Are you saying that somebody took translations that had already been written and replaced them with AI generated worse translations? That has got to be a rare exception, no?
But more to your point: you might not have run into languages that didn't have proper translations available, but billions of other people did. In the past I read a machine translated book before. It was almost like a derivative work because it would randomly differ by a huge amount from the source material.
1. "Defends" suggests some level of explanation and justification; the White House did not present any here.
2. "AI image showing arrested woman" could mean a fully-generated image of a woman, rather than editing an image of an existing person under law enforcement control to disguise the actual facts. The first one would be bizarre, the second one is much more problematic.
There is no meaningful difference between a 100% percent fabricated image and a some slightly smaller percentage of a digitally manipulated image when presented from the government as fact. There's no need to split hairs.
It's the difference between drawing a cartoon and editing a photograph; the second one is a definite attempt to misrepresent matters of fact, the first could be argued to be illustrative only.
The article title is overly kind; the White House didn't defend the image, they dismissed it as an issue.
This reporting presents it as a debate with reasoning on both sides, rather than a brazen act with no defence supplied. It's not good journalism to legitimise a position that didn't even attempt to legitimise itself.
This has been the story the whole time. Coupled with the insistence the media is unfair they’ve managed to shift the window of what is acceptable. It’s been remarkably effective and most news sources seemingly have no counter.
It's not even about whats acceptable, it's about what they can frame as a narrative for their supporters in as incendiary a manner as possible. Remember that the FCC investigations into Comcast and NBCUniversal weren't predicated on political bias or uneven reporting, but rather that they '...may be promoting invidious forms of DEI in a manner that does not comply with FCC regulations.”
Matthew Gertz, a senior fellow at Media Matters, summarises its mechanisms and intent quite succinctly: “This is the path that Viktor Orbán took in Hungary, where you use the power of the state to ensure that the media is compliant, that outlets are either curbed and become much less willing to be critical, or they are sold to owners who will make that happen."
I don’t disagree that’s a lot of it, and with Hungary as my possible second citizenship have been following Orban closely. I do think there’s something different happening here though. The loop is:
- Do something wildly unacceptable
- Media writes an article declaring the action is indefensible
- Those involved complain publicly about the unfair nature of the story; their supporters back them up
- Next time to avoid controversy media writes a slightly more fair story
It doesn’t even require state power because technically in the US they cannot. There is clearly threat of power kicking journalists out of the pentagon is a clear example. But it’s much more about creating a permission structure through public airing of grievances.
Worse, it seems that these institutions have internalized this as a good thing. "Liberal columnists criticizing the left" is seen as a sign of intellectual righteousness while criticizing the right is seen as behavior that is beneath elite institutions like the New York Times.
The net effect is that when Trump says "we are going to fix housing prices by deporting fifty million people" the Times writes that while the policy may not work it does seem like Trump is trying to tackle the rising cost of housing.
Counter to what? Most news sources are owned by people who support this administration’s positions, and are glad they don’t have to do this whole charade of pretending to care about the truth or normal people.
I mean Donald Trump on Tuesday posted an AI-generated image of himself holding an American flag next to a sign that read "Greenland". Previously he had posted fake videos of Obama being arrested. We're a long way past traditional notions of journalism in this post-satire reality - and the BBC has to adhere to 'rules for me, not for thee' moral outrage after its recent gaffe broadcasting an edited speech of Trumps.
It's incoherent to be anti-copyright because it's used to freeze out competition by corporations and be pro-AI (which is exactly that, at vastly greater scale).
> people might start using said editor prompts to express themselves, causing an increased range in distinct writing styles
We're already seeing people use AI to express themselves in several contexts, but it doesn't lead to an increased range of styles. It leads to one style, the now-ubiquitous upbeat LinkedIn tone.
Theoretically we could see diversification here, with different tools prompting towards different voices, but at the moment the trend is the opposite.
I think, as a general principle, if you're asking for people's attention, you should say what you actually mean. In this case, you used an inaccurate headline to get views, adding no new information beyond what you yourself claim as 'obvious'.
I think it's reasonable for people to react badly to that.
Who reasonably believes that you can "play a game at 1 frame a minute" on Nano Banana? Isn't that a truly absurd claim, one stronger than "AGI has been achieved"? Is it really that unreasonable to ask my audience to think for half a second about what I might actually be claiming, given the literal interpretation of my words is absurd?
It feels like if I made a title saying "Make page loads feel instant" and everyone came in to say "actually no, in your post it took 0.2 seconds to load your page, and that's not instant."
well the question is rather, what is the difference of AI use vs say a 3D modelling application?
assuming you have the 3D assets already designed. you then take a model, and instruct the application that this model is to move from point A to point B, using a pathfinding algorithm while avoiding obstacles. once done, render the result in a video.
now do the same with AI. is the human contribution really that much different?
> It’s probably a mistake to read too much into it
I disagree; art both reflects and influences culture. If we don't discuss and explore the subtext of things, we're impacted without understanding, and that's never a good position to be in.
This is explicitly not a benefit to the people using the services.
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