June 24, 2025 • 58 mins
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 hello@tangoti.com!
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.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:04):
There are No Girls on the Internet. As a production
of iHeartRadio 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 that we are witnessing
the revival of menstrual shows using AI on social media
platforms like TikTok. When you actually look at what menstrual
(00:27):
shows were and the role they played and 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 tad pages, I'm at twell pages.
(00:50):
And eventually we had to say, like, okay, enough pages
like this. 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.
Speaker 2 (00:58):
Mike him 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 joes one
hundred years ago? Is that the right sort of time
frame that we're.
Speaker 1 (01:18):
Talking like nineteenth century, eighteenth and nineteenth 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 nineteenth century,
(01:40):
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 citizen, where they would fail in some
(02:02):
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
(02:24):
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
(02:47):
makeup on their already black faces to exaggerate their already
black features, which I always found to be interesting that
you would 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.
Speaker 2 (03:03):
That is really interesting, and it reminds me of this
concept that you told me about. Is a different context,
they idea have similacrum 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
(03:26):
thing is, and that it 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.
Speaker 1 (03:37):
Oh, this is Boujayard's concept of simulacrum absolutely right, where
just having 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, an exaggerated
skin tone, and so to have an actual black person
on stage is not black enough. You need in order
(04:00):
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 saw that to
be so interesting. And so while there were a few
black performers who performed in minstrel shows in blackface makeup
(04:20):
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.
Speaker 2 (04:35):
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 functional role that these shows.
Speaker 1 (04:45):
Had exactly so they were incredibly popular as entertainment, but
they sorted this this more important purpose of reaffirming and
re establishing the political and social ideologies of the time,
and they really occupy 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,
(05:09):
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 and all of this irony and all
of this plausible deniability and all of this kind of
wink wink, no, no, it's just a joke. But back then,
(05:32):
the KKK was exploiting that very same ambiguity to permeate control.
As the nineteenth century gave way to the twentieth, 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
(05:56):
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
hard working, mainstream white Americans, that is such an incredibly
powerful tool to uphold and reaffirm that, you know, black
(06:19):
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 time it
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 things like segregation, Like a black person would be
(06:41):
overwhelmed if they had had a job, because look how
stupid they are. From what I saw on this menstrual show,
you could almost provides a kind of cover of these
pretty grotesque political and social attitudes.
Speaker 2 (06:54):
It's so interesting to hear that history, like very tempting
to think about the way the alright 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 one
hundred years, maybe longer.
Speaker 1 (07:16):
Oh that's the thing about white supremacy, Like it seems new,
but it is. It's always a page from a very
well worn playbook, just sort of reimagined 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 twenty twenty five equivalent of menstrual shows today
(07:38):
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
(08:00):
digital blackface, where non black creators are using AI to
create viral skits depicting racist black stereotypes all over TikTok today.
Speaker 2 (08:11):
How did you come upon this? Because I'm not on TikTok,
I haven't seen this tell me about these videos, bridget So.
Speaker 1 (08:17):
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, some I related you might have saw
(08:39):
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
at the Supreme Court said was only justified because of
the supposed survey of the threat. It don't seem like
(09:01):
it's that big of a thread anymore. Something has changed,
because the deadline to enforce this band has been pushed
back twice and now a third time just last week,
which really gives you a into 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.
Speaker 2 (09:20):
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.
Speaker 1 (09:32):
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. It just
basically was like, TikTok, the vibes are not vibing. It
(09:54):
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
(10:15):
ways that I'm seeing black women and our identity 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,
(10:37):
I do want to back up because I think that
you could argue that anybody who was 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 as Ariah Cole Shepherd made in our episode
that we'll link back to, back in twenty twenty two,
when all of these AI generated kind of futuristic looking
(10:59):
sell these 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 too. What's funny about that episode, though,
going back and listening to it, is that she made
(11:21):
this great point. This was back in twenty twenty two,
that people should be very wary about feeding their likeness
voluntarily into this random AI platform to generate like a
cute Facebook picture, because that platform, it's definitely using your
image to train their AI. This was back in twenty
twenty two when she was warning against this, and now
here we are in twenty twenty five and people are
(11:43):
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, huh,
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
(12:03):
later cover the inevitable fallout. That's like, oh, the thing
these people were warning about is happening now.
Speaker 2 (12:08):
It makes me feel like I wish we'd done a
better job of warning, But I guess that's the NAT.
Speaker 1 (12:12):
I mean, hey, we made that episode.
Speaker 2 (12:14):
We made that episode. You know, we did what we could.
Speaker 1 (12:17):
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 when 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
(12:41):
what we know about the astronomical amount of energy the
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, de picks it up a black woman in
a mall when a white older woman comes up to
(13:03):
her to confront her about her hair. I love my
natural hair. That hair isn't real. Death is seeking you
at the Bingos 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 French call the of the wit of the staircase,
(13:25):
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,
(13:47):
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 Diane Carroll's character as this like classy, wealthy,
take no prisoners, Dominique Devereaux always knew what to say,
(14:09):
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
(14:30):
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.
Speaker 3 (14:47):
I remember when they were creating photos in artificial intelligence,
and it acts the artificial intelligence to create them four
pictures of a beautiful woman. All four of those were
not African American women. Let's say like that, we're not.
So I felt like I needed to change that. So
(15:08):
I decided to work with a lot of AI organizations
and companies to help them.
