The Weekly Weird #2

Virtual Women of Note, Google Gemini, governments poop on speech, US Supreme Court stays (in a bad way), Episode 102 drops on Sunday

Virtual Women of Note

Last Wednesday I mentioned ‘Aitana Lopez’, the AI-influencer making bank on Instagram.

Another Virtual Woman of Note (VWON) is CarynAI, the AI girlfriend that will make you feel special for $1 a minute. CarynAI was developed by the influencer Caryn Marjorie (@cutiecaryn on all socials) and was recently acquired by BanterAI “in a six-figure deal”. From the linked-to press release:

BanterAI’s ultimate vision is to pioneer and lead in providing realistic two-way video and audio AI experiences.

Two-way? Well…

Google Gemini

Google have announced Gemini, their new multimodal AI. Enjoy the six-minute demo reel below.

AI now speaks, hears, and sees. With help from Boston Dynamics, it won’t be long before it can knock on doors. Sleep well.

Governments Poop on Speech

In “The Repressive Power of Artificial Intelligence”, Freedom House gives a summary of the global situation regarding online speech and related civil liberties. Their detailed naming and shaming of countries guilty of suppressing, repressing, oppressing, and depressing their citizens through online censorship is worthwhile and pretty damning, but notably makes no mention of the US government’s efforts through the aptly-named Censorship-Industrial Complex as described by Matt Taibbi, Bari Weiss, and Michael Shellenberger et al. in the Twitter Files and, more recently, the CTI Files as well.

An example from India in the Freedom House report:

Indian prime minister Narendra Modi and his Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party have incorporated censorship, including the use of automated systems, into the country’s legal framework. The Information Technology (Intermediary Guidelines and Digital Media Ethics Code) Rules require large social media platforms to use AI-based moderation tools for broadly defined types of content—such as speech that could undermine public order, decency, morality, or the country’s sovereignty, integrity, and security, or content that officials had previously ordered removed. For instance, in early 2023, authorities ordered YouTube and Twitter to restrict access within India to a British Broadcasting Corporation documentary about communal violence during Modi’s tenure as chief minister of the state of Gujarat. Because the government ordered the restriction of the documentary, the IT Rules require the two platforms to use automated scanning tools to sweep up any additional posts that share the film. As the country prepares for general elections in 2024, the government’s expanding censorship regime is creating an uneven playing field by silencing criticism of and independent reporting on the ruling party.

2024 is an election year in the United States too. Just sayin’.

US Supreme Court Stays (In a Bad Way)

A note on Missouri v. Biden, conspicuous in its absence from the Freedom House report.

From the preliminary injunction ruling in that case, where a judge found the government had likely violated the First Amendment and should therefore stop:

If the allegations made by Plaintiffs are true, the present case arguably involves the most massive attack against free speech in United States’ history. In their attempts to suppress alleged disinformation, the Federal Government, and particularly the Defendants named here, are alleged to have blatantly ignored the First Amendment’s right to free speech.

Although the censorship alleged in this case almost exclusively targeted conservative speech, the issues raised herein go beyond party lines. The right to free speech is not a member of any political party and does not hold any political ideology. It is the purpose of the Free Speech Clause of the First Amendment to preserve an uninhibited marketplace of ideas in which truth will ultimately prevail, rather than to countenance monopolization of the market, whether it be by government itself or private licensee.

On 23 October 2023, the Supreme Court stayed the lower court’s injunction until they rule on the case. The dissent by Justice Alito, with Justices Thomas and Gorsuch joining, explains why this is a “highly disturbing” douche move:

This case concerns what two lower courts found to be a “coordinated campaign” by high-level federal officials to suppress the expression of disfavored views on important public issues.

To prevent the continuation of this campaign, these officials were enjoined from either “coerc[ing]” social media companies to engage in such censorship or “active[ly] control[ling]” those companies’ decisions about the content posted on their platforms.

Today, however, a majority of the Court, without undertaking a full review of the record and without any explanation, suspends the effect of that injunction until the Court completes its review of this case, an event that may not occur until late in the spring of next year. Government censorship of private speech is antithetical to our democratic form of government, and therefore today’s decision is highly disturbing.

The Supreme Court decided that the federal government can go back to the behaviour found by lower courts to be unconstitutional censorship, until it decides whether that censorship was unconstitutional or not. In an election year.

Quoting Justice Alito again:

The injunction applies only when the Government crosses the line and begins to coerce or control others’ exercise of their free-speech rights. Does the Government think that the First Amendment allows Executive Branch officials to engage in such conduct? Does it have plans for this to occur between now and the time when this case is decided?

…

At this time in the history of our country, what the Court has done, I fear, will be seen by some as giving the Government a green light to use heavy-handed tactics to skew the presentation of views on the medium that increasingly dominates the dissemination of news. That is most unfortunate.

Episode 102 drops this Sunday

Episode 102 of the podcast will be out this Sunday. Our guest is Ken Silva, an investigative journalist from the US, who has been working on an unfolding series of stories he calls the Fed Files, dealing with the role the FBI has played in the far-right and neo-Nazi movements in the United States since the 1970s.

You can find Ken on X/Twitter as @jd_cashless and you can read the Fed Files here.

Stay sane out there, my friends.