There Are No Girls on the Internet - TikTok Minstrel Shows Are Mocking Black Women Using Digital Blackface

Episode Date: June 24, 2025

Have you seen this wave of racist over the top AI generated videos featuring Black women on TikTok?  Since the release of Google’s VEO3 AI video generation platform in May, which allows users to create realistic videos from text prompts, there has been a wave of viral AI generated videos on TikTok depicting Black women using racist stereotypes and tropes.  Although the first videos were made with good intentions, their popularity has sparked copycat creators to recreate more and more extreme versions. Just like 19th-century minstrel shows reinforced a political and social climate hostile to Black people, today’s AI-driven content is being used by some to affirm a similarly hostile climate toward Black women, and prop up a political and economic system that benefits others at their expense.  Bridget studied minstrel shows in grad school, and has a lot to say about these videos that are essentially white supremacist propaganda masquerading as entertainment.  The original, not-so-bad, actually-clever video from account AI Clapback King: https://www.tiktok.com/@aiformobile/video/7512729952618286378    Conference talk about Black representation in AI, posted by AI Clapback King: https://www.tiktok.com/@aiformobile/video/7517712586712812814?_t=ZP-8xQFrwYvZqY&_r=1    EXAMPLE - Increasingly violent, decreasingly funny iteration of the original Karen video: https://www.tiktok.com/@hubbabubbablast400/video/7516178273047498015?_r=1&_t=ZP-8xQIaauZ0LX   EXAMPLE  - Big Foot (2 million views): https://www.tiktok.com/@femalebigfoot/video/7514190146695154987?_r=1&_t=ZP-8xQUzlvCtqQ    EXAMPLE - Slave Tok: https://www.tiktok.com/@cottonvlogsss/video/7514846240031444254?_r=1&_t=ZP-8xQV5CnNAQI    If you’re listening on Spotify, you can leave a comment there or email us at [e-mail]!    Follow Bridget and TANGOTI on social media! Many vids each week.   instagram.com/bridgetmarieindc/    tiktok.com/@bridgetmarieindc    youtube.com/@ThereAreNoGirlsOnTheInternet    See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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This was just basketball. So listen to Point Game on the Iheart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. There Are No Girls on the Internet is a production of IHeart Radio and Unbossed Creative. I'm Bridget Todd, and this is There Are No Girls on the Internet. I am sad to say that I think, but we are witnessing the revival of menstrual shows using AI on social media platforms like TikTok. When you actually look at what menstrual shows were and the role they played in upholding the status quo back in the day, and then look at what's happening right now with these AI-generated racist videos depicting black women on TikTok,

the similarities are shocking. Now, this is something I could talk a lot about as I was writing my thoughts for the outline for today's conversation. I said, oh, I'm at 10 pages. I'm at 12 pages. And eventually we had to say like, okay, enough pages. Like you have to put a stop to this. This is too much. So here with me to get into all of it is my producer, Mike.

Hi, Bridget. Thanks for having me here. I know this is a topic that you have studied, have a lot to say about. And so I am very interested to hear how what's going on on TikTok right now reminds you of what was happening with minstrel Joe's 100 years ago? Is that the right for the time frame that we're talking? Like 19th century, 18th and 19th century. So let's start there. Let's start with what a minstrel show is for folks

who did not spend all of their college years like pouring through this and obsessing over the minutia of minstrel shows. The minstrel show was an incredibly popular form of American theater and entertainment in the 19th century where mostly white performers would wear blackface to make themselves look like black people and portray really racist stereotypes that showed black people as like lazy, stupid buffoons. A common trope in these skits would be black folks trying and failing to become citizens where they would fail in some kind of a humorous way because they were too stupid to figure it out or too lazy. Like there would be a test they were supposed to take and they would oversleep and miss the date or something like that. And it was very much

meant to be a source of humor at black people's expense. When these shows would depict black women, we were depicted as what's known as the Sapphire caricature, which sort of shows black women as being rude, loud, malicious, aggressive, stubborn, and really overbearing. So kind of what you might think of as the angry black woman trope in the kind of media that we still see today. Now, while there were some black people who did perform in minstrel shows. Ironically, putting black face makeup on their already black faces to exaggerate their already black features, which I always found to be interesting that you'd have these black performers drawing an outline on their lips to make them look more black, even though

they have black features. I always found that to be kind of funny. That is really interesting. And it reminds me of this concept that you told me about in a different context, the idea of simulacrum, where there's like a copy of a copy and then people will make a new copy that has features that never existed in the original, but those new features become like the idea

of what the thing is. And that kind of reminds me of that a little bit, the idea that black actors would apply makeup to make themselves look the way they were supposed to look for this very particular performance. Oh, this is Bodriar's concept of simulat. Black room, absolutely, right? Where just having a black, an actual black performer on stage is not

black enough because you've been trained that what a black person is is these like exaggerated facial features and exaggerated skin tone. And so to have an actual black person on stage is not black enough. You need, in order to feel like you're really experiencing that experience, you need it to be like this like hyper exaggerated way that you've already experienced it that's completely not what an actual black person looks like that. I always sound that to be so interesting. And so while there were a few black performers who performed in

minstrel shows in blackface makeup with exaggerated features, the overwhelming and vast majority of performers in minstrel shows were white actors wearing black face makeup for the explicit purpose of portraying these racist stereotypes of black people. And it wasn't just entertainment, right?