Speaker 4 (15:14):
Create milleniated people, to create heir textures to make sure
that they don't make our women look too aggressive to
put like all body positivity.
Speaker 3 (15:27):
All women have different shapes. All women here is going
to be different. It's okay to have flaws. These are
the things that I fight for on a back end.
Speaker 1 (15:37):
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 with what he's saying,
but personally, I am still uncertain, Like when I think
about the kind of representation that I want in AI,
(16:00):
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
(16:21):
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
(16:42):
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
(17:04):
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
ten million views and his platform on TikTok, the AI
(17:25):
clap back 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.
Speaker 5 (17:43):
Let's take a quick break at our back.
Speaker 1 (17:57):
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 bullied by the success of that initial viral video,
really took that format and ran with it, went extream
(18:20):
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?
Speaker 2 (18:33):
Yeah? I do. That felt like a good use of AI.
Speaker 1 (18:37):
Better than this, for sure. So Shrimp Jesus was this
AI slap 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
sectatus and they just want to like see if they
(18:58):
can duplicate that over and over and over again. So
at first it's just an AI image of Jesus Christ
writing 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 crawdad arms and like little
shumpy crustacean disciples and stuff all around him. Like it's
just like a more and more exaggerated version of that
(19:18):
first thing that initially hit with a little bit of
virality on social media.
Speaker 2 (19:23):
And I feel that's like what AI is really good at,
just taking something and making it more and more extreme
and absurd. And 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 videos.
Speaker 1 (19:42):
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,
(20:05):
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
(20:29):
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
(20:51):
talking about. So this video is a take on the
first iteration of the video that I talked about earlier.
Look at me, slam my, curly wave blonde. Wig ahh.
Speaker 2 (21:02):
That's not your natural color.
Speaker 6 (21:04):
The only color you should be worried about is which
color palette they've gonna use on you.
Speaker 1 (21:06):
At the more coke. So it's the same setup. A
black woman walked an AI generated black woman being like, Ooh,
I love this hair. Some pretty egregious aave going on
in this in this video, but that a white woman
comes up to her, SOA's 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
(21:29):
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, was like a
cunning phrase, and go on about her day. In this one,
but not only is the woman more exaggerated, her response
(21:49):
is like a threat of violence and a violent attack.
It's we've we've we've really ratcheted up the ratchet, so
to speak.
Speaker 2 (21:56):
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.
The more that that's weak.
Speaker 1 (22:10):
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 these sort
of AI generated racist videos on TikTok is this very
popular account where it's female Bigfoot and basically it depicts
(22:36):
a gorilla like Bigfoot as a black woman. So here's
one of the videos that got two million views on TikTok.
What's up, bitch? Is this Bigfoot? One hand the baddest
bitch in the woods? Part time cryptic, full time problem.
Don't follow me if you scare a flease. So talk
about exaggerated. It is a bigfoot with like blonde extensions,
wearing like a pink bikini and speaking like you just heard,
(22:59):
and there's I mean, there's not even really 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.
Speaker 2 (23:11):
Yeah, it's not much of a joke.
Speaker 1 (23:13):
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
(23:34):
to show enslaved people on plantations, but it reimagined if
they had social media and we're doing vlogs. Here's one example.
Speaker 7 (23:44):
Some of y'all think it's hard doing what I do.
Some of y'all all so lazy, So that could be
why MASSA got us working an extra hard today. But
that's fine with me as long as I'm getting dinner tonight.
Speaker 1 (23:57):
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.
(24:20):
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 two hundred years ago.
Speaker 2 (24:37):
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.
Speaker 1 (24:48):
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 see I'm not
seeing the joke now.
Speaker 2 (24:59):
There was no joke.
Speaker 1 (25:00):
Some of these slave talk videos also depict enslaved people
doing like very explicitly racist stereotypical stuff like eating watermelon
and drinking 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 muck bangs,
those videos where you eat a lot of food, and
(25:21):
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 plays. I saw one
(25:44):
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 her mom's funeral essentially,
So it's a lot of like very simple morality place stories,
if I'm being honest, Like, I hate to say this,
(26:06):
but I'm sorry, it's 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
(26:28):
not real. They just like to see their world views
reaffirmed in these skits. And again I'm not talking about
explicitly 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,
(26:48):
that reaffirms that you're gonna 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 choke 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
(27:11):
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
(27:33):
really happened, even though they're not, even though these are
actors and 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?
Speaker 2 (27:45):
I have definitely seen these where it'll be like some
kind of faith confrontation where somebody gets their come upance
or has a really good retort or something. Yeah, I
don't know how common they are. 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 gotta come up and kind of skit
(28:07):
Like I guess sort of similar to those morality plays
that you were talking about, but yeah, they happen a lot.
Speaker 1 (28:14):
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 come upance to be satisfying 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
(28:37):
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
(28:58):
a while, but I've seen a less of it lately.
Go figure where it was attacking 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
(29:20):
a woman coming in and yelling at a teacher 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 as an
angry mom, but this time she's a transparent who is
yelling at a teacher for telling her kid the truth
that there are only two genders or something like these
(29:42):
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 as 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
(30:04):
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 massed 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 their skits or maybe worse, don't even
really care that their skits. They are just thinking this
(30:26):
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.
Speaker 2 (30:37):
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
(31:01):
the Internet and potentially getting worse now that AI is
getting so much better, so much cheaper and more accessible.
