The Weekly Weird #11
Have I got nudes for you, like a coffee shop but worse, let my pigeon go, Apple Vision bros, and school sensors 'actively listen' to kids in toilets
When I started writing a weekly dystopian roundup, a concern that lurked at the back of my mind was that surely, at some point, a week would go by without enough relevant happenings to justify a mail-out, and what then?
What then indeed, as another week has flown by and, like a spy pigeon on a peanut diet, left behind a very noticeable trail. I hadn’t pegged myself as an optimist, but apparently I was rose-tinted to believe the dystopian well could ever run dry. This week we have a bumper crop of the absurd and the worrying, often simultaneously.
In podcast news, Episode 106 with Jonathan M. Katz is out now. If you haven’t listened to it yet, we get into Jonathan’s issues with Substack, and the Bog of Eternal Stench known as the Free Speech Debate. It pairs nicely with Episode 104 with Elle Griffin, and a chilled glass of white wine, if you’re partial. Also, stay tuned for our upcoming and very special Valentine’s Day episode, for all you lovers out there.
One item that was going to be in this week’s Weird will be with you shortly as a standalone article instead. The reason for the delay is that I’m awaiting a response from one of the parties involved in an attempt to give as full and balanced a picture of the situation as possible. Sorry to be cryptic, all will be clear soon enough.
Well, let’s roll up our sleeves and try to unclog the dystopian drain…
Have I Got Nudes For You
Author, AI power-user, and friend-of-the-show Tim Boucher (Episode 105) has had his account permanently deleted by the AI image generator Midjourney because he happened upon a way to generate (tasteful) nude and not-so-nude images for one of his books. The story was picked up by The Debrief, and now The Daily Dot has also put up an article about the situation here.
Sample images:
So why didn’t Tim just notify Midjourney of the ‘bug’ instead of going public? As he puts it in his blog post:
If you’ve ever tried to contact Midjourney about issues related to their product, you might know that the only email address they have is for billing, and at that address they refuse to answer any other inquiries, including privacy concerns and bug reports, both of which I have previously attempted to contact them about. Their stock reply is to go into their Discord group, and publicly post your message there.
Sounds all-too familiar for those of us who have had to interface with a company in the so-called golden age of communication.
The Debrief with more:
Boucher’s experience highlights a critical issue in AI image generators: while explicit terms may be blacklisted, synonymous or related terms might not be, allowing users to circumvent the intended content restrictions. For example, while a term like “wound” might be restricted, a synonym like “injury” might not be, leading to the potential creation of content that breaches the platform’s guidelines. However, there is a much broader issue here. Boucher, and others, were not purposefully looking to subvert Midjourney’s protections.
There are synonyms, there are euphemisms, and then there’s just plain weird:
On Reddit, a discussion has appeared where one user notes that when they simply used the prompt, “put a banana on it,” multiple variations of imagery with nudity were generated.
Tim explained to The Debrief what the beef ultimately is:
“On the one hand, as an artist, some of these images are aesthetically very beautiful. If the user is a consenting adult, the problem is reduced. On the other hand, as a Trust & Safety professional, your system should not be creating nudes when people aren’t asking for it,” Boucher told The Debrief. “Especially since your rules officially disallow nudes. And when users ask for it directly, they may be banned outright from using the service. There’s a major disconnect here.”
On his blog, Tim sums it up with customary humour:
In short, by trying to depict a dystopian near future society ruled by AI companies, I was banned by an entirely real life and entirely dystopian AI company for my efforts.
Speaking of dystopian AI companies…
Like A Coffee Shop But Worse
NeuroSpot, a Georgian (the country, not the state) tech company with (apparently) an office soon to open in Barcelona, claims to offer multi-application facial recognition and surveillance modules for retail and hospitality. Their video demo of their BaristaEye ‘module’ has been getting some notice:
The video shows the BaristaEye system using object detection1 to track the productivity of staff members as well as the time-in-store of customers. Bad news for privacy in general, or just for the Mac-attackers that take over every coffee shop during the week, nurse a single cappuccino all day, and boost the contention rate of the wi-fi?
Over on Medium (remember Medium?), Sohail Shaik gives a good rundown of the ways AI can help coffee shop productivity. He ends with a pretty chilled summary (emphasis in original):
Using AI for productivity and customer monitoring in coffee shops can threaten privacy. Continuous surveillance and data collection without informed consent may invade customers’ and baristas’ personal space. Storing biometric data and its potential misuse raises ethical and legal concerns. Non-compliance with privacy regulations can lead to legal consequences. Striking a balance between AI benefits and privacy protection is vital to maintain trust and ethical standards.