Like people would laugh in the audience. But you were telling me before the show about the important sort of functional role that these shows had. Exactly. So they were incredibly popular as entertainment, but they served this more important purpose of reaffirming and reestablishing the political and social ideologies of the time. And they really occupied that this gray area that comes up a lot when we're talking about this kind of popular culture, this ambiguousness between humorous entertainment that's just like, oh, nothing. to think twice about, doesn't really matter, isn't really that important, is not that deep, and the functional reinforcement of white supremacy. And it really reminds me a lot of how, like, all right members use memes today. Like, everything is couched in all of this irony and all of this plausible deniability and all of this kind of wink, wink, nod, it's just a joke. But back

then, the KKK was exploiting that very same ambiguity to permeate control as the 19th century gave way to the 20th. And so, this kind of form of popular entertainment that people were just consuming mindlessly as like, oh, it's just a joke, yada, yada, yada, became a way of just reaffirming the status quo of black people as, you know, other, different, less than, and not really worthy of full citizenship, rights, things like that. And so I would argue if the popular depiction of media involving black people shows us as lazy, stupid, angry, loud, completely unable to conform to the dominant culture of like hardworking mainstream white Americans, that is such an incredibly powerful tool to uphold and reaffirm that, you know,

black folks should not be given full citizenship. Black folks should not be given full rights. Black folks cannot be integrated into white society, quote unquote. And it's almost kind of becomes this thing of like, oh, well, it's, it's not that I hate black people. It's for their own good. This attitude where it provides a kind of polite justification for it. things like segregation. Like a black person would be overwhelmed if they had a job because look how stupid they are from what I saw on this menstrual show.

It almost provides a kind of cover of these pretty grotesque, political, and social attitudes. That's so interesting to hear that history, like very tempting to think about the way the all right uses memes with irony and humor to give them that plausible deniability. It feels new, but you're saying it's not new at all. You know, it's been going on for well over 100 years, maybe longer. Oh, that's the thing about white supremacy. Like, it seems new, but it is a, it's always a page from a very well-worn playbook, just sort of reimagine for today.

And I think that's exactly what we're seeing with the proliferation of AI being used to create, what I would argue, are the 2025 equivalent of menstrual shows today, for the digital age. So even though menstrual shows in theater died out, I would argue that they are having a comeback today in the digital realm. And just like those menstrual shows of yesteryear, were used to affirm political and social ideologies under the guise of it just being entertainment and it not being that deep, I think it is no coincidence that we are seeing the rise of digital black face where non-black creators are using AI to create viral skits depicting racist black stereotypes all over TikTok today.

How did you come upon this? Because I'm not on TikTok. I haven't seen this. Tell me about these videos, Bridget. So I think I've talked about it on the show, but I took kind of a deep break from TikTok after it was temporarily banned and then came back because I just kind of hated that entire thing. I hated how the platform put up that banner thanking Trump for like bringing back TikTok and

his leadership. It felt it had big stunt energy to me and I didn't like that. Also, by the way, semi-referral. related, you might have saw in the news that Trump actually just recently pushed back the deadline to enforce a TikTok ban again. Now remember back a few years ago when TikTok was, we were being told, the biggest threat to national security so much so that it had to be banned via emergency legislation that the Supreme Court said was only justified because of the supposed severity of the threat. It don't seem like it's that big of a threat anymore. Something has changed

because the deadline to enforce this ban has been pushed back twice and now a third time just last week, which really gives you a sense of how urgent it was. Apparently, during Trump's recent talks with the president of China, TikTok didn't even come up. So, like, that's how urgent of a threat it actually is. It's truly amazing to me how rapidly that went from the biggest issue facing the country to something that people don't even talk about anymore.

Not to toot my own horn. not to get all Kara Swisher on y'all, but when they first started saying that, I said, this is a stunt. And here we are. I feel like that is coming to fruition. But in any event, that all left kind of a bad taste in my mouth. That aligned with the rise of TikTok shop, which I've talked about on the show before. I just basically was like, TikTok, the vibes are not viving. It is not for me. So imagine my surprise when I check back in with TikTok a little bit later after my deep break from the platform. And the first handful of videos I see are these over-the-top AI-generated video skits depicting black women in these very racist stereotypical ways. And it really

got me thinking about the ways that I'm seeing black women and our identities show up more and more in AI-generated content and what it says about our culture, both online and off. So the first one of these videos I saw was actually not even that bad. I don't actually think this specific video was created to be like a digital minstrel show. However, I do want to back up because I think that you could argue that anybody who is using AI to generate content they put on social media is inherently doing something unethical. This was the argument that electrical engineer and AI ethicist Azariah Cole Shepard made in our episode that we'll link back to back in 2020, when all of these AI-generated kind of futuristic-looking selfies were all over Facebook.

People were, like, changing their Facebook picture to be these AI-generated images. She basically argued that anybody who is using AI to make art is inherently stealing from human artists, and there is no ethical way to participate in that. An argument that, frankly, I am personally, like, sympathetic to. What's funny about that episode, though, going back and listening to it, is that she made this great point, this was back in 2022, that people should be very, very wary about feeding their likeness voluntarily into this random AI platform to generate like a cute Facebook picture because that platform is definitely using your image to train their AI.

This was back in 2022 when she was warning against this. And now here we are in 2025 and people are saying things like, wow, the AI is so good. It can generate these hyper-realistic depictions of black women that I can't even tell her AI. And it's like, yeah, hon, you gave it your picture. Of course it can. I think it's one of the. quirks of having done this show for five years because you get to really cover when people are warning about something and then five years later cover the inevitable fallout that's like, oh, the thing these people were warning about is happening now. It makes me feel like I wish we'd done a better job of warning, but I guess that's the nature of

these things. We made that episode. We made that episode, you know, we did what we could. So there are all kinds of reasons to inherently not love this specific use of AI. Like, even if this person is not trying to use AI to create, you know, racist depictions of black women, which he says he is explicitly not trying to do, and it's pretty clear from his work that that is the case. There are all kinds of reasons to not necessarily love this dynamic, including what we know about the astronomical amount of energy that AI uses.

Like, it's hard for me not to feel some type of way about wanting to use this much energy to create a stupid skit on TikTok. But in any event, the first one of these AI-generated skits with black women video that I saw really take off on TikTok depicted a black woman in a mall when a white older woman comes up to her to confront her about her hair. I love my natural hair. That hair isn't real. Death is seeking you at the bingo table. I almost kind of get what the creator of this video is going for in this particular instance. It's almost kind of an AI depiction of what the friend. call the wit of the staircase, which is a phrase I've always loved, the idea that a black woman

would have the absolute perfect retort to this rude white woman to put her in her place, right? And I can actually see how this specific video that really jump started all these other videos was actually an attempt to affirm things that I think are positive depictions of black womanhood, like us being quick with our words, us being poised, the idea of being able to read somebody and put them in their place with a clever retort. Like, hello, if you ever watched Dynasty, which if you're too young, ask your parents, because they were definitely watching it.