Speaker 1 (31:08):
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.
Speaker 5 (31:30):
More after a quick break, let's get right back into it.
Speaker 1 (31:44):
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's
they is in that comment, And like, even though this
video was AI, that does not depict any real human
(32:07):
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
(32:31):
Internet theory? Is this bots making bot content for bot commentators?
Is it just like bots the whole way down?
Speaker 2 (32:39):
It does make one crazy, but also I don't think
you're crazy for it saying then there's a lot of bots. Yeah,
it's 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
(33:04):
quickly become disoriented.
Speaker 1 (33:06):
This reminds me. This is on a side. But on Instagram,
I made a video about a 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, ooh, and literally I'm not even kidding.
For a minute, I was like, am I.
Speaker 2 (33:28):
You would be the last to know.
Speaker 1 (33:30):
Like like, that's that's what I'm saying. Like I was
sort of like I thought I had a childhood and
parent and like I thought I 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 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
(33:51):
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,
so well spoken or something. I'm not making all kinds
of ticks and likes and beeps and bloops like she
must I must be really like on my gain if
she thinks I'm AI.
Speaker 2 (34:10):
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.
Speaker 1 (34:18):
I'm not saying I'm a suspiring 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
to be like like I don't know I was. I
was weirdly flattered and it's probably not worth unpacking why
I've had his Let's just move on.
Speaker 2 (34:35):
We need to move on. This is unsettling.
Speaker 1 (34:40):
It's just what an AI would say.
Speaker 2 (34:42):
I feel like this every time I have to do
a catcha I'm so bad at captures.
Speaker 1 (34:48):
Oh you're bad at capture to the point that I
think that you are a robot.
Speaker 2 (34:52):
It makes me wonder, and the instructions often are like
confirm your humanity and then I fail to test. It's
like deeply threatening and upsetting.
Speaker 1 (35:02):
Oh my god, So I mean talk about like bots
talking to bots. I'm Ai. I'm making a podcast with
my bot producer. Like it it's all bots that the
whole way.
Speaker 2 (35:11):
Down, and it's all for that one human listener out there,
We know who you are. This is all for you.
Speaker 1 (35:20):
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 does not mean
that they aren't saying something about our culture. And just
like that rise in popularity in minstrel shows was against
(35:43):
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 erased at the
(36:04):
federal level. Black women, black folks, 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, not
just because it's like a fascinating piece of journalism and
I love ProPublica about how Trump and Musk Stage and
(36:24):
all of their pundits attacks on so called DII 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 the
EI at any capacity, their careers were derailed under this
(36:49):
false premise that they were diversity hires. This might have
nothing to do with DEI have and instead have everything
to do with being just being black women and becoming
an easy target for administration hostile to marginalize people. Right,
and so if all of that is happening at the
same time where we have this rise of this new
(37:09):
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
(37:32):
out of their stable employment, folks might think, well, maybe
it's for the best, because they're not suited for that
work anyway, just like we saw with minstrel 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
(37:54):
to reaffirm this worldview that real life human Black 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
(38:15):
Black women, both online and off.
Speaker 2 (38:18):
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
(38:38):
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. Kiktok also in a
weird changing situation right now, but with these videos being
so harmful, aren't they against TikTok's community guidelines.
Speaker 1 (39:01):
Well, not technically, but maybe so. These kinds of videos
are not technically against TikTok's moderation policies because they do
disclose that their 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 for you page recommendations. However,
(39:23):
since these videos are all over my for you page,
TikTok is clearly not moderating these videos in that way.
They could, but they're definitely not.
Speaker 2 (39:32):
Maybe they should, Maybe they should.
Speaker 1 (39:35):
I mean, I would argue that having a racist Bigfoot
skit that depicts Bigfoot as a black woman is 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
(39:56):
have to amplify them by putting them on people's for
you pages by allowing people to monetize them like. 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.
Speaker 2 (40:13):
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. 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
(40:36):
they are actively deciding to allow it to be boosted.
Speaker 1 (40:41):
And not only that. You know, as we talked about
with the Jesus shrimp metaphor, when one of these videos
gets five 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,
you are only ensuring that more people make this kind
of content. And if it's not that kind of content
(41:02):
you want flooding your platform, if I were running that platform,
I probably do something about it, especially when you have
multiple avenues of doing something about it at your disposal.
Speaker 2 (41:12):
Yeah, so maybe this is a good sponsored transition into
the text that's behind this because you know, even just
the 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. It's allowing all of these
(41:33):
videos to blood the algorithm.
Speaker 1 (41:36):
Well, that thing that has changed is probably Google's VO three,
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
(41:57):
a month ago and it's really been taking off since.
I will say it's one of those AI models where
people were like, this is gonna 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 LM, which can create
sort of very realistic sounding podcasts out of any kind
(42:20):
of text prompt but that everybody said the same thing,
like this is going to change everything. Podcasters are all
going to be out of a job. AI is going
to be doing podcasts. Human podcasters are all gonna get fucked.
But guess what y'all 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
(42:40):
just yet, considering I'm still a human as far as
I know, hosting this podcast, Yeah.
Speaker 2 (42:46):
As far as I know can confirm you are still
a huge.
Speaker 5 (42:51):
More after a quick break, let's get right back into it.
