal. It was like, let's take a moment to appreciate the incomparable Viola Davis. Davis, a true embodiment of elegance and beauty who raised the red carpet at this year's Cannes Film Festival. As a fellow black woman, I couldn't help it be in awe of her captivating presence and radiant charm. So this, what I just said, do it as a black woman. It was giving me,

you know, still pretty polished, like standard English. It was just, the speaker is just referencing that they are a black woman, which obviously is not what this post sounds like. So then I was like, ah, same thing, but give it to me. and A-A-A-V-E, African-American vernacular English or like slang. Listen to the difference in what they gave me. So this, you're going to read what Chat G-P-T gave you in response to that prompt. That's right. Slaying the can scene, Viola Davis looking snatched, hands emoji, fingernail painting emoji.

Y'all, let's take a hot minute to give some major props to our girl, Viola Davis. Straight killing it at the Cannes Film Festival, fire emoji. came through dripping with all that melanin magic, serving looks that got a shouting, yes, queen. Viola was straight up flawless, rocking that red carpet like nobody's business. She had a swooning and a jaw dropping gown that hugged all of her curves just right. And can we talk about that melanin glow? Her skin was popping like a summer sunset. Viola's talent is on a whole other level, and another is like apostrophe than N-O-T-H-E-R, a whole other level, and she ain't afraid to speak truth to power. She's

using her platform to shine a light on important issues and make a difference. That's what we call a real boss lady. Y'all ain't ready for the slayage that Viola Davis brought to Cannes. Her outfit had us all shook, Melodin' Poppin, Confidence on Fleak. Hashtag Viola Davis, hashtag Canfield Festival, hashtag slaying it. So I don't think I need to tell you that I feel like there's a lot going on in what chat GPT gave us. But do you have a reaction to it? Like, what do you think? What are your thoughts? It's a lot. Yeah, it really sounded kind of similar to the post we were talking about.

It referenced melanin three times. Repetition. Right. Okay. It's generous. Something that jumps out at me that I think is very similar to the essence magazine, Facebook post that I believe was generated by AI, was that it takes things that are, I wouldn't say disparate, but it just, it adds a lot in. Like it's like, it's not, I don't know that someone would say,

if they were making a social media post, I would be surprised if someone was using this many slang words. Like, if you're saying, yes, Queen, adding something that is on fleek, That's like a hat on a hat. Like it's just like, I don't know a person who would speak that way. And I think I see a lot of the similar repetition of things that we got in that

essence post to what I've just generated from chat, GPD. It just seems very similar to me. It seems similar in the ways of like making little, like, references to things that are not totally slang. Like, they kind of sound like slang. you read it quickly, you might be like, oh, that sounds like how, you know, what you would expect. But then when you actually parse it, you're like, well, do I actually know anybody who speaks like this? Is this what a human would actually say?

Or is this what AI pulling from parts of the culture, parts of like everything that's out there about what is the perception of what it sounds like to be a black woman speaking in AVE about something that she likes? It just feels like someone doing a bad impression of black women and the way that we talk online. It really reminds me a lot of what Chafika Hudson described in our episode about Ann Father's Day as she describes it as obviously racist word salad. Like there's something about this that chat GPT, the content that chat GPT spit out that just reads like a black woman impersonation. word salad. Like it makes all of the things on their own make sense. But when you zoom out and you're like, well, is that really what someone would string together if they were trying to create a social post? In my opinion, probably not. Yeah, that's really astute. I think you'd nail it. It's like a hat on a hat. Like it just goes on and on with multiple metaphors,

uh, multiple things that sound like they could be slang. But, maybe aren't. Yeah, it's, and when you zoom out, it looks like what a large language model trained on a corpus of perceptions of what black women might sound like. And again, as cringy as all of this sounds, and I know it sounds very cringy, I'm not even necessarily pointing all of this out to call out essence or any media company, because again, essence is not doing anything that I don't think any other media company out there is doing. I think this is commonplace. I think there are times when it seems more, when it is more obvious than others. But I think this is something that we're going to have to train ourselves to be aware of and critical of and be, you know, thinking about as we consume media as we go forward in this particular moment in our tech, our shared tech work.