Diane Carroll's character as this, like, classy, wealthy, take no prisoners, Dominique Devereaux, always knew what to say, to use her words to put, like, wealthy white ladies in their place while remaining poised and classy and wealthy. Like, I think this is a video that is meant to evoke that aspect of black womanhood.

And I think it is meant to make us feel good, positive. Be like, yay, this AI black woman really knew what to say to put this white woman in her place. It was created by a black creator who said that he is interested in seeing more representation of black identity in AI. I watched a little bit of a talk that he did at a conference about how to make money from AI,

a point I want to come back to in a moment. But here's what he had to say. I remember when they were created photos in artificial intelligence and they asked the artificial intelligence to create them four pictures of a beautiful woman. All four of those pictures were not African-American women. Let's say like that. We're not. So I felt like I needed to change that. So I decided to work with a lot of AI organizations and companies that helped them create melanated people to create hair textures, to make sure that

that they don't make our women look too aggressive. To put light on body positivity, all women have different shapes. All women hair is going to be different. It's okay to have flaws. These are the things that I fight for on the back end. So obviously, that sounds nice. And I am aligned with his overall point

about more inclusion needed in any and all tech spaces. I'm broadly aligned. aligned with what are you saying. But personally, I am still uncertain. Like when I think about the kind of representation that I want an AI, I want more representation in terms of who is making decisions about how AI is made, how it is impacting people, especially marginalized people. I don't necessarily need or even want this to be translated into us being the ones who are depicted and thus being sort of consumed in AI content because I feel that that really mirrors the exact same way that we're treated in media now, which I don't think is equal.

We are historically the thing that is being consumed by others, while also historically not being in charge of the production or getting an equal share of the revenue of that thing. So just like in sports, film, music, et cetera. And I am not super interested in recreating that same dynamic using AI. So I want to be clear that I am talking about a black person who makes content depicting other black people using AI. Obviously, that does not necessarily mean that this one creator is immune to harmful depictions of black women. Let's not forget, podcasts like Fit and Fresh are run by black men and they push some of the most harmful lies about black women that I've ever heard. But to be clear, I do not think this specific AI creator is trying to use AI to depict black women

in a negative or stereotypical light to make fun of us. And again, to be clear, it's pretty clear from his work that that is not what he's trying to do. He's trying to do the opposite. But because that AI video got almost 10 million views and his platform on TikTok, the AI Clapback King is growing because of that virality. Of course, this sparked several copycats who are now taking this kind of content to the extreme in ways that are like super obviously explicitly racist. Let's take a quick break.

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the worst advice from the dumbest people you know. Listen to Help from Hypocrite as part of the Mike Coutura podcast network available on the I-HartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. At our back. So we're talking about these viral racist AIs featuring black women that are all over TikTok and how the first iteration of one of these viral videos

I actually don't think was meant to be racist. But that other creators really buoyed by the success of that initial viral video really took that format and ran with it, went extreme with it. and we're absolutely trying to be racist. Now, this is a tried and true thing that we have seen about the way

that AI content takes off online. Like, Mike, do you remember seeing Shrimp Jesus on Facebook? Yeah, I do. That felt like a good use of AI. Better than this for sure. So Shrimp Jesus was this AI slout that was all over Facebook for a while. And, you know, with AI, people pump out all kinds of weird stuff.

Something hits. And then they just pump out more and more and more exaggerated versions of that first iteration of the thing that hit because they found success and they just want to like see if they can duplicate that over and over and over again. So at first, it's just an AI image of Jesus Christ riding a giant shrimp. But at the end, it's like Jesus and he's entirely made out of shrimp and he has like lobster legs and crawled arms and like little shrimpy crustacean disciples and stuff all around him. Like it's just like a more and more exaggerated version of that first thing that initially. hit with a little bit of virality on social media. And I feel that's like what AI is really good at, just taking something and making it more and more extreme and absurd.

It was pretty funny, but it also felt kind of like harmless, you know, like Jesus and shrimp were not actually being harmed in that series of video. Well, that's the thing. Like it's one thing when it's something that's nonsensical or silly, like a picture of Jesus made out of shrimp, It is another when we are talking about potentially harmful depictions of historically marginalized people that affirm existing political or social ideologies or stereotypes.

So even though the original originator of these kinds of videos is black, I know for a fact that a lot of the people who are making them now, who are kind of doing that sort of extreme version, are not black. And I would call that digital blackface where non-black people, are using online tools like AI to depict black identity in these highly racist, highly exaggerated, highly stereotypical ways that can be really harmful and also are used to reaffirm existing political or social ideologies or worldviews. Like, I am super comfortable saying these videos are using this format to intentionally depict black women and black people in ways that are racist. It is not an accident.

So let's watch a few more to get a sense of what I'm talking about. So this video is a take on the first iteration of that video that I talked about earlier. Ooh, look at me slam my curly wave blonde wig. That's not your natural color, bitch. The only color you should be worried about is which color palette they're going to use on you at the morgue. So it's the same setup, a black woman walk, an AI generated black woman being like, ooh, I love this hair, some pretty egregious A-A-A-V-E going on in this video. But then a white woman comes up to her, says, like, that's not your natural hair color.

It ends in a threat of violence, and the black woman actually lunges at the white lady who is talking shit about her hair. And so, again, you can see how in the first iteration of that video, the woman is just able to, like, check the white lady who's talking shit about her hair with like a cutting phrase and go on about her day. In this one, but not only is the woman more exaggerated, her response is like a threat of violence and a

violent attack. We've really ratcheted up the ratchet, so to speak. Yeah, and the thing that got ratcheted down was the quality of the joke, because that first joke, death is waiting for you at the bingo table. That is so much better than the second one about what color palette at the morgue. That's weak.