Speaker 1 (43:06):
Google's VIEO three 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
(43:27):
how to create AI influencers that they hope they can
monetize via brand deals or even AI OnlyFans 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 OnlyFans model and then start
(43:51):
raking in money on only fans. 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 influencer to make money?
Like people are treating this like a business enterprise.
Speaker 2 (44:12):
Makes sense, people would want to monetize this, and it
seems like a good way to get rich quick if
you could spin up one hundred or a thousand different influencers,
all of them out there racking up followings and selling products.
But are people actually making money from doing that?
Speaker 1 (44:30):
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 Mikayla, who came out
in twenty sixteen, 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
(44:51):
has done brand deals for huge brands like Chanelle. She's
done like collabs with like human celebrities. She's huge. However,
she was really the first one, and 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 twenty sixteen are
(45:12):
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
(45:33):
be ahead of the curve by getting in on it
now and like learning about it now and setting 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 scammy. And by scamming,
I mean it's a lot of pay me to teach
(45:53):
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.
(46:16):
I'm making so much money hand over fist. I cannot
confirm that. I can't demy it either, but I cannot
confirm 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 who was really looking for a way to passively
generate money online, and so you would see all of
(46:38):
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 that 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
(47:00):
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 junks that nobody really needs.
I feel that the way that people are talking about
AI content is a bit similar, like, how could I
use this powerful tool to make a little bit of
money pushing cheap AI garbage slop that doesn't make anybody
(47:21):
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.
Speaker 2 (47:36):
I also have to wonder if 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
(47:59):
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, Meda is gonna
just take it and it will be there.
Speaker 1 (48:13):
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 chatbock 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
(48:34):
films down, a collective boo. 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 now 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,
(48:58):
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
(49:21):
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
(49:42):
racist stereotypes to make a quick book. To be clear,
Meta's black woman chatbot also, I would argue did traffic
in stereotypes like she's spoken aave, she was really for
someone who is not human, really taking a lot of
liberties around black idea. And yeah, so I do think
it's all kind of related in terms of, like it's
(50:05):
not just you know, Joe Blow AI contact creator, it's
also Mark fucking Zuckerberg.
Speaker 2 (50:10):
Right, so many people want all the value of an
expansive capitalists 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
(50:32):
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.
Speaker 1 (50:38):
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
(51:00):
basically for their shorts for YouTube shorts. They are going
to be partnering with Google's vo three 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
(51:21):
on this being the future of the creator economy.
Speaker 2 (51:24):
Yeah, the creator economy without creators.
Speaker 1 (51:27):
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 set thinks 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
(51:48):
AI avatars all came together to demand better representation of
black AI avatars. Here's what they had to say.
Speaker 6 (51:56):
It's crazy how people are now using AI to make
the black woman look neat 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.
Speaker 1 (52:12):
I'm going to enforce others to make more prompts like me.
Speaker 7 (52:15):
Stop sitting around and get into AI and make more
prompts like us and to help show black beauty.
Speaker 6 (52:22):
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 meloded women and feel like AI
still holds some type of impression on black culture.
Speaker 7 (52:36):
See people use AI to make us look bad, but
we should look good.
Speaker 1 (52:43):
Even talking about this kind of makes me feel like
I am 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 harmfulis stereotype. So I applaud
this creator for being interested and invested in the way
(53:05):
that black folks are depicted using AI. However, I also
in 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 it's there
they use so much energy, right, Like, I don't know
(53:26):
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's starting the conversation. But something about this
just doesn't feel like liberation to me.
Speaker 2 (53:41):
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.
Speaker 1 (53:50):
A question that was posed by the TikTok creator Robert Tolpy,
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 who Google's bottom line financially nor
provide them any kind of meaningful bad press, even though
(54:10):
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 dall Lee 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.
(54:30):
But facilitating infinite copycat videos where each copy gets slightly
more racist and extreme to the one before it is
not a solution either. It's like the opposite of a solution.
And as a company who's 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
(54:53):
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 pass could it really get them?
Speaker 3 (55:05):
Right?
Speaker 1 (55:05):
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 lynchpin 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
(55:28):
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 the 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 characacters of black women like
(55:52):
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
(56:15):
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 blackfaced figurines as novelties.
The New York Times spoke to David Pilgrim, the founder
of the Jim Crow Museum of Racist Memorabilia at Farris
(56:37):
State University in Michigan. He 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
(56:58):
to a system that specifics 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
(57:19):
thing in tech, or just want to say hi? You
can reach us at Hello at tangodi dot com. You
can also find transcripts for today's episode at tengody dot com.
There Are No Girls on the Internet was created by
me bridget Toad. It's a production of iHeartRadio, an unbossed creative.
Jonathan Strickland is our executive producer. Tarry Harrison is our
producer and sound engineer. Michael Almado is our contributing producer.
I'm your host, bridget Toad. If you want to help
(57:42):
us grow, rate and review.
Speaker 5 (57:43):
Us on Apple Podcasts.
Speaker 1 (57:45):
For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, check out the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Speaker 3 (58:00):
You
There are No Girls on the Internet. As a production
of iHeartRadio 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 that we are witnessing
the revival of menstrual shows using AI on social media
platforms like TikTok. When you actually look at what menstrual
(00:27):
shows were and the role they played and 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 tad pages, I'm at twell pages.
(00:50):
And eventually we had to say, like, okay, enough pages
like this. 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.