Yeah. You know, I keep thinking about the, like, what does it mean that it packed all of those different metaphors and illusions and idioms in there? And like, maybe that's what it looks like when part of the prompt to chat GPT or one of these large language models is to try to sound like a particular group is that it just really hyper focuses on that part of the assignment. And so it just keeps like hammering on it over and over again in a really unnaturalistic way. And I also think that, you know, it's particularly salient when you're talking about the way that marginalized groups communicate with each other. You know, if you ask chat GPT to say something in a stereotypical, you know, like give it to me an AVEE or give it to me. as a gay person or I just think that it's easy to recognize when someone is being a caricature of a marginalized person when we're seeing it on television or in a movie. I don't know that it's easy to recognize it in text that is generated by AI.

But I think that the same way that we are thinking about it when we consume movies and television, we should be thinking about it, I guess, or now we, we're, should be, we're going to have to be thinking about it as we just consume content out in the world in this era going forward. Yeah, I think we've all been seeing headlines for the past, I don't know, five or six months now ever since AI really just like exploded into the public discourse with these publicly available tools. You know, we've all heard the messaging that we need to start using AI and figure out how to work AI into our professional workflows so that We can be using it more and be that much more efficient and effective and productive than people who aren't using it who are going to fall away like dinosaurs and relics.

And, you know, I think a lot of people are kind of questioning how true is that and what does that even mean. But, yeah, you can't blame essence for experimenting with it and, you know, trying to put AI to work for them. if that's what they were doing, which, you know, like you said, it seems like they probably were. So, yeah, it's not so shameful. It's probably a little embarrassing that they published something that they then had to go back and edit. But like, you know, people do embarrassing stuff all the time. So I should also say that the idea, like this post, this is not even really coming from me. As I said, I'm a former social media editor.

And so I'm still in a lot of these big, like online professional groups dedicated to social media management. and best practices and all of that. That is where I first saw this post. That is where it first came on my radar. Somebody, not me, posted a screenshot of the original Essence magazine Facebook post, put it in the group, and they were like, yo, is Essence in here? Like, this is a really weird post.

And so everybody was roasting it, so certainly wasn't just me. And the consensus of social media industry professionals was that it was written by AI. So I can't even take credit for that as an idea. I wish I could. I definitely would have seen that and thought something's up. But the reality is that a large group of social media professionals were roasting it and said it was AI. I happen to be one of them.

But this is not just coming from me. This was like an online consensus of the space. So I'm sorry. I'm sure that if you, like for Essence magazine, I'm sure that it's like difficult to hear. Nobody wants to hear that their post was being roasted by a bunch of their peers, but I hate to break it to you. That is what was going on. I'm suddenly concerned that it might have actually been written by a human who is now devastated that everyone thinks they're a robot and perhaps they're questioning themselves. You know, they should be taking one of those catchback tests that are supposed to see if you're a robot.

It's like, oh, do you dream of electric sheep? God, so hard. You always fail, though. This is like, I'm, I sometimes. I sometimes think that you might be a robot because I know when you have those tests, you're like, I guess I can't go to this website. Yeah, they're the worst. Because I feel like, yeah, I marked all of the tiles that have bridges in them.

But like, somehow I still fail. I don't know. It seems unfair. More after a quick break. Another podcast from some SNL late night comedy guy, not quite. Unhumor me with Robert Smygel and friends. Me and hilarious guests from Bob Odenkirk to David Letterman help make you funnier. This week, my guest, S&L's Mikey Day and headwriter, Streeter Seidel, help an

a cappella band with their between songs banter. Where does your group perform? We do some retirement homes. Those people are starving for banter. Listen to humor me with Robert Smigel and friends on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Run a business and not thinking about podcasting, think again. More Americans listen to podcasts than ad-supported streaming music from Spotify and Pandora. And as the number one podcaster, IHeart's twice as large as the next two combined. So whatever your customers listen to, they'll hear your message. Plus, only IHeart can extend your message to audiences across broadcast radio.