That's the thing is that that initial video is, I think it's like I get what they're going for. It's like clever. This is hardly even a joke. And it actually gets even worse because another iteration of the sort of AI-generated

racist videos on TikTok is this very popular account where it's female Bigfoot and basically it depicts a gorilla like Bigfoot as a black woman. So here's one of the videos

I've got two million views on TikTok. What's up, bitches, it's Bigfoot with hand, the baddest bitch in the woods. Part-time cryptic, full-time problem. Don't follow me if you're scared of flees. So talk about exaggerated. It is a big foot with like blonde extensions wearing like a pink bikini and speaking like you just heard. And there's, I mean, there's not even real. The joke is just like black women are animals.

Like black women are ghetto and black women are animals. Like that like, that's the joke in quotation marks. Yeah, it's not much of a joke. I mean, that's the thing about racist content like this is that they're barely even jokes. So when people are like, oh, it's just a joke, what is the joke? You know what I'm saying? Like, they're barely even jokes.

There's an entire bucket of this kind of content that is AI generated, which people are calling slave talk, which essentially is meant to show enslaved people on plantations, but it reimagined if they had social media and we're doing vlogs. Here's one example. Some of y'all think it's hard doing what I do. Some of y'all are all so lazy, so that could be why.

Masa got us working an extra hard today, but that's fine with me, as long as I'm getting dinner tonight. So that's obviously meant to show this idea that, like, slavery wasn't that bad, and that enslaved people were actually happy to be enslaved, which is a very common trope that we saw in minstrel shows that was used to really try to convince people who might otherwise be abolitionists that slavery was actually good for black people.

It gave them food. It gave them stability. It gave them housing. You know, they didn't really mind it. They were always like smiling and dancing and happy. And so it is very funny to me how AI is being used to say the literal exact same thing. Folks were saying to affirm that slavery wasn't that bad 200 years ago.

And again, there was no joke. there at all. Like it wasn't even trying to be funny. It was just deserving that purpose. Exactly. And so when people say, oh, it's not that deep. It's just a joke. Again, like, I would love to, I'm, like, missing the joke. I'm not seeing the joke. Now, there was no joke. Some of these slave talk videos also depict enslaved people doing, like, very explicitly racist, stereotypical stuff, like eating watermelon and drink grape Kool-Aid, like, over-the-top racist imagery. There's also AI videos of black women eating lots and lots of fried chicken as part of like muckbangs, those videos where you eat a lot of food, and even AI-generated criminals vlogging violent crime sprees.

So as bad as those are, I will say that not all of these AI-generated videos on TikTok are over-the-top explicitly racist skits. Some are just really stupid. like AI versions of Tyler Perry morality players. I saw one where it was a black mom telling her black daughter to wash the dishes. And the black daughter was like, no, I don't want to wash the dishes. And it ends with her mom being, like her mom's funeral essentially. So it's a lot of like very simple morality play stories.

If I'm being honest, like I hate to say this, but I'm sorry. just true. It's the kind of content that I know absolutely fucking hits with some people in my family. Like, when I look at some of my auntie's Facebook feeds, it's covered with this kind of AI-generated morality play skits. And they love it. They don't care that it's AI. They don't care that it's not real. They just like to see their worldviews reaffirmed in these skits. And again, I'm not talking about a implicitly racist skits, just if the worldview could be, kids don't have any respect today. You know, if that's a worldview you hold, if you're watching an AI-generated garbage skit that reaffirms that, you're going to like it.

And one of the reasons why I am not super surprised by how popular this kind of content has gotten is because of the absolute chokehold that skit culture on social media had, even before the rise of the AI skit that we're seeing now. It is something I've been screaming about for a really long time, how people were making money off of creating skits on TikTok and Facebook that depicted things that never happened. And I'm not talking about obviously fictionalized skits like you might see on Saturday Night Live or Portlandia. I mean skits that you see on social media that are intentionally blurring the line between fiction and reality to try to get viewers to think they are watching footage that somebody captured on their cell phone of something that really happened, even though they're not. even though these are actors in a skit that's been set up. You've probably seen a million of these on social media

and maybe not thought too much about it. Have you seen these? Yeah, I have definitely seen these where it'll be like some kind of fake confrontation where somebody gets their comeuppance or has a really good rhetoric or something. Yeah, I don't know how common they are or if my phone just thinks that that's content I like.

I always feel a little like guilty and dirty when I like that sort of like somebody got to come up kind of skit, like, I guess sort of similar to those morality plays that you were talking about. But, yeah, they happen a lot. Well, so again, I don't really care that much. You know, people love morality plays. I'm obsessed with Judge Judy because I love, I find the formula of someone getting, you know, getting comeuppance to be satisfied to watch over and over and over again.

You know, I don't love the idea of people not being able to tell a real situation from a fake situation and getting legitimately worked up over a fictional scenario or whatever. But I think there is a line where these skits go from really stupid entertainment that isn't hurting anybody to legit harmful. And that line is when they are used to affirm a harmful existing worldview that actually ends up endangering marginalized people. For instance, there was a very common skit format on TikTok for a while, but I've seen a lot less of it lately, go figure, where it was attacking trans, trans, people or like the idea of transness or queerness in classrooms. So these videos would purport to show situations that would be described as like mom has had enough of trans teacher pushing her agenda

on her kid and then it would show a woman coming in and yelling at a teacher who we are who we are as the audience is to assume as trans. But then you would see another video where you'd see that same woman that we were just told is an angry mom. But this time she's a true. transparent who is yelling at a teacher for telling her kid the truth that there are only two genders or something. Like these incredibly staged skits in staged classrooms that are meant to affirm sort of an existing attitude around trans folks. And again, you can't act like this kind of content is popping off in a vacuum because it is actually happening against the backdrop of trans and queer folks being threatened, targeted, criminalized, and so on. So, of course, skit after skit after skit that makes them look threatening or foolish is going to be used to provide justification for the kinds of anti-trans bigotry that we see today only masked as entertainment. So again, there isn't necessarily anything inherently wrong with this kind of content, but the issue is that people either can't tell that they're skits or maybe worse, don't even really care that they're skits.