Speaker 2 (00:58):
Mike him 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 joes one
hundred years ago? Is that the right sort of time
frame that we're.
Speaker 1 (01:18):
Talking like nineteenth century, eighteenth and nineteenth 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 nineteenth century,
(01:40):
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 citizen, where they would fail in some
(02:02):
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
(02:24):
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
(02:47):
makeup on their already black faces to exaggerate their already
black features, which I always found to be interesting that
you would 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.
Speaker 2 (03:03):
That is really interesting, and it reminds me of this
concept that you told me about. Is a different context,
they idea have similacrum 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
(03:26):
thing is, and that it 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.
Speaker 1 (03:37):
Oh, this is Boujayard's concept of simulacrum absolutely right, where
just having 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, an exaggerated
skin tone, and so to have an actual black person
on stage is not black enough. You need in order
(04:00):
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 saw that to
be so interesting. And so while there were a few
black performers who performed in minstrel shows in blackface makeup
(04:20):
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.
Speaker 2 (04:35):
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 functional role that these shows.
Speaker 1 (04:45):
Had exactly so they were incredibly popular as entertainment, but
they sorted this this more important purpose of reaffirming and
re establishing the political and social ideologies of the time,
and they really occupy 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,
(05:09):
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 and all of this irony and all
of this plausible deniability and all of this kind of
wink wink, no, no, it's just a joke. But back then,
(05:32):
the KKK was exploiting that very same ambiguity to permeate control.
As the nineteenth century gave way to the twentieth, 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
(05:56):
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
hard working, mainstream white Americans, that is such an incredibly
powerful tool to uphold and reaffirm that, you know, black
(06:19):
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 time it
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 things like segregation, Like a black person would be
(06:41):
overwhelmed if they had had a job, because look how
stupid they are. From what I saw on this menstrual show,
you could almost provides a kind of cover of these
pretty grotesque political and social attitudes.
Speaker 2 (06:54):
It's so interesting to hear that history, like very tempting
to think about the way the alright 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 one
hundred years, maybe longer.
Speaker 1 (07:16):
Oh that's the thing about white supremacy, Like it seems new,
but it is. It's always a page from a very
well worn playbook, just sort of reimagined 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 twenty twenty five equivalent of menstrual shows today
(07:38):
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
(08:00):
digital blackface, where non black creators are using AI to
create viral skits depicting racist black stereotypes all over TikTok today.
Speaker 2 (08:11):
How did you come upon this? Because I'm not on TikTok,
I haven't seen this tell me about these videos, bridget So.
Speaker 1 (08:17):
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, some I related you might have saw
(08:39):
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
at the Supreme Court said was only justified because of
the supposed survey of the threat. It don't seem like
(09:01):
it's that big of a thread anymore. Something has changed,
because the deadline to enforce this band has been pushed
back twice and now a third time just last week,
which really gives you a into 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.
Speaker 2 (09:20):
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.
Speaker 1 (09:32):
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. It just
basically was like, TikTok, the vibes are not vibing. It
(09:54):
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
(10:15):
ways that I'm seeing black women and our identity 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,
(10:37):
I do want to back up because I think that
you could argue that anybody who was 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 as Ariah Cole Shepherd made in our episode
that we'll link back to, back in twenty twenty two,
when all of these AI generated kind of futuristic looking
(10:59):
sell these 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 too. What's funny about that episode, though,
going back and listening to it, is that she made
(11:21):
this great point. This was back in twenty twenty two,
that people should be very wary about feeding their likeness
voluntarily into this random AI platform to generate like a
cute Facebook picture, because that platform, it's definitely using your
image to train their AI. This was back in twenty
twenty two when she was warning against this, and now
here we are in twenty twenty five and people are
(11:43):
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, huh,
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
(12:03):
later cover the inevitable fallout. That's like, oh, the thing
these people were warning about is happening now.
Speaker 2 (12:08):
It makes me feel like I wish we'd done a
better job of warning, But I guess that's the NAT.
Speaker 1 (12:12):
I mean, hey, we made that episode.
Speaker 2 (12:14):
We made that episode. You know, we did what we could.
Speaker 1 (12:17):
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 when 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
(12:41):
what we know about the astronomical amount of energy the
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, de picks it up a black woman in
a mall when a white older woman comes up to
(13:03):
her to confront her about her hair. I love my
natural hair. That hair isn't real. Death is seeking you
at the Bingos 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 French call the of the wit of the staircase,
(13:25):
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,
(13:47):
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 Diane Carroll's character as this like classy, wealthy,
take no prisoners, Dominique Devereaux always knew what to say,
(14:09):
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
(14:30):
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.
Speaker 3 (14:47):
I remember when they were creating photos in artificial intelligence,
and it acts the artificial intelligence to create them four
pictures of a beautiful woman. All four of those were
not African American women. Let's say like that, we're not.
So I felt like I needed to change that. So
(15:08):
I decided to work with a lot of AI organizations
and companies to help them.
Speaker 4 (15:14):
Create milleniated people, to create heir textures to make sure
that they don't make our women look too aggressive to
put like all body positivity.
Speaker 3 (15:27):
All women have different shapes. All women here is going
to be different. It's okay to have flaws. These are
the things that I fight for on a back end.
Speaker 1 (15:37):
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 with what he's saying,
but personally, I am still uncertain, Like when I think
about the kind of representation that I want in AI,
(16:00):
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
(16:21):
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
(16:42):
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
(17:04):
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
ten million views and his platform on TikTok, the AI
(17:25):
clap back 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.
