Technology

Forgive me for being entirely unsympathetic, but I would not call being an “influencer” a “job”.

Oh no, fake people are stealing fake jobs from fake people!

Anyways..

People's identities become fully commodified then a technology is invented to simulate it. Late stage capitalist dystopia things.

I'm not entirely unsympathetic here - we all do what we can to survive. For some of us, that does mean cashing in on nature's gifts.

There is a darker side here, as much as I like to joke, influencers are people and most people draw the line somewhere. There are some things no-one wants their face tied to. AI personas on the other hand...

Oh no, those poor influencers ... anyway ...

Let's define "stealing" and "business" here.

1. Influencers don't produce anything, nor do they add intrinsic value to products they promote. Not much business to that if you ask me.

2. They do already compete fiercely for brands' atention so every successful influencer by definition has "stolen" potential income from others.

If you want to split hairs, influencers' work is creating an idealised image that they project to peddle products. If AI can outmatch them in that regard, I see no problem with that.

And thus social media has reached its apex.

After a decade plus of bombarding people with a mix of whatever they desire most and whatever causes them to become emotionally invested to the point of exhaustion, we see the pinnacle innovation of social media:

A literally completely fake person selling overpriced fashion I guarantee was made in a sweatshop, that nearly no one viewing 'her' can afford or look good in, who receives many thirsty comments praising her as if 'she' will be their friend or something, who in the process of doing all this also puts out of business actual human models who are simply fake in every sense of the word that is not literal.

It is basically the most perfectly capitalist thing I can imagine. Everyone loses except the capital owners.

I mean sure, maybe it will get some people whose entire personality is "I am pretty, worship me!" to think about doing something actually useful or learning and developing a real personality.

But... we are fairly far into the predicted cyberpunk dystopia now. No its not exactly as predicted, but shockingly close in many ways.

The average consumer of content cannot tell a bot or a fake person such as Aitana here from a real one, and there will just be another after news of Aitana in particular gets around.

At this point I would say that most humans have basically failed a reverse Turing Test.

If your job is easy, then it'll probably get replaced with AI eventually. What's easier than being an influencer?

Ok, I'm all for worrying about the impact of AI in jobs but... Living advertisements are easy to replace, what a suprise.

People who make actual interesting and/or funny videos, those that require personal work and are a direct result of the creator's skills or interests, are not really at risk of this.

Wow, a bunch of assholes just getting paid for showing you free stuff they got, pretending to be relatable and your friend while evading their taxes in Dubai, may be out of business. And think of those parents who won't be able to exploit their kids by getting them free toys and exposing them to the whole world!

I don't think I will lose any sleep over this.

That's a business risk lmao

Damn, what a shame, those poor poor influencers

maybe they need to get an actual job now?

Did a complete idiot write this article? How the fuck are you allowed to report on business without the basic understanding of technological innovation and its impact on business relationships and transitioning business operations?

Does this dumb motherfucker think that we still have horse and buggy businesses and children working looms?

"Stealing" business...?

I don't see the downside to this in particular.

This is a problem for the whole internet. I've made a long version of my argument here, but tl;dr as companies clutter the internet with cheaper and cheaper mass produced content, the valuable places will also get ruined. There's an analogy to our physical world: Because we build cheap and ugly cities that roughly look the same, the few places that are beautiful and unique are also ruined, because they're just too valuable; everyone wants to go there. I think that we're already seeing beginning, with pre-existing companies like Reddit that have high quality human-generated content walling themselves off more and more as that content becomes more valuable.

If everyone would just stop looking at influencers, they would go away.

Good. Influencers are a plague.

I think technically whoever created that AI persona is now profiting from the work they put into creating and maintaining that. It's different than what a human influencer does, but the money they are generating still goes into someone's pocket, not dissolving into thin air. This isn't AI stealing people's jobs, it's someone stealing someone else's market share. It's like a guy with a saw complaining that a guy with a chainsaw is stealing their business.

Would you look at that, another story where I hate everybody involved.

In some ways, I’m very excited about the sociological and economic opportunities for change this kind of scenario brings. And far, farrr more horrified. I haven’t yet seen a meaningful or impactful use of AI yet, that doesn’t mainly further capitalists or state power over their own or other civilians.

“AI development is dominated by capital, led by some of the world’s most powerful oligopolistic corporations… strengthening capital vis-à-vis labour, and elite sections of labour relative to others, and are hence likely to increase inequality along lines of class stratification that are also lines of gender and race.”

The future is cyberpunk, and Gibson started that as a sci-fi horror show future to avoid. Congress knows that Meta/Zucc influenced the 2016 election via ML/AI targeted ands and did basically nothing.

What's funny to me, is AI generated content is virtually indistinguishable from heavily filtered content, but it cannot replicate a high resolution, untouched image.

So, obviously it's putting influencers out of a job.

They terk er jerbs

That's what AI is made for. Bull-shiting.

I prefer to think of it as leveling the playing field. You don’t have to be a 20 year old woman with the right face and body ratios to be an instagram model anymore. Anyone can! Seems like true equality to me.