They are just thinking this is mindless entertainment on their phone and that the casual viewer is probably not stopping to think about the impact this kind of content. has, especially if it is reaffirming a worldview that they already might hold. That's something we've talked about a lot on this show is like one of the most dangerous aspects of AI is the way it's facilitating a further breakdown of people's ability to distinguish what's real from what isn't. I feel like that comes up again and again when we're talking about the risks and harms that are currently existing on the internet and potentially getting worse now that AI is getting so much better, so much cheaper and more accessible. Exactly. And so with AI, you can really create this kind of content at scale. And if you already think

that black women are loud, ghetto, violent, et cetera, et cetera, it sort of does not matter that these skits are obviously not real, because they still reinforce that belief whether they are real or not. 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 Jim Gaffigan to Bob Odenkirk to David Letterman, help make you funnier.

This week, my guest, SNL's Mikey Day and head writer Streeter Seidel, help an acapella band with their between songs banter. The worst singer in the group. The worst? Yeah. Me. Is there anything to the idea that because you're from Harvard, uh,

you only got in because you're, Parents made a huge donation. The group. The yard birds, right? That's the name. The Harvard Yardt. They're open. Do you have a name suggestion?

We're open. Since you guys are middle age, one erection. Listen to humor me with Robert Smigel and Friends on the I-Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. Humor me. I need some jokes to make me seem funny. and not thinking about podcasting, think again.

More Americans listen to podcasts than ads supported streaming music from Spotify and Pandora. And as the number one podcaster, IHearts 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 IHeart. Streaming, radio, and podcasting.

Let us show you at iHeartadvertising.com. That's IHeartadvertising.com. What's up, fam, it's Isaiah Thomas. And I'm C.J. Toledano, and our podcast Point Game is about defying the odds. Like LeBron heading into the playoffs without Luca and Austin Reed. And finding ways to win no matter what. He's the smartest player to ever play the game. His IQ is at a level that we've never seen before.

And he knows without Luca and Austin Reeves, I got to manipulate the game. We get a player's perspective on the challenges of the playoffs. I think Joker's going to be exhausted this series because when they don't have Rudy in the lineup, He has to really guard guys like Nas Reid. He has to guard Julius Randall. And then he has to give us everything he gives us on the night-to-night basis on offense. And when IT's friends stop by, like Quentin Richardson,

we dive into some playoff history too. Steve Nass would get that thing. That man, hell get the flying. He running up the court, licking his fingers why he got the ball. After you go through a training camp with that, Isaiah, you figure it out real quick. Get your ass up and down the court,

and you're going to get the ball. So listen to Point Game on the I. Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, I'm Jared Adano. You might know me as that loud guy who yells out, help on the internet. Help! Somebody! Please! But there's so much more to me than me.

I'm an actor. I'm a comedian. And recently, I've become quite the helper myself. And on my new podcast, Hope from a Hippocrat, I'll be changing lives, helping people in need with my sage advice and thoughtful solutions. Sike! I'm a comedian. I'm not qualified.

to give good advice. Join me and my comedian friends as we riff rant and recommend some of the most legally dubious advice known to man. If I'm calling you, even if you're on your phone, let it ring twice. One ring is too scary. Oh, cream a chicken suit. Hey, cream. Cream a chicken suit. This is Help from a Hypocrite, the worst advice from the dumbest people you know. Listen to Help from Hypocrite as part of the MyCultura podcast network available on the IHart Radio app, or wherever you get your podcasts. Let's get right back into it.

In the comments of one of those videos I watched of a black woman threatening a white woman who was talking about her hair, someone in the comments wrote, why are they, all caps, so aggressive? And you know, as a black person on the internet, I know exactly who they is in that comment. And like, even though this video was AI,

that does not depict any real human, black or otherwise, it still reaffirmed the idea that black women are like this. And that commenter's comment just further reaffirms that to anybody reading that comment. Now, I also, I mean, not to get too down the rabbit hole more than I already am, because you know I can talk about this forever. Then I was thinking, like, is it possible that that comment is a bot? Like, dead internet theory, is this bots making bot content for bot commentators? Is it just like bots the whole way down?

It does make one crazy, but also I don't think you're crazy for thinking that. There's a lot of bots, yeah. But maybe it doesn't even matter. Like if, you know, if some human reads that comment, it still has an impression on them, regardless of who wrote that comment, what their intention was. It gets pretty circular in ways that quickly become disorienting.

This reminds me, this is an aside, but on Instagram, I made a video about like not trusting AI content. And somebody left me a comment that was like, I mean, aren't pretty rich for you to say, aren't you AI? And I thought, and literally, I'm not even kidding for a minute. I was like, am I? You would be the last to know. Like, that's what I'm saying. Like, I was sort of like, I thought I had a childhood and parents. and like I thought I like had gotten blood drawn at the doctor.

But then I was like, if you were AI, you probably wouldn't know you were AI. So that that comment was like, am I AI? And then I have to say I was weirdly sort of flattered that she thought I was AI that this is probably revealing all kinds of messed up ways about the way I think. But I was like, oh, if I'm AI, that means like my skin must be looking good and my hair must be looking good and I must be sounding, you know, well spoken or something. I'm not making all kinds of ticks and likes and beeps and bloops like. I must be really on my game if she thinks I'm AI.

I don't know, Bridget. I don't think aspiring to be AI is the right direction here. I feel there might be some negative consequences of that. I'm not saying I'm aspiring to be AI. I just thought that thinking, getting confused that I am AI, because like AI doesn't get zits. You know, AI doesn't have like bad skin. I was like, oh, this must be like, I don't know.

I was weirdly flattered and it's probably not worth unpacking why that. is let's just move on. We need to move on. This is unsettling. It's just what an AI would say. I feel like this every time I have to do a CAPTC, I'm so bad at CAPTCHAs. Oh, you're bad at CAPTCHAs to the point that I think that you are a robot. It makes me wonder.