Speaker 5 (17:43):
Let's take a quick break at our back.
Speaker 1 (17:57):
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 bullied by the success of that initial viral video,
really took that format and ran with it, went extream
(18:20):
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?
Speaker 2 (18:33):
Yeah? I do. That felt like a good use of AI.
Speaker 1 (18:37):
Better than this, for sure. So Shrimp Jesus was this
AI slap 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
sectatus and they just want to like see if they
(18:58):
can duplicate that over and over and over again. So
at first it's just an AI image of Jesus Christ
writing 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 crawdad arms and like little
shumpy crustacean disciples and stuff all around him. Like it's
just like a more and more exaggerated version of that
(19:18):
first thing that initially hit with a little bit of
virality on social media.
Speaker 2 (19:23):
And I feel that's like what AI is really good at,
just taking something and making it more and more extreme
and absurd. And 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 videos.
Speaker 1 (19:42):
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,
(20:05):
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
(20:29):
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
(20:51):
talking about. So this video is a take on the
first iteration of the video that I talked about earlier.
Look at me, slam my, curly wave blonde. Wig ahh.
Speaker 2 (21:02):
That's not your natural color.
Speaker 6 (21:04):
The only color you should be worried about is which
color palette they've gonna use on you.
Speaker 1 (21:06):
At the more coke. So it's the same setup. A
black woman walked an AI generated black woman being like, Ooh,
I love this hair. Some pretty egregious aave going on
in this in this video, but that a white woman
comes up to her, SOA's 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
(21:29):
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, was like a
cunning phrase, and go on about her day. In this one,
but not only is the woman more exaggerated, her response
(21:49):
is like a threat of violence and a violent attack.
It's we've we've we've really ratcheted up the ratchet, so
to speak.
Speaker 2 (21:56):
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.
The more that that's weak.
Speaker 1 (22:10):
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 these sort
of AI generated racist videos on TikTok is this very
popular account where it's female Bigfoot and basically it depicts
(22:36):
a gorilla like Bigfoot as a black woman. So here's
one of the videos that got two million views on TikTok.
What's up, bitch? Is this Bigfoot? One hand the baddest
bitch in the woods? Part time cryptic, full time problem.
Don't follow me if you scare a flease. So talk
about exaggerated. It is a bigfoot with like blonde extensions,
wearing like a pink bikini and speaking like you just heard,
(22:59):
and there's I mean, there's not even really 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.
Speaker 2 (23:11):
Yeah, it's not much of a joke.
Speaker 1 (23:13):
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
(23:34):
to show enslaved people on plantations, but it reimagined if
they had social media and we're doing vlogs. Here's one example.
Speaker 7 (23:44):
Some of y'all think it's hard doing what I do.
Some of y'all all so lazy, So that could be
why MASSA got us working an extra hard today. But
that's fine with me as long as I'm getting dinner tonight.
Speaker 1 (23:57):
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.
(24:20):
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 two hundred years ago.
Speaker 2 (24:37):
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.
Speaker 1 (24:48):
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 see I'm not
seeing the joke now.
Speaker 2 (24:59):
There was no joke.
Speaker 1 (25:00):
Some of these slave talk videos also depict enslaved people
doing like very explicitly racist stereotypical stuff like eating watermelon
and drinking 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 muck bangs,
those videos where you eat a lot of food, and
(25:21):
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 plays. I saw one
(25:44):
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 her mom's funeral essentially,
So it's a lot of like very simple morality place stories,
if I'm being honest, Like, I hate to say this,
(26:06):
but I'm sorry, it's 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
(26:28):
not real. They just like to see their world views
reaffirmed in these skits. And again I'm not talking about
explicitly 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,
(26:48):
that reaffirms that you're gonna 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 choke 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
(27:11):
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
(27:33):
really happened, even though they're not, even though these are
actors and 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?
Speaker 2 (27:45):
I have definitely seen these where it'll be like some
kind of faith confrontation where somebody gets their come upance
or has a really good retort or something. Yeah, I
don't know how common they are. 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 gotta come up and kind of skit
(28:07):
Like I guess sort of similar to those morality plays
that you were talking about, but yeah, they happen a lot.
Speaker 1 (28:14):
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 come upance to be satisfying 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
(28:37):
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
(28:58):
a while, but I've seen a less of it lately.
Go figure where it was attacking 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
(29:20):
a woman coming in and yelling at a teacher 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 as an
angry mom, but this time she's a transparent who is
yelling at a teacher for telling her kid the truth
that there are only two genders or something like these
(29:42):
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 as 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
(30:04):
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 massed 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 their skits or maybe worse, don't even
really care that their skits. They are just thinking this
(30:26):
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.
Speaker 2 (30:37):
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
(31:01):
the Internet and potentially getting worse now that AI is
getting so much better, so much cheaper and more accessible.
Speaker 1 (31:08):
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.
Speaker 5 (31:30):
More after a quick break, let's get right back into it.
Speaker 1 (31:44):
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's
they is in that comment, And like, even though this
video was AI, that does not depict any real human
(32:07):
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
(32:31):
Internet theory? Is this bots making bot content for bot commentators?
Is it just like bots the whole way down?
Speaker 2 (32:39):
It does make one crazy, but also I don't think
you're crazy for it saying then there's a lot of bots. Yeah,
it's 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
(33:04):
quickly become disoriented.
