The Weekly Weird #3

AI-generated news is...old?

I had a sit-up-in-your-chair-and-spit-out-your-beverage moment today.

Channel 1, ‘a personalized global news network powered by generative AI’, released a full 20-minute episode of news on their Twitter feed yesterday, complete with anchors and everything, except it’s all AI-generated. Enjoy it here.

Now what if I told you that they aren’t the first, by a long way?

Here’s the ‘world’s first’ AI news anchor, saying hello from China (where else?) five years ago…

Kuwait News launched ‘Fedha’ eight months ago. This upbeat corporate promo should be up for the ‘Incongruous Music Award’ somewhere.:

Seven months ago, Joanna Stern from The Wall Street Journal created an AI clone of herself for the terrifying lulz.

Five months ago, OTV in India released ‘Lisa’, which their own creepy news-puppet called ‘a historic moment’. Uncanny Valley, or Death Valley?

You know how there’s a chirpy guy on YouTube with a tutorial for almost anything you might want to do? Well, AI Andy wants to show you how to use ChatGPT to create and run your own news channel.

Hell, how do we know that it was really Elon phoning into the World Government Summit in March 2023 to yuk it up with the host?

At 17:10, he talks about AI, which he thinks we need to be “quite concerned about”. He also goes into some background on his involvement with OpenAI, the creator of ChatGPT.

In the words of Lou Reed, “don’t believe half of what you see and none of what you hear.”

Make sure you check out Episode 102 with Ken Silva where we discuss, among other things, the evidentiary implications of AI, especially with the federal government’s track record of entrapment.

Until it’s time for your next dose of the Weekly Weird, stay sane out there, my friends.