And the instructions often are like, confirm your humanity. And then I fail the test. It's like deeply threatening and upsetting. Oh, my gosh. I mean, talk about like bot stock. to bots. I'm AI. I'm making a podcast with my bot producer. Like, it's all bots that the whole way down. And it's all for that one human listener out there. We know who you are. This is all for you. So even if these are bots, you know, responding to this commentary and it's all just bots the whole way down and, you know, there's no human black women being depicted in these AI generated viral videos, that's,

does not mean that they aren't saying something about our culture. And just like that rise in popularity in minstrel shows was against the backdrop of a very real, very dark, difficult, political and social climate for black folks in the United States, coinciding with the rise of Jim Crow after the end of Reconstruction, I would argue that these racist AI skits are taking off in popularity at a time when black people's contributions to history are being literally are raised at the federal level. Black women, black folks of color, we are all being attacked and threatened in new and increasing ways every day. You know, there was this really meaty piece in ProPublica that I'll link in the show notes just because it's like a fascinating piece of journalism

and I love ProPublica about how Trump and Musk's doge and all their pundance attacks on so-called DEI was really an attack on black women with stable federal government jobs. And that these attacks targeted and are still targeting the government careers of highly educated civil servants, even though many of these people, their jobs didn't have anything to do with DEI. They were not connected or involved with DEI in any capacity. Their careers were derailed under this false premise that they were diversity hires, despite having nothing to do with DEI, and instead have everything to do with just being black women and becoming an easy target for an administration hostile to marginalized people.

Right. And so if all of that is happening at the same time where we have this rise of this new form of digital media that uses AI to reaffirm hurtful, harmful stereotypes about black women like me, about how we're not able to behave ourselves in polite society, how we can't really figure out a way to solve conflicts without resorting to violence, how we really are like loud and obnoxious and stupid and aggressive and all of these things, when you hear about real life black women getting pushed out of their stable and place. people might think, well, maybe it's for the best because they're not suited for that work anyway. Just like we saw with menstrual shows of yesteryear. I do think that this kind of content is not a coincidence, but this kind of content is rising in popularity against the backdrop of all of these other social and political attacks on black women. It's simply using AI to reaffirm this worldview that real-life human women are not self-actualized human beings, where it's a collection of tropes and stereotypes and characters who really don't have a place in like mainstream modern society. When you actually sit down and think about it, it's incredibly harmful.

And I think it contributes to an incredibly hostile environment for black women, both online and off. It feels like white supremacy has been ascended over the past few years, you know, in pretty scary ways. And this AI is just being used to reinforce that. And there is a time when social media. platforms were more aggressive than they are today, it seems, in fighting this kind of stuff. And we know that I think all of the platforms have really loosened or in some cases

eliminated their moderation around this stuff. TikTok also in a weird changing situation right now. But with these videos being so harmful, aren't they against TikTok's community guidelines? Well, not technically, but maybe. So these kinds of videos are not technically against TikTok's moderation policies because they do disclose that they're AI. However, TikTok's community guidelines do say that videos that traffic in stereotypes about protective classes are not eligible to be on people's 4U page recommendations. However, since these videos are all over my 4U page, TikTok is clearly not moderating these videos in that way. They could, but they're definitely not.

Maybe they should. Maybe they should. I mean, I would argue that having a racist Bigfoot skit that depicts Bigfoot as a black woman, it's probably not making your platform any better. You don't have to, like, say people can't make videos like that. I personally don't think people should make videos like that. But TikTok can allow people to make those videos, but they don't have to amplify them by putting them on people's four you pages,

by allowing people to monetize them. There are all kinds of ways that they can illustrate that this is not something that we think makes our platform a better space that is not preventing people from making these kinds of videos if that's how they choose to spend their time. Absolutely. Because we're talking about the For You page,

the platforms are not neutral in deciding what videos get boosted and don't get boosted, right? Like every single platform is making active decisions about what types of videos take off and don't. And so if you're seeing that Bigfoot video, it's because they are actively deciding to allow it to be boosted. And not only that, you know,

as we talked about with the Jesus shrimp metaphor, when one of these videos gets 5 million views, six million views, it only encourages other people to make similar videos. So by allowing it to get, rack up lots of views on people's FYP pages, is you are only ensuring that more people make this kind of content. And if it's not that kind of content you want flooding your platform,

if I were running that platform, I'd probably do something about it, especially when you have multiple avenues of doing something about it at your disposal. Yeah, so maybe this is a good sponsor transition into the tech that's behind this, because even just a few months ago, I feel that AI video creation software from prompts really wasn't quite there yet, but it seems like something has changed that's allowing all of these videos to flood the algorithm. Well, that thing that has changed is probably Google's V-O-3, which is Google's latest AI video generation model, which is designed to create realistic videos from

text prompts with the added capability of incorporating synchronized audio like dialogue, sound effects, and music. With this kind of technology, creators can push out content like this at scale. It came out about a month ago, and it's really been taking off since then. I will say it's one of those AI models where people were like, this is going to change everything. Every animator is going to lose their job. Every actor is going to be out of a job because of this technology. It was a lot like the conversation around Google's kind of audio version of this, notebook L.M, which can create sort of very realistic sounding podcasts out of any kind of text prompt. Everybody said the same thing, like, this is going to change everything. Podcasters are all going to

out of a job. AI is going to be doing podcasts. Human podcasters are all going to get fucked. But guess what? Y'all are listening to me right now, not an AI version of me that I know of. So I don't think that tool from Google actually changed everything just yet, considering I'm still a human, as far as I know, hosting this podcast. Yeah, as far as I know, can confirm, you are still a human. More after a quick break. Another podcast from some SNL, late-night comedy guy, not quite. Unhumor me with Robert Smy and friends, me and hilarious guests from Jim Gaffigan to 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. There's the worst singer in the group? The worst? Yeah. Me. Is there anything to the idea that because you're from Harvard, you only got in because your parents made a huge donation. To the group. The yarn herds.

right? That's the name. The Harvard Yard, but they're open. Do you have a name suggestion? We're open. Since you guys are middle-aged, one erection. Listen to humor me with Robert Smigel and Friends on the I-Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. Huber me. I need some jokes to make me seem funny.

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, IHearts 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 IHeart.

Streaming, radio, and podcasting. Let us show you at iHeartadvertising.com. That's iHeartadvertising.com. What's up, fam? This Isaiah Thomas. And I'm C.J. Toladano, and our podcast's point game is about defying the odds. like LeBron heading into the playoffs without Luca and Austin Reed. And finding ways to win no matter what.