Speaker 1 (33:06):
This reminds me. This is on a side. But on Instagram,
I made a video about a 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, ooh, and literally I'm not even kidding.
For a minute, I was like, am I.
Speaker 2 (33:28):
You would be the last to know.
Speaker 1 (33:30):
Like like, that's that's what I'm saying. Like I was
sort of like I thought I had a childhood and
parent and like I thought I 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 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
(33:51):
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,
so well spoken or something. I'm not making all kinds
of ticks and likes and beeps and bloops like she
must I must be really like on my gain if
she thinks I'm AI.
Speaker 2 (34:10):
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.
Speaker 1 (34:18):
I'm not saying I'm a suspiring 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
to be like like I don't know I was. I
was weirdly flattered and it's probably not worth unpacking why
I've had his Let's just move on.
Speaker 2 (34:35):
We need to move on. This is unsettling.
Speaker 1 (34:40):
It's just what an AI would say.
Speaker 2 (34:42):
I feel like this every time I have to do
a catcha I'm so bad at captures.
Speaker 1 (34:48):
Oh you're bad at capture to the point that I
think that you are a robot.
Speaker 2 (34:52):
It makes me wonder, and the instructions often are like
confirm your humanity and then I fail to test. It's
like deeply threatening and upsetting.
Speaker 1 (35:02):
Oh my god, So I mean talk about like bots
talking to bots. I'm Ai. I'm making a podcast with
my bot producer. Like it it's all bots that the
whole way.
Speaker 2 (35:11):
Down, and it's all for that one human listener out there,
We know who you are. This is all for you.
Speaker 1 (35:20):
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 does not mean
that they aren't saying something about our culture. And just
like that rise in popularity in minstrel shows was against
(35:43):
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 erased at the
(36:04):
federal level. Black women, black folks, 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, not
just because it's like a fascinating piece of journalism and
I love ProPublica about how Trump and Musk Stage and
(36:24):
all of their pundits attacks on so called DII 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 the
EI at any capacity, their careers were derailed under this
(36:49):
false premise that they were diversity hires. This might have
nothing to do with DEI have and instead have everything
to do with being just being black women and becoming
an easy target for administration hostile to marginalize people. Right,
and so if all of that is happening at the
same time where we have this rise of this new
(37:09):
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
(37:32):
out of their stable employment, folks might think, well, maybe
it's for the best, because they're not suited for that
work anyway, just like we saw with minstrel 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
(37:54):
to reaffirm this worldview that real life human Black 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
(38:15):
Black women, both online and off.
Speaker 2 (38:18):
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
(38:38):
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. Kiktok also in a
weird changing situation right now, but with these videos being
so harmful, aren't they against TikTok's community guidelines.
Speaker 1 (39:01):
Well, not technically, but maybe so. These kinds of videos
are not technically against TikTok's moderation policies because they do
disclose that their 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 for you page recommendations. However,
(39:23):
since these videos are all over my for you page,
TikTok is clearly not moderating these videos in that way.
They could, but they're definitely not.
Speaker 2 (39:32):
Maybe they should, Maybe they should.
Speaker 1 (39:35):
I mean, I would argue that having a racist Bigfoot
skit that depicts Bigfoot as a black woman is 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
(39:56):
have to amplify them by putting them on people's for
you pages by allowing people to monetize them like. 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.
Speaker 2 (40:13):
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. 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
(40:36):
they are actively deciding to allow it to be boosted.
Speaker 1 (40:41):
And not only that. You know, as we talked about
with the Jesus shrimp metaphor, when one of these videos
gets five 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,
you are only ensuring that more people make this kind
of content. And if it's not that kind of content
(41:02):
you want flooding your platform, if I were running that platform,
I probably do something about it, especially when you have
multiple avenues of doing something about it at your disposal.
Speaker 2 (41:12):
Yeah, so maybe this is a good sponsored transition into
the text that's behind this because you know, even just
the 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. It's allowing all of these
(41:33):
videos to blood the algorithm.
Speaker 1 (41:36):
Well, that thing that has changed is probably Google's VO three,
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
(41:57):
a month ago and it's really been taking off since.
I will say it's one of those AI models where
people were like, this is gonna 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 LM, which can create
sort of very realistic sounding podcasts out of any kind
(42:20):
of text prompt but that everybody said the same thing,
like this is going to change everything. Podcasters are all
going to be out of a job. AI is going
to be doing podcasts. Human podcasters are all gonna get fucked.
But guess what y'all 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
(42:40):
just yet, considering I'm still a human as far as
I know, hosting this podcast, Yeah.
Speaker 2 (42:46):
As far as I know can confirm you are still
a huge.
Speaker 5 (42:51):
More after a quick break, let's get right back into it.
Speaker 1 (43:06):
Google's VIEO three 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
(43:27):
how to create AI influencers that they hope they can
monetize via brand deals or even AI OnlyFans 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 OnlyFans model and then start
(43:51):
raking in money on only fans. 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 influencer to make money?
Like people are treating this like a business enterprise.
Speaker 2 (44:12):
Makes sense, people would want to monetize this, and it
seems like a good way to get rich quick if
you could spin up one hundred or a thousand different influencers,
all of them out there racking up followings and selling products.
But are people actually making money from doing that?