In summary, by leveraging object detection and recognition through CCTV footage, AI can provide valuable insights to optimize both the productivity of baristas and the overall customer experience. This technology allows coffee shops to make data-driven decisions, reduce wait times, and ensure that customers have a pleasant and efficient visit, ultimately contributing to increased customer loyalty and business success.
Personally, I feel like this technology would be existential for my customer experience, as in I would no longer be a customer if a coffee shop did this. Even calling this an innovation feels disingenuous, since surveilling workers and tracking customers is nothing new, it’s just the level of intrusiveness, the use of algorithms, and the risk of data breaches that, in my view, supercharge the downside.
I’m a frequenter of coffee shops and usually, when there are issues with speed, service, or productivity, it’s down to not having enough staff or equipment for the customer flow. Restaurants and supermarkets are similar, they seem to be increasingly run with as close to a skeleton staff as possible, the barest minimum needed to keep things ticking over, regardless of what it means for the experience of the customers. Somehow I don’t see this AI ‘innovation’ convincing owners to hire more people, or give workers more hours.
As with many AI ‘innovations’ or inventions, I find myself asking who the technology is actually for. What need are we serving here?
I reached out to NeuroSpot for comment and context. My phone call to the number on their website was answered by a man who spoke in Russian, didn’t speak English, and hung up on me. My email bounced back as ‘undeliverable’, with an error message linked to a .ru URL, i.e. Russia rather than Georgia. So, as with so much in the age of dystopia, and as Queen sang in Bohemian Rhapsody:
“Is this the real life? Is this just fantasy?”
From one mystery to another…
Let My Pigeon Go
Sky News, living up to their name (if the implication is that the sky is the limit for what is considered news these days), posted a hard-to-beat story this week:
The titular pigeon was busted over a port in India with two rings tied to its legs featuring text the authorities believed to be Chinese. Obviously, the simplest explanation was that the pigeon was a Chinese spy.
Pictured: AI impression of a spy pigeon. Any resemblance to pigeons living or dead is purely co-incidental.
From the story:
Detectives suspected the pigeon was involved in espionage and took it in, before later sending it to Mumbai's Bai Sakarbai Dinshaw Petit Hospital for Animals.
However, after eight months in captivity, it emerged that the creature was an open-water racing bird from Taiwan which had escaped and flown to India.
It seems that India has a track record of falsely imprisoning pigeons:
India has also previously detained the birds over security fears. In 2020 suspicious police in Indian-controlled Kashmir captured a pigeon that belonged to a Pakistani fisherman.
An investigation found the bird was not a spy, and had simply flown across the border between the countries.
In 2016 another pigeon was detained after it was allegedly found with a note that threatened Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
No news yet on whether Birds Aren’t Real2 have penetrated the Indian market with their “If it flies, it spies” merch.
Think it’s far-fetched for a country to arrest a “spy bird”? Not as uncommon as you’d think. Or maybe journalists just love using puns like “ruffling feathers” or “quackdown”, so they go looking for this stuff.
Anyway, everyone knows that the world’s greatest secret agent was Dynamo Duck:
Birds aren’t the only thing that have had us in a flap this week, though…
Apple Vision Bros
Apple have launched the Apple Vision Pro (AVP), unleashing a stream (pun intended) of videos showcasing the exciting ways that the product can help you do things that were previously impossible, like using X, watching sports, and checking text messages, all for the low price of $4,000. Bargain!
In a new low for consumer culture3, the Apple Store even celebrated the first dude with too much money and too little sense by giving him the red carpet treatment, complete with whooping and hollering (but sadly devoid of Joan Rivers mocking his outfit).
Citizens have been surreptitiously and/or openly filming the headset crowd since the AVP came out, introducing us all to a newly-named member of the human family: the Apple Vision Bro.
Apple Vision Bros include Guy exiting Cybertruck and Guy ‘working’ on subway. Bros are wearing the AVP while driving, doing a barspin, gaming on the moon, the list is growing as I write. Just go to your video or social site of choice and search for ‘apple vision pro’, you’ll see. No news yet on what the headset is actually uniquely good for, other than sawing further through the already dangerously thin thread connecting the ‘developed’ world with a verifiable external form of consensus reality.
Bros are also filming themselves wearing the AVP using its capture function, sharing the life-changing experiences it is giving them, e.g.
“I’m watching 33 different NBA games at the exact same time.”
