Tag: artificial impersonators

Bookstore (No Books)

Recently the fam and I spent the weekend back in my old college town.  Despite the fact that my  wife and kids love it when dad shows them his old haunts and regales them with stories of his college days, I found myself alone again while the family unit was off making candles.  

With football season right around the corner, and me still rocking fashion from a previous millennium, it felt like I was due for an update to my university athletic apparel.  Pretty much every retailer close to campus sells it, but I thought in order to get the real goods maybe I should visit the campus bookstore for the officially licensed merch.  Despite having three floors of t-shirts, hats, hoodies, sweats, jerseys, golf apparel, banners and bedding, nothing really stood out as a must have, so I decided to stick with my crummy old outdated shirts and sweat stained ball caps and left the bookstore empty handed.  

However, after walking for about ten minutes, reflecting on how much the bookstore had changed in the last thirty years, it dawned on me that the university bookstore didn’t contain any books.  In the olden days, the lowest level was entirely devoted to stocking texts for the current semester, while the upper levels featured merch and apparel.  Now, the whole place was a massive gift shop superstore, yet they still called it a bookstore.

So where the hell do students get their books these days if not the campus bookstore?  Do they even use books?  When was the last time I saw a kid with a book in his hands?  After all, that would necessitate prying the smartphone from fingers palsied by a constant and unrelenting grip on a smart device.  “From my cold dead hands,” is the response I got last time I attempted to extract a smartphone from a young person. 

Clearly, they have no need for books.  They probably just sit down in class and the professor says, “Okay, class, open the internet to page blah, blah, blah,” and they go from there.  Of course these days even looking stuff up on the internet has become so much of an imposition that we now have several versions of artificial impersonators that will do the research for us, summarize findings, and even produce scholarly works. 

I know, there he goes again, the old man yelling at technology.  Fact is, they probably download class materials onto tablets and computers, and it undoubtedly costs them a small fortune, as it always has.  

Anyway, I could get to the bottom of this Bookstore (No Books) situation simply by asking a powerful computer brain for help, but I’d rather just ask a student when I get a chance.  As for the brainiacs down there at the University of Science Bookstore, you probably ought to think about changing the name to Gift Shop.

Artificial Impersonators

Used to be you’d turn on the old boob tube and watch some comedian like Rich Little, Dana Carvey or Darrell Hammond do impressions of famous figures that were so spot on they sounded like the real thing.  Only they obviously weren’t because the voice was clearly coming out of a different person and the content was entirely farcical.  

Recently, I was consuming content on the internet’s most prominent boob tube channel when I realized I was being taken for a ride by one of its artificial impersonators.  I’ve been watching Bishop Robert Barron’s channel since way back when he was only Father Barron and his content featured movie reviews in which he’d insert some relevant christian theology.  The other day I’m listening to one of his messages on a channel I’d never heard of before when I became curious about the YouTube account and the channel’s background.  The thumbnail featured Bishop Barron’s image and the audio sounded like a message or sermon he’d possibly recorded privately or perhaps spoken publicly at some time or another.  Here’s a direct quote from the video’s description:

“In this 21-minute morning message, Bishop Robert Barron reflects on the power of morning prayer, gratitude, and surrender to God’s plan.

“Through Scripture, prayer, and reflection, Bishop Barron reminds us that when we start our day with thankfulness and intention, we align our hearts with divine peace and purpose.”

I immediately wondered if this channel represented some new offering from Bishop Barron’s Word on Fire Ministries, so I read on.  After scrolling through chapter titles, hashtags and descriptions of what I would learn from “Bishop Robert Barron’s Catholic insights,” I finally arrived at this disclaimer:

“This message includes public theological reflections and prayers inspired by Bishop Robert Barron.”

Because I’m not super bright, and I’m old and not very clever when it comes to the ways of technology, the internet and social media, I still did not get the hint.  

The message included “public theological reflections and prayers.”  So, Bishop Barron spoke these words publicly and someone recorded it and here it is, right?

If, at that moment, someone would have smacked me upside the head and said, “Do I need to spell it out for you?” I would have deserved it.  Instead, there is this:

“Altered or synthetic content:  Sound or visuals were significantly edited or digitally generated.”

As much as I wanted to believe that I hadn’t been duped by an artificial impersonator, it became abundantly clear that I had.  Apparently, many others had been as well, because there were lots of comments thanking Bishop Barron for the message.

The channel is called “The Divine Motivation,” it’s on YouTube and it’s fake.  It is not Bishop Barron, and it doesn’t matter if it has some ambiguous disclaimer buried deep within the show notes, it is deliberately deceptive.  Some additional searching immediately revealed two other artificial impersonator channels:  “Bishop Barron’s Motivations” and “The Faith Journey.”  

I know I sound like an old man yelling at technology.  I can imagine someone countering, “Where have you been, old timer?  This is the world we live in.”  Fair enough.  But this old man can’t abide while dull-witted content creators harness technology to impersonate authentic, exceptional, thoughtful and inspiring human beings.  

Using someone else’s name, likeness and voice to create artificial messages without being upfront about it is massively deceptive.  And you can never motivate, inspire, reveal truth or instill hope through fakery and deceit.