Speaker 1 (44:30):
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 Mikayla, who came out
in twenty sixteen, 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
(44:51):
has done brand deals for huge brands like Chanelle. She's
done like collabs with like human celebrities. She's huge. However,
she was really the first one, and 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 twenty sixteen are
(45:12):
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
(45:33):
be ahead of the curve by getting in on it
now and like learning about it now and setting 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 scammy. And by scamming,
I mean it's a lot of pay me to teach
(45:53):
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.
(46:16):
I'm making so much money hand over fist. I cannot
confirm that. I can't demy it either, but I cannot
confirm 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 who was really looking for a way to passively
generate money online, and so you would see all of
(46:38):
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 that 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
(47:00):
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 junks that nobody really needs.
I feel that the way that people are talking about
AI content is a bit similar, like, how could I
use this powerful tool to make a little bit of
money pushing cheap AI garbage slop that doesn't make anybody
(47:21):
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.
Speaker 2 (47:36):
I also have to wonder if 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
(47:59):
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, Meda is gonna
just take it and it will be there.
Speaker 1 (48:13):
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 chatbock 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
(48:34):
films down, a collective boo. 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 now 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,
(48:58):
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
(49:21):
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
(49:42):
racist stereotypes to make a quick book. To be clear,
Meta's black woman chatbot also, I would argue did traffic
in stereotypes like she's spoken aave, she was really for
someone who is not human, really taking a lot of
liberties around black idea. And yeah, so I do think
it's all kind of related in terms of, like it's
(50:05):
not just you know, Joe Blow AI contact creator, it's
also Mark fucking Zuckerberg.
Speaker 2 (50:10):
Right, so many people want all the value of an
expansive capitalists 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
(50:32):
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.
Speaker 1 (50:38):
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
(51:00):
basically for their shorts for YouTube shorts. They are going
to be partnering with Google's vo three 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
(51:21):
on this being the future of the creator economy.
Speaker 2 (51:24):
Yeah, the creator economy without creators.
Speaker 1 (51:27):
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 set thinks 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
(51:48):
AI avatars all came together to demand better representation of
black AI avatars. Here's what they had to say.
Speaker 6 (51:56):
It's crazy how people are now using AI to make
the black woman look neat 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.
Speaker 1 (52:12):
I'm going to enforce others to make more prompts like me.
Speaker 7 (52:15):
Stop sitting around and get into AI and make more
prompts like us and to help show black beauty.
Speaker 6 (52:22):
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 meloded women and feel like AI
still holds some type of impression on black culture.
Speaker 7 (52:36):
See people use AI to make us look bad, but
we should look good.
Speaker 1 (52:43):
Even talking about this kind of makes me feel like
I am 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 harmfulis stereotype. So I applaud
this creator for being interested and invested in the way
(53:05):
that black folks are depicted using AI. However, I also
in 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 it's there
they use so much energy, right, Like, I don't know
(53:26):
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's starting the conversation. But something about this
just doesn't feel like liberation to me.
Speaker 2 (53:41):
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.
Speaker 1 (53:50):
A question that was posed by the TikTok creator Robert Tolpy,
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 who Google's bottom line financially nor
provide them any kind of meaningful bad press, even though
(54:10):
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 dall Lee 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.
(54:30):
But facilitating infinite copycat videos where each copy gets slightly
more racist and extreme to the one before it is
not a solution either. It's like the opposite of a solution.
And as a company who's 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
(54:53):
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 pass could it really get them?
Speaker 3 (55:05):
Right?
Speaker 1 (55:05):
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 lynchpin 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
(55:28):
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 the 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 characacters of black women like
(55:52):
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
(56:15):
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 blackfaced figurines as novelties.
The New York Times spoke to David Pilgrim, the founder
of the Jim Crow Museum of Racist Memorabilia at Farris
(56:37):
State University in Michigan. He 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
(56:58):
to a system that specifics 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
(57:19):
thing in tech, or just want to say hi? You
can reach us at Hello at tangodi dot com. You
can also find transcripts for today's episode at tengody dot com.
There Are No Girls on the Internet was created by
me bridget Toad. It's a production of iHeartRadio, an unbossed creative.
Jonathan Strickland is our executive producer. Tarry Harrison is our
producer and sound engineer. Michael Almado is our contributing producer.
I'm your host, bridget Toad. If you want to help
(57:42):
us grow, rate and review.
Speaker 5 (57:43):
Us on Apple Podcasts.
Speaker 1 (57:45):
For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, check out the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Speaker 3 (58:00):
You
Popular Podcasts
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Special Summer Offer: Exclusively on Apple Podcasts, try our Dateline Premium subscription completely free for one month! With Dateline Premium, you get every episode ad-free plus exclusive bonus content.
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
I’m Jay Shetty host of On Purpose the worlds #1 Mental Health podcast and I’m so grateful you found us. I started this podcast 5 years ago to invite you into conversations and workshops that are designed to help make you happier, healthier and more healed. I believe that when you (yes you) feel seen, heard and understood you’re able to deal with relationship struggles, work challenges and life’s ups and downs with more ease and grace. I interview experts, celebrities, thought leaders and athletes so that we can grow our mindset, build better habits and uncover a side of them we’ve never seen before. New episodes every Monday and Friday. Your support means the world to me and I don’t take it for granted — click the follow button and leave a review to help us spread the love with On Purpose. I can’t wait for you to listen to your first or 500th episode!