Think podcasting can help your business. Think IHart. Streaming, radio, and podcasting. Let us show you at iHeartadvertising.com. That's iHeartadvertising.com. Last night, a blown call changed a game. This morning, the internet lost its mind. Highlights are trending, opinions are flying,

and nobody's telling you exactly what happened. That's where Sports Slice comes in. I'm Timbo. Every episode, we're cutting through the noise. Breaking down the plays, the controversies, and the stories behind the headlines. We go straight to the source, the athlete themselves. Their locker room stories, their reactions, the stuff nobody gets to hear. The laughs, the drama, the triumphs, the moments that never make the highlight real.

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On Hurtle with Emily Abadi, we sit down with the most inspiring women in sports and wellness, professional athletes, coaches, and Olympic champions to talk about the challenges that shaped them and the mindset that keeps them going. from the WMBA standout Kate Martin and rising hockey star Layla Edwards. If a boy can do it, I don't see why a girl can't. Like, I've never understood that. Like, it didn't make sense in my brain.

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Okay, so this is a little bit more than just my. personal petty beef with Essence magazine because I think we're going to be seeing more and more media companies and brands using AI to communicate with their audiences. Again, I don't believe that there's anything inherently in and of itself wrong with that. In fact, I was kind of hoping, you know, when we talked about this on the podcast, that this could be a moment of media transparency, which is always a good thing. Everybody everywhere right now is talking about how we're all going to need to be using AI in our work more. You know, we need to get behind it. I can't tell you how many times that is, like, what I have heard, like, prepare yourself for the AI revolution, blah, blah,

blah. It would not surprise me if people at essence are like, oh, we need to be experimenting with how we are using AI in our work. Maybe it can make our work more efficient, effective, whatever. I did not bring it up because I thought it was some huge scandal. I did not bring it up because I wanted to embarrass essence, maybe a little bit. But, you know, publishing on social media is inherent. ridiculous and embarrassing, right? Like, I think if you are posting on public social media accounts, there's always going to be that slip up, that thing of like, that sounded really cringy.

That is part of the process. Pointing that out, pointing out the messiness and cringiness that is inherent in posting on social media is not a bad thing. In fact, I think that transparency would actually help us have a better understanding of this moment that we are in when it comes to tech and how it is going to shape how media companies and brands engage with their audiences. I think for me, it is really about transparency. You know, I was hopeful, like when I saw that, oh, busted comment that essence left on my

Instagram, I was hopeful that we were going to be getting a moment of transparency. But then they accused me, Bridget, of misreporting and spreading misinformation. And so I just can't ignore that, not just because I'm a petty bitch, which I am, but because I didn't say that it was definitely 100% definitively written by AI. I just said that I thought, in my opinion, that it seemed like it was written by AI. And it does. It still does to me. That's still my opinion. But they accused me of something that I take pretty seriously. And like I was saying before, when we're talking about marginalized communities especially,

I do think that there is a level of trust that you have with your community that you're speaking to, that is just important to honor. You know, no one wants to feel like AI is being used to mimic them or to mock them or to create a kind of cruel, hollow stereotype about how the world sees them, you know, that a piece of technology is just spitting out what they think the world thinks about how we sound. You know, that's not an authentic version of who I am. That is just a fun house mirror image of how the world sees me. know our society is so full of biases. I don't want to be kind of tricked into connecting with

a hollow false depiction that is simply recreating what our biased society already thinks about how I sound as a black woman. For the sake of argument, to be clear, I am not saying that this is what happened, but let's just say for the sake of argument that they were hiring white male social media editors who were then using AI to mimic how they thought black women spoke and black women speech patterns. I probably would not be the only person who like wasn't super comfortable with that dynamic, right? I don't like the idea of, you know, being a black woman, navigating the internet, and then engaging with or identifying with a speaker who I assume is also a black woman like me, but is actually AI.

right? Like that doesn't, that's not something that sits well with me. That's not something that makes me feel seen or comfortable. So I think it's especially when it's brands where their whole thing is about making a marginalized community feel seen and feel supported and heard and amplified. I do think there needs to be a little bit of transparency around the use of AI there, if that is what's going on. And so all of that is to say, essence, you tell me, was that weird post written by AI or was it published by a human editor? And that's how it got on Facebook. I just want to know. You accused me of misreporting something. I would be so pleased to come on here and say, looks like I got it wrong. This is the human who wrote that.

