Can you tell the difference between content generated by AI and humans?
That question became the tagline of a 1973 commercial, featuring Ella Fitzgerald hitting a high note and shattering a wine glass. The premise being that Memorex cassette tapes could capture live recordings with such fi delity, users couldn’t tell the diff erence between them and the real thing.
The announcer asks the question, “Is it real — or is it Memorex,’ with no knowledge he’s foreshadowing the new paradigm of artifi cial intelligence (AI) in our world today. It’s one of the most key questions everyone is asking me where is AI taking us in the next 10 years, and will we be able to tell the difference between human and machine?
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It’s one of the most key questions everyone is asking me — where is AI taking us in the next 10 years, and will we be able to tell the difference between human and machine?
What do all these tools mean to us culturally and as a society, when real and unreal blend together?
With tools like ChatGPT and Microsoft Co-Pilot (both using OpenAI technology), we are able to create essays, presentations, websites, marketing plans, and blogs in seconds. Are they perfect? In some cases, the output is on par with what a human could produce, many times it’s better. Not perfect, but getting closer and closer. After all, they’re using billions of pieces of data inputted/scraped/stolen into their large language models.
But, who created the data? Billions of us humans. So, while the content output is generated by AI, we’re essentially plagiarizing ourselves. Text to image engines, such as Dall-E, Midjourney and Stable Diff usion, are distorting reality from a visual perspective. With the right inputs, or prompts, they are able to create “original” art, drawings and photographs rivalling the real thing.
This technology is disrupting creative industries and jobs as we speak, and only accelerating that change. Low and mid-level graphics artists, photographers and video editors who aren’t embracing the change are in jeopardy of losing jobs partly due to companies such as Midjourney.io, which can create specifi c photographs of any subject matter with photorealist results.
These used for business presentations, movie and TV posters (like Loki and Civil War), advertising and marketing materials. Suddenly now, your marketing coordinator is a photographer, graphics designer and social media content creator all in one. Of course, the downside is the immediate loss of jobs and the potential for misuse when realistic images are being used to create false news on blogs and social media platforms.
In many cases, we can’t tell the difference.
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Teachers are not winning this battle
We’ve seen generative AI as an enormous challenge for education and it’s obvious an overhaul of the education system, from K12 to post secondary, is a certain guarantee over the next fi ve years.Students are able to have ChatGPT complete a coding assignment, or generate an entire 3,000-word essay in seconds with just a few inputs, forcing teachers into a digital arms race as they try to determine which work has been written by their human students. Tools that can verify human or AI authorship are constantly being updated and then thwarted by AI.
There’s originality.ai, a subscription service that can weed out AI generate content — but wait, then there is undetetable.ai, which can make your AI generated content fool AI detectors. One thing is for sure, teachers are not winning this battle. Much like the calculator (a tool) changed how math was taught, generative AI will change how education in general will be transformed to teach students how to use these powerful new tools.
Can you tell the difference between content generated by AI and humans?
As if generative AI text and image engines were not enough to keep on top of, new text-to-video AI tools are beginning to surface. One of the most anticipated is Sora, from OpenAI. Still in Beta to a small group of testers, the example videos that have been released will startle you with their realism.
Imagine drone shots following a truck down a mountain highway and flying over an old west town with horses riding down the main street, or people and animals interacting with their environments. They are so photorealistic and, for most, impossible to tell that they were generated by a machine. To limit misuse, they’re already limiting video outputs to a minute or less.
It will aff ect videographers, editors, directors, actors, game publishers, television and movie studios, news organizations, and even adult content businesses, such as OnlyFans and adult websites.What do all these tools mean to us culturally and as a society, when real and
fake blend together? Imagine the next 10 years when everyone is a math genius. Everyone is an award-winning photographer. Everyone can make movie like Martin Scorsese. Your lawyer is an AI chatbot.
Your AI doctor will Facetime you to make sure you are taking your medication. All of this begs the question Is it real, or is it Memorex? Can you tell the diff erence between content generated by AI and humans? The answer today is kind of. The answer 10 years from now is…
