Virtual influencers?

[Dave Bryce]

I just read an interesting article on "the virtual human industry" - using AI to create online personalities that are "never-aging, scandal-free and digitally flawless".

 

Can't say I'm terribly surprised...but I do find the concept a little...unsettling.  The article sez that's because I'm an old person.

 

Quote

Older generations might consider interacting with an artificial person somewhat odd. But experts say virtual influencers have struck a chord with younger Koreans, digital natives who spend much of their lives online.

 

They're probably right. 🤔

 

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[KuruPrionz]

We just need to create cranky old virtual influenzas?... uhhh... influencers who speak with the cynical, scathing wisdom of the ages. 

Somebody already got getoffmylawn.com, so it goes. 🤔🤣

[Dave Bryce]

13 minutes ago, KuruPrionz said:

We just need to create cranky old virtual influenzas?... uhhh... influencers who speak with the cynical, scathing wisdom of the ages. 

 

Kuru FTW. 😄

 

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[CEB]

The whole virtual people/AI/Bot thing is  interesting.   Could have some significant impacts on the careers of people whose job is related to the monetization of online activities through selling ad space or other services based on online contacts with real potential customers.    How do you tell what is a real contact and what is a fake when you can ghost or proxy IPs?

[Anderton]

But does this mean the "Click here to show you're  human" buttons will go away? Can we file a discrimination suit against the bots who are exempt?

 

Playboy airbrushed their playmates, actors get plastic surgery, and Photoshop is so ubiquitous is has become a verb. This is just a logical extension of ways that advertisers can try to pry more bucks from you. 

 

BTW this also explains why I never show my face in the videos I do, if at all possible. An image just gives people one more way to make value judgements. By having virtual people, perception becomes reality. 

 

 

[Anderton]

Whoever rebranded "marketing slime" as "influencers" should probably get a medal from the American Marketing Association.

[ElmerJFudd]

😂 as if living up to photoshopped and autotuned humans wasn’t hard enough. 

[KuruPrionz]

Can't we all just make "virtual humans" and clog up the virtual influencers web pages with tons of useless nothing?

Maybe that's the new "bitcoin", a pretense of value for a bunch of nothing. 

 

I'm gonna google it, it can't be that difficult. With a barrage of sufficient magnitude, humans might be able to just hang out with other actual humans, while the interwebz is hung by the hoops of it's own sphincter. 

[Anderton]

55 minutes ago, ElmerJFudd said:

😂 as if living up to photoshoped and autotuned humans wasn’t hard enough. 

 

True story: When I met my wife, I asked if she ever planned to get plastic surgery. When she emphatically said "no," I knew she was the right girl for me. I find "stock" women far more attractive than the ones where it's obvious they've had work done. Their lips look like bees attacked them, they can't smile without looking strange, and I'm not a fan of boob jobs, either. As to me, I'm not getting any hair transplants or stuff like that. Or end up looking like this...

 

 

 

[ElmerJFudd]

55 minutes ago, Anderton said:

 

True story: When I met my wife, I asked if she ever planned to get plastic surgery. When she emphatically said "no," I knew she was the right girl for me. I find "stock" women far more attractive than the ones where it's obvious they've had work done. Their lips look like bees attacked them, they can't smile without looking strange, and I'm not a fan of boob jobs, either. As to me, I'm not getting any hair transplants or stuff like that. Or end up looking like this...

 

 

 

“Her green plastic watering can
For her fake Chinese rubber plant
In the fake plastic earth
That she bought from a rubber man
In a town full of rubber plans
To get rid of itself

It wears her out, it wears her out
It wears her out, it wears her out

She lives with a broken man
A cracked polystyrene man
Who just crumbles and burns
He used to do surgery
For girls in the eighties
But gravity always wins

It wears him out, it wears him out
It wears him out, it wears him out

She looks like the real thing
She tastes like the real thing
My fake plastic love
But I can’t help the feeling
I could blow through the ceiling
If I just turn and run

It wears me out, it wears me out
It wears me out, it wears me out

If I could be who you wanted
If I could be who you wanted all the time

All the time…
All the time…”

[Dave Bryce]

4 hours ago, Anderton said:

BTW this also explains why I never show my face in the videos I do, if at all possible. An image just gives people one more way to make value judgements. 

 

I’m totally with you.  Any ad or video I make for any of the companies with whom I work, I go out of my way not to put any faces in them for the same reason. 

 

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[Anderton]

3 hours ago, David Bryce said:

 

I’m totally with you.  Any ad or video I make for any of the companies with whom I work, I go out of my way not to put any faces in them for the same reason. 

 

dB

 

I can totally understand. It's generally not a good idea for extraterrestrials to be too obvious. It attracts the wrong kind of attention.

[Dave Bryce]

9 hours ago, Anderton said:

 

I can totally understand. It's generally not a good idea for extraterrestrials to be too obvious. It attracts the wrong kind of attention.

 

No doubt. 

 

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[Anderton]

Fortunately, a backlash is growing against trying to blandify the looks of perfectly good-looking people.

 

Frankly, I think the "before" looks at least 20 times more attractive and interesting than the Photoshopped plastic surgery "after." 

 

[KuruPrionz]

2 minutes ago, Anderton said:

Fortunately, a backlash is growing against trying to blandify the looks of perfectly good-looking people.

 

Frankly, I think the "before" looks at least 20 times more attractive and interesting than the Photoshopped plastic surgery "after." 

 

I agree, I've been using Photoshop since 1992 and a photographer much longer than that. 

I don't like the "homogenized" face thang but it seems to be unavoidable in current publications. I might fix a zit if somebody has one and maybe lighten the shadows a bit but I like it when somebody looks like what they look like. In the end, we are all just monkeys of one sort or another. 

[RABid]

Maybe old people are already tired of dealing with virtual people calling to sell us insurance, trick us into changing Medicare plans, and scam us out of our retirement. 

 

Anyway, does anyone here remember the popular computer games, "Dogs" and "Cats"? Virtual pets that you play with and train. So why not virtual friends? 

[Anderton]

5 minutes ago, RABid said:

Maybe old people are already tired of dealing with virtual people calling to sell us insurance, trick us into changing Medicare plans, and scam us out of our retirement. 

 

Maybe if they were Asian nubiles, they'd feel different. At least the dirty old men