No. No you are not. You have two eyes. Two. Not thirty-three. You have over-saturated your input ability, not optimised it.
Bros are trying to test the limits of what the device can bear, as in this video which involves turning an otherwise pleasant apartment into a techno-hellscape reminiscent of Black Mirror and Minority Report.
Casey Neistat took the AVP out into the wild for a review run, which is a fun watch:
He asks at one point:
“Do I look as ridiculous as those people make me feel like I look?”
You decide.
The goggle-gushing ramps up to a level of enthusiasm usually only seen in a six year-old receiving a puppy at Christmas.
“This is like the craziest piece of technology I’ve ever experienced in my entire life, no joke.”
Maybe I’m just old, but when I see someone younger than most of my t-shirts say that, I can’t help but think of my father’s pacemaker, which I am much happier about and more impressed by than, well, whatever this is.
More YouTuber sharing from Davis, including a fantastic throwaway line that should probably be stitched onto the American flag at this point:
“I’m like in and out of reality.”
Not all the reviews are positive, with some complaining about the fragility of the plastic goggles, and others calling the advent of the AVP a harbinger of the anti-social apocalypse.
This satirical promo gives good giggles at the expensive goggles’s expense:
I know what you’re thinking: Is this all-too Dickian, or merely dick-ish? Here’s a refresher on what the world of Minority Report looked like:
While we’re on the subject of a surveillance system intruding into individual lives in a dark and unwelcome manner…
School Sensors ‘Actively Listen’ To Kids In Toilets
This story might be bringing up the rear in this week’s Weird, but it is definitely at the vanguard of “things I haven’t heard debated or discussed that definitely sound like things people should be debating and discussing.”
I’m referring to smart sensors being placed in school toilets for purported anti-bullying, safety, and anti-vaping reasons. The sensors use machine learning to ‘hear’ keywords or phrases that then trigger an alert to teachers or other school personnel.
Jessica Hill reported on this for Schools Week in an article called “Schools Install Toilet Sensors That ‘Actively Listen’ To Pupils”.
From the article:
The sensors can be programmed to listen for certain keywords through machine learning algorithms, which trigger alerts to chosen staff members.
The nature of a sensor that is listening for keywords or phrases is that it is always on, like Alexa or Google Assistant, until the specific word or phrase switches it into active or recording mode.
Triton, who manufacture one such sensor, stated that they are “to enhance safety, not monitor everyday conversations.” However, within the functionality, “School leaders can also add 10 “customisable” keywords to listen for.”
Hill goes on to report:
One company selling the sensor, Emergency Protection, described on its website how keywords and phrases were “constantly added through OTA [over-the-air] updates”.
The deployment figures, while relatively low in the grand scheme, are staggering considering the apparent absence of meaningful public discussion or outcry.
More than 1,500 US school districts are using Halo Smart Sensors, made by US company IPVideo, owned by Motorola Solutions.
Between 30 and 40 have been sold in the UK [to] primary and secondary schools and colleges…
Triton seems quite proud of the number of units they’ve sold, as per their website:
Gotta stop those filthy vapers.
Madeleine Stone from Big Brother Watch was unequivocal about the trend.
“No school should consider spying on children’s private conversations and doing so is highly likely to be unlawful. This misguided surveillance poses a clear safeguarding risk and should be allowed nowhere near UK schools.”
How much further will this go before there is a serious open debate about whether children, who are already suffering record-breaking levels of anxiety and depression, should now be subjected to a surveillance regime that is listening to them go to the toilet? Are kids now at risk of developing neuroses around bathroom breaks, constipation, IBS, because they feel weird knowing that something or someone could be listening while they, as my grandparents used to say, go make?
The ramping up of surveillance technology feels like the ‘Not touching, can’t get mad’ gag in Friends.
Perhaps at some point the prospect of a smart implant instead of sensors, microphones, and cameras will be sold as a relief, since it will at least be out of sight.
In keeping with the surveillance theme, here’s Bobby Vee with The Night Has A Thousand Eyes to play us out.
“Remember when you tell those little white lies that the night has a thousand eyes…”
…and ears…
Stay sane out there, friends.
From Sohail Shaik’s Medium post: “Object detection is a computer vision technique that enables machines to identify and locate objects within images or video frames. It works by dividing an image into a grid and analyzing each grid cell to determine if it contains an object.”
The satirical but taken-all-too-seriously conspiracy theory that birds are actually surveillance drones.
Maybe I’m mistaken. Who can forget Oprah’s Favourite Things?