He's the smartest player to ever play the game. His IQ is at a level that we've never seen before. And he knows without Luca and Austin Reeves, I got to manipulate the game. We get a player's perspective on the challenges of the playoffs. I think Joker's going to be exhausted this series because when they don't have Rudy in the lineup, he has to really guard guys like Nas Reid.

He has to guard Julius Randall. And then he has to give us every. everything he gives us on the night-to-night basis on offense. And when IT's friends stop by, like Quentin Richardson, we dive into some playoff history too. Steve Nass would get that thing. That man, hell get the flying. He running up the court, licking his fingers why he got the ball.

Like, after you go through a training camp with that, Isaiah, you figure it out real quick. Get your ass up and down the court, and you're going to get the ball. So listen to Point Game on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, I'm Jordanano. as that loud guy who yells out, help on the internet. Help! Somebody! Please!

But there's so much more to me than me. I'm an actor. I'm a comedian, and recently, I've become quite the helper myself. And on my new podcast, Hope from a Hypocrite, I'll be changing lives, helping people in need with my sage advice and thoughtful solutions. Sike, I'm a comedian. I'm not qualified to give good advice. Join me and my comedian friends as we riff rant and recommend some of the most Legally dubious advice known to man. If I'm calling you, even if you're on your phone, let it ring twice.

One ring is too scary. Oh, cream a chicken suit. Hey, cream a chicken suit. This is Help from a Hypocrite, the worst advice from the dumbest people you know. Listen to Help from Hypocrat as part of the Mike Cultura Podcast Network available on the IHart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Let's get right back into it. Google's V-O-3 has really taken off with creators online trying to use this platform to create everything from AI skits to AI muckbangers to AI influencers. I am in a few spaces online for like women in AI and so many of them are asking for help learning about how to create AI influencers that they hope they can monetize via brand deals or even AI only fans models to do.

like explicit sexual content. Side note, only fans doesn't actually allow AI content unless it's from a registered human creator in sort of that person's likeness. So you couldn't just theoretically make an AI only fans model and then start raking in money on OnlyFans. However, other similar platforms do have different rules around that. But in a lot of these spaces designed for women

and other people to learn about AI, so much of it is like, how can I create an AI, avatar or influencers to make money. Like people are treating this like a business enterprise. Makes sense. People would want to monetize this. And it seems like a good way to get rich quick. If you could spin up 100 or 1,000 different influencers,

all of them out there, racking up followings and selling products. But are people actually making money from doing that? Great question. So there are definitely big-name AI influencers who have been around for a long time. like the very first AI-generated influencer, Little Michaela, who came out in 2016, who we've previously talked about on the show. I am certain that she makes tons of money for the people who created her, which is a duo. She has done brand deals for huge brands like Chanel. She's done like collabs with like human celebrities. She's huge. However, she was really the first one and she's been,

she's like the OG who's been in the game the longest. It has been difficult. for me personally to confirm that normal people who have not been doing this since 2016 are making real money on AI influencers right now. Like nine years later when AI is more ubiquitous, I don't know that people are actually

making real money from doing that. That doesn't mean that they're not. I'm saying I personally have not seen any evidence of it. What I am seeing is people who are sort of betting that there is real money to be made soon and wanting to be ahead of the curve by getting in on it now and like,

learning about it now and citing it up now, which like, I can't even really fault them for that. It makes sense to me. It's also kind of hard to say because so much of the conversation right now feels a little bit scamy. And by scammy, I mean it's a lot of pay me to teach you how to make money setting up an AI influencer vibe. So everybody is talking about how much big money they're making, how much money there is in this enterprise and, you know, all of that. But I cannot say, that I have personally seen evidence of all of this big money made. And of course, if you're trying to get people to pay you because you're the expert of making money at something, of course you're going to say, oh, the business is booming. I'm making so much money hand over fist. I cannot confirm that.

I can't deny it either, but I cannot confirm it myself. And it does kind of remind me of the way that people talked about other kinds of online side hustles to make money, like drop shipping or creating Canva templates or creating online courses that you sell. Like everybody was really looking for a way to passively generate money online. And so you would see all of these side hustles popping up all over social media, and then eventually the hustle will turn into, I'm not selling Canva,

I'm selling a toolkit to teach people how they can make money doing Canva. And I always sort of sniff that out as like a little bit of a get-rich-quick scheme. And so I'm not saying that nobody out there is making money off of AI influencing, but just something about the way people are talking about it gives me pause.

The same way that people will talk about drop shipping as using technology to get a little money to make cheap junk that nobody really needs. I feel that the way that people are talking about AI content is a bit similar. Like, how can I use this powerful tool to make a little bit of money pushing cheap AI garbage slop that doesn't make anybody better informed, but maybe provide somebody a quick, cheap dopamine hit? So yeah, I can't really confirm or deny that there is big money to be made here. But in my opinion, the smell I'm getting off of this is a little bit of a desperate.

get rich quick scheme. I also have to wonder if that does turn out to be something that works, that people, regular, people want to see AI generated influencers on their feeds, meta is going to take all of that, right? Like, they're already trying out AI characters in your social network to talk to you. And I don't really see how this is all that different from what they're, trying to do. And so if there's a nut to be cracked here, as soon as somebody figures it out, Meta's going to just take it and it will be theirs. Well, it's funny that you mentioned this because

we actually have an episode about this coming up about, I mean, Meta tried this back in January. They were rolling out these AI chatbot character Instagram profiles. And wouldn't you know it? The first one they started with was a black queer woman. And the outcry about that, everybody, it was a collective thumbs down, a collective boo, we hate it, we hate it, we hate it, we hate it. Then Zuckerberg was like, oh, JK, we actually just rolled that out by mistake.

