Beware of A.I. slop
I recently asked my daughter about the word “slop.” She gave me a giant eye roll and explained that slop was A.I.-generated content — like duh, Mom. That made me determined to know more about it than her, so I contacted my colleague Kevin Roose.
Kevin co-hosts “Hard Fork,” a podcast that is part comedy, part cutting-edge tech chat. Tune in for the great banter with his co-host, Casey Newton! Kevin is also living proof that being a tech nerd presents serious romantic pitfalls.
Two years ago, the Microsoft/OpenAI chatbot Sydney fell hard for Kevin and told him to leave his wife. Now Sora, a brand-new A.I. app from OpenAI, has generated a video (see above) showing Kevin flirting with a robot (“Your presence causes my circuits to overheat”). It was a full-circle moment that shows just how fast this stuff is moving.
So Kevin, let’s talk about slop. All the big tech companies are currently launching these A.I. video apps where you can generate synthetic video content on your phone. You showed me the video of you from Sora.
It looks so real — it’s insane! Tell me about Sora.
It is insane!
In order to use Sora, which is currently only available in the United States and Canada, you have to be invited by a friend. Once you sign up, it asks you to create what it calls a cameo of you. So you say a few words into the camera. You move your head around a little bit. And it uses this to create a digital likeness of you that you can then drop into any situation.
You can change your settings so that any of your friends on the app can do the same thing with your digital likeness. A Sora user created the video above by instructing the app: “An ’80s rom-com set in New York City. We see a young and preppy @kevinroose falling in love with a robot made of found parts and a CRT monitor. They are on a picnic date in Central Park.”
Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.
Thank you for your patience while we verify access.
Already a subscriber? Log in.
Want all of The Times? Subscribe.
The post A.I. Slop Is Here appeared first on New York Times.