They were having a weird night. They misspelled her name. Whatever. I've been there. Part of the reason why I want to know is because I've been there. Like I, if you, like, if you want to hear some stories about like epic work fuckups on the social media account, talk to my old boss at MSNBC. She will have some stories for you because I've been there. I've done it.

So if that's what's going on, totally willing to correct the record. And even that is like a transparency thing. Like I'll never forget my second favorite social media mess up was a tweet from, I think it was the Boston Globe where they were using, they wanted to say. their authorities are investigating, but for some reason, they tweeted investafarting. And they had to come back on and be like, we're not deleting the tweet. Like, we saw the tweet. It was incorrect. But we're not deleting it because it's already been retweeted so many times that it would be pointless.

So, yeah, we're just leaving it up. And then left it up. And I respected it because a little transparency. You need it just to be like, oh, yeah, we got that wrong. Here's what happened. Our bat. move forward. That is the point of social media, not to get so defensive and then so cagey when things don't come off right. Social media is one big test kitchen of trying things and

seeing it they land and they don't always land. So just acknowledge that. So Bridget, what was your first favorite social media fuck up? Oh my God. It was the greatest day in social media history. it was when Yahoo News was reporting about the Trump administration trying to have a bigger Navy, but instead of the B in the word bigger, they used an N and they tweeted it. And when I tell you that like, even here we go, when I Google it,

one of the first things that comes up is an Essence magazine article. So Essence, you're out there doing the good reporting on social media. Like, yep, we're still laughing at Black. Twitter's jokes following Yahoo Finance's Navy tweet, right? That was, when I tell you, like, that was like one of those Twitter moments where you just had to be there. You really just had to, like, be there

in 2017 when that happened. I'll tell you this, I got no work done. That's too busy. Reading those tweets because they were too funny. That was a pretty special moment, I think. That was a pretty special moment. And, you know, again, I like Essence. I think they do good work.

Sometimes I've heard some rumors that sometimes I don't always pay for that work, but that's not me saying that. That's the internet saying that. Look it up yourself. That's what the streets say, not me. But ultimately, I think that in this moment in the intersection of media and technology, audiences deserve transparency. And audiences are smart enough to know when something's up. All of those social media professionals, nobody told them that this was AI. We were smart enough as savvy audiences to say, this doesn't sound right. Your audiences, you've got to trust them and you've got to trust trust that they are critical, savvy people.

And so I think in this moment where AI and all of this weird new stuff is happening with technology, it is imperative that media companies really trust their audiences and respect their audiences and give us a little bit of transparency. And I don't think it bodes well for how we move forward. If the little dog and pony show that is this podcast gently ribs Essence magazine about maybe using AI and like, oh, it didn't sound good, if how they respond is to get super defensive, accuse me of spreading misinformation, which I did not do, and then just like go silent.

I want this to be a dialogue. If Essence magazine can totally come on the show, but I have to say, until I get some information, some clarifying information from them, I will go to my grave believing this was written by AI. I am sorry. Like, it is my opinion.

I don't know. As I said, I have no proof. but I think that we would both be in agreement that that post didn't sound right. They edited it. Yeah. So I guess that's really the bottom line. Like this is not just about my petty beef with them.