It wasn't meant to go live, and we pulled it. We just bullied him right out of that. But people, I mean, Mark Zuckerberg has been saying that he thinks the future of social media is AI, that it's AI avatars, AI content, AI influencers,

everything AI, and that we will be really satisfied and happy in a future where a big chunk of our relationships and people that we connect with is AI and not our human friends and a human community. And so I do think like it does seem to be the future that tech leaders who are poised to make more money on it are pushing for sure. Whether it's a future that solves an actual need or creates actual value, I don't know if I agree with that. And I just kind of hate that the big use case of AI that people are jumping all over right now, is like, how can I displace black human creators and voices to make AI creations that traffic

and harmful racist stereotypes to make a quick buck? To be clear, META's Black Woman chatbot also, I would argue, did traffic in stereotypes. Like she spoke to AVAVE. She was really for someone who is not human, really taking a lot of liberties around black identity. And yeah, so I do think it's all kind of relational. in terms of like it's not just you know joe blow AI contact creator it's also Mark fucking Zuckerberg right so many people want all the value of an expansive capitalist enterprise without the expense of humans being part of it if that's what the world is heading towards

the ordinary people who are trying to hustle and like throw together an AI avatar, they're not going to be the ones who benefit from that. It's going to be the Zuckerbergs and the musks of the world. Absolutely. And already tech leaders are betting on this being the future of content. Gizmodo reported about this last week was the end of the con festival. And the CEO of YouTube, Neil Mohan, spoke. And basically he said that YouTube is doubling down on this as the big bet for the future of creators on the platform. And they're basically for their shorts, for YouTube, shorts, they are going to be partnering with Google's V-O-3 AI generator. So it's going to be like a one-stop shop for easily creating this kind of AI generated video content. And so you're

absolutely right that tech leaders are really betting on this being the future of the creator economy. Yeah, a creator economy without creators. Well, so, you know, that black creator who made the first big viral Karen video that we were talking about, the one that I was like, oh, it's not so bad. He actually said things that more people need to be using AI to make depictions of black women and black people that are not rooted in stereotypes. He actually created a kind of AI call to action, wherein these black AI avatars all came together to the band better representation of black AI avatars.

Here's what they had to say. It's crazy how people are now using AI to make the black woman look mean and aggressive. And I'm sure these TikTok accounts don't. be from people like us. I get it. It's just AI and fun, but making racist slaves videos or having us black women prompts to fight white old ladies is just a bit too much. I'm going to enforce others to make more prompts like me.

Stop sitting around and get into AI and make more prompts like us and to help show black beauty. We can use AI to make black women prompts just to show beauty and black women doing positive things, thankful for being created from a prompt. Because AI just don't like to show many melated women and feel like AI still holds some type of impression on black culture. See, people use AI to make us look bad, but we should look good.

Even talking about this kind of makes me feel like I'm stone. Like, I just don't know how I feel about this. And I guess I do want a future where we can expect thoughtful AI depictions of ourselves that are not rooted in harmful racist stereotype. So I applaud this creator for being interested in an investment. in the way that black folks are depicted using AI. However, I also want a future where we can expect better for ourselves than just a more thoughtful, nuanced depiction of ourselves in this AI

that, like, we know is displacing and threatening actual black folks in places like Tennessee because they use so much energy, right? Like, I don't know that this is the kind of representation that I actually want when it comes to AI. Like, I'm glad he's, I'm glad he is starting. the conversation, but something about this just doesn't feel like liberation to me. So it seems like Google's new tool is allowing this to happen. Do you see them doing anything to try to rein this in? So this was a question that was posed by the TikTok creator Robert

Tulpe, whose video really helped me in like working through and thinking through all of this. He said that he didn't really see Google doing anything about this because there is nothing that might impact Google's bottom line financially, nor provide them any kind of meaningful, bad press. Even though there are certainly ways that Google could keep their platform from being used to create this kind of imagery, maybe not entirely, but there are some guardrails they could do. I get that it might not be super simple. Like I remember when Dali first came out, the guardrails were really over the top to the point where it was difficult to get it to generate any images of black folks at all. So clearly that's not the right solution. But facilitating

infinite copycat videos where each copy gets slightly more racist and extreme than the one before it is not a solution either. It's like the opposite of a solution. And as a company who was making this kind of technology, Google really does have the responsibility to make sure that it's not being used to like increasingly harm us. And I guess that is one of the reasons I wanted to make this episode. I think that the leaders at Google know this kind of thing is like being used to harm marginalized people, but it's not like black women really have a loud voice when it comes to technology. So what kind of bad press could it really get them, right? Probably not a lot. I think that is the calculation being made. But I think that they should be legitimately embarrassed

that this kind of technology that they are making and banking on being the linchpin of the future of our global economy is being used to create this kind of garbage right now. Like, why are we not associating Google with these racist AI black Bigfoot videos that Google is being used to create? Like, it is their creation, right? Like, why are we not associating these two things? I think that we should be. Like, if I had a direct line to Sundar Pachai, the head of Google, I would show him these videos,

and I would ask him if this is what he has in mind for the use of this tool. And does he think that creating AI Bigfoot as these racist caricatures of black women like me is making the internet a better place for black women like me who are human and actually have to show up on the internet every goddamn day. Like, that is the question I would ask him,

do you think that your platform is being used to create a better internet for me? If anybody knows him, my DMs are open. And it really does remind me of menstrual shows, because when menstrual shows were going on, it wasn't just the theater itself, right? That was a big part of it. But it was also an entire manufacturing enterprise where people made very good money

selling racist black-faced figurines as novelties. The New York Times spoke to David Pilgrim, the founder of the Jim Crow Museum of Racist and Robulia at Ferris State University in Michigan, who said, they were everyday objects which portrayed black people as ugly, different, and fun to laugh at. They were in a word, propaganda.

And that is exactly what I think these AI-generated racist videos are. People love to talk about racism, like they're talking about fucking. just a vibe in the air, right? As opposed to a system that specific people are personally perpetuating because they are making money from it. And I simply do not see how Google letting creators make this kind of content is any different. And we should be talking about it exactly like that.

Got a story about an interesting thing in tech or just want to say hi? You can reach us at hello at tangoody.com. You can also find transcripts for today's episode at tangoody.com. There are no girls on the internet was created by me, Bridget Todd. 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.

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