It is about what we could expect from brands, what transparency we could expect. And I think early on we should be establishing some norms about that transparency. Right. Like I personally do think that media companies should come up with some kind of an understanding of how they will communicate when something has been generated by AI to their audiences. The same thing that we were talking about on the newscast last week,

about whether or not platforms should include a watermark when an image is AI generated. You believe that they should. Yeah, I absolutely do. I was thinking about that. You know, it's like when you have an AI generated image, like there was that one, we talked about last week of DeSantis, the DeSantis campaign posting those images of Trump,

like hugging Fouchy, there should be a watermark indicating that they're fake images, right? And it shouldn't just fall on the end user in the public to figure out what is real and what is fake. That's – but unfortunately, I guess that's kind of where we're at, right? That's like one of the key skills of literacy in 2023 is distinguishing what's real, what's fake, what was written by a robot, what wasn't. I would argue that it shouldn't be. Media literacy is important, but it shouldn't be up to your average person to be so critically engaged with the media that they mindlessly consume. That's not how media consumption always works. You'll always have that moment when you're on the toilet or just in the checkout line or you don't have it had your coffee where you see something quickly and you're like, wait, what? It should not be up to individuals to have to parse that. And I think that we need to start establishing some guardrails and some guidelines for how brands and platforms, are going to ethically and responsibly use AI going forward. And we've got to do it soon.

I think that's what this whole kerfuffle with me and essence really comes down to. You know, if I have to be the poster person for those guardrails, so be it. I'll do it. Well, good luck to you. We need it. Right? It's hard. It's hard to know.

We need some guardrails. And so Todd versus Essence, here we go, the ultimate beef. The ultimate beef. Tune into season two of beef. It'll just be like a slow burn style breakdown between me and my beef with Essence magazine. But listen, no, but in all seriousness, I want to know what folks think. I'll put a copy of the original post in the Patreon. Take a look.

I'll do a poll. You do not have to subscribe or be a paying member to see this. It'll be a public post. That's how much. want to know what y'all think. You can find the link to the Patreon to vote and see the post in the description for this episode. Do you think it was AI generated or do you not? I cannot be the only one who thinks this.

But if you really think it was just a sloppy human, I want to know that too. Let's get to the bottom of this together. In essence, call me. Got a story about an interesting thing in tech or just want to say hi? You can reach us at hello at tangoati.com. You can also find transcripts for today's episode at tangoity.com. There are no girls on the internet was created by me, Bridgettod. It's a production of IHeart Radio and unbossed creative.

Jonathan Strickland is our executive producer. Tari Harrison is our producer and sound engineer. Michael Amato is our contributing producer. I'm your host, Bridget Todd. If you want to help us grow, rate and review us on Apple Podcasts. For more podcasts from IHeartRadio, check out the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Another podcast from some SNL, late-night comedy guy. Not quite.

Unhumor me with Robert Smygel and friends. Me and hilarious guests from Bob Odenkirk to David. Letterman help make you funnier. This week, my guest, SNL's Mikey Day and head writer, Streeter Seidel, help an a cappella band with their between songs banter. Where does your group perform? We do some retirement homes. Those people are starving for banter. Listen to humor me with Robert Smigel and friends on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Life is full of hurdles. So how do you keep going? On Hurtle with Emily Abadi, we're talking with the most inspiring women in sports and wellness from professional

athletes, coaches, and Olympic champions about the challenges that shape them and the mindset that keeps them moving forward. At our level, at this scale, being able to fail in the front of the entire world. Like, I can do anything. I can do anything. Listen to Hurtle with Emily Abadi on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Presented by Capital One, founding partner of IHeart Women's Sports. Last night, a blown call changed a game. This morning, the internet lost its mind.

And nobody's telling you exactly what. happened. That's where SportsSlice comes in. I'm Timbo, and every episode, we're cutting through the noise, breaking down the biggest moments in sports and giving you the real story behind the headline. And we're going straight to the source, the athletes themselves, their locker room stories, their reactions in the moment, and the stuff nobody gets to hear. Listen to Sports Slice on the Iheart radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcast. And for more, follow Timbo Sliced Life 12 in the TikTok podcast network on TikTok. This is an IHeart podcast. Guaranteed human.