Almost Timely News: 🗞️ Authenticity in the Age of AI

(2024-07-14)

Jul 14, 2024

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What's On My Mind: Authenticity in the Age of AI

This week's newsletter is two newsletters in one. First, we'll talk about authenticity in the age of AI, and then I'll walk through how I made this issue, since it's a little different than normal. I had some ideas that needed to be coalesced into something beyond a random list of complaints and observations, and I used Google Gemini to help with that. I'm also writing this in a cycle of voice notes, transcription, and cleanup.

Part 1: Authenticity in the Age of AI

Let's talk about authenticity in the age of AI - talking about truth and trust, human experience, and the way AI is changing everything. I want to talk about this through three different examples of what is real.

Number one: There's this person on Threads - and I've seen this making its rounds on LinkedIn as well - who put up a post introducing themselves. A whole bunch of people jumped in, saying, "Oh, this is AI, this is a bot," because the person's introductory photo looked like the kind of thing that someone puts up as a very generic selfie or that was generated by a machine. Now, if this person is, in fact, machine-generated, it's a very well-run account. A bunch of people left comments, and this person understandably got very angry, saying, "Go get a life," and a variety of other, more colorful responses, which leads me to believe that the person and the account are real, though the images might not be.

Number two is in the UK this past week; they had elections. One of the parties was accused of running purely AI-generated candidates - people who weren't real, who didn't exist. It turns out that the people who were running those social media accounts on behalf of those candidates, or running the candidates' profiles on various election websites, had used generative AI tools to touch up their profile photos - something that you see a lot of people do on LinkedIn. They do look like synthetic people, but the candidates did exist.

In fact, these candidates had some very harsh words that, in another time and place, probably would have gotten them kicked out of the election, or their party kicked out.

Third, a friend of mine said that their parent really loves this YouTube channel. On this channel, people take songs by one band and apply the vocal style - the neural style transfer - of another band. For example: The Beatles singing "Paradise City" by Guns N' Roses. My friend was commenting on how entertaining that is to their parent.

The question that all three of these things raise is, what is real? What is reality? What does it mean to be real and authentic in a world of AI?

The Authenticity Crisis

The concept of an authenticity crisis where AI is making us question things and in some cases, use AI as an excuse to not dig deeper. We already have an issue with empathy. We have an issue with being able to listen to opposing viewpoints and understand them, even if we don't agree with them. This has been a declining skill. Now, in an age of deepfakes, AI-generated content, and a lack of empathy, people are just shutting down, saying, "Nope, you're AI-generated; not going to listen to you."

Let's talk about this, the ways this impacts us, the problems it creates, and maybe some solutions. First of all, we need to talk about what is real. What does it mean to be real? The term "authentic" in marketing has been used and overused so many times that I've lost count. It's just a hot mess. "Your brand should be authentic." Well, how does that work when a brand isn't a person? By definition, if authenticity is about what's real, a real person - as in these examples - then a brand can't be authentic, because it's not a person.

Three Types of Authenticity

We have to think about what "authentic" means. I think you can break this down into three different categories: authenticity of origin, authenticity of intent, and authenticity of experience.

Authenticity of origin is probably what we think of first when we talk about authenticity. For example, is this a real human being? Did Christopher Penn write this newsletter? The answer is yes. Does this person actually exist on Threads? If I open a jar of tomatoes, and inside is a jar of snakes, that's not authentic. It's not what it says on the box. That's authenticity of origin.

Second, authenticity of intent: What was the intent of the creation? What is the motivation behind it? Is there an intent to deceive - to say it's one thing when it's really another? For example, if I said this newsletter was completely generated without AI, the only way it could be authentic is if that were absolutely true - that I did not use AI for any part of this. That's untrue. I've used AI fairly significantly for this. Authenticity of intent is important.

Finally, authenticity of experience, which is the audience's experience: Do they feel a connection? Do they feel some kind of meaning, some kind of truth? This is the hardest one to quantify because, with authenticity of experience, if you don't feel like something is real, then to you, it's not real - whether or not it is actually real. You feel like it isn't.

I'll give you a culinary example: Truffle oil is a relatively expensive product, so there's a lot of synthetic truffle oil out there. It is so prevalent that synthetic truffle oil is what people have come to believe real truffle oil tastes like - to the point where, when they have the real thing, they think, "That's not it." What's fake is perceived as real by the audience.

The same is true in Western countries with sushi, with wasabi. Almost all wasabi served with sushi is dyed horseradish. It's not real wasabi. Real wasabi is incredibly expensive; it perishes quickly, it doesn't grow in many places, and it has a very different taste from what is normally served. So many people have had sushi served with horseradish, synthetic wasabi - that, to them, that is real. Their lived experience of what they think wasabi is, is the fake stuff.

We have three different types of authenticity. To be authentic, you've got to have two out of three, "Two out of three ain't bad," as the expression goes.

Corrupted Authenticity

However, there's a second wrench in the works, which is even when you have authenticity, if the intent of the authenticity is self-serving, it ruins the value of authenticity. For example, if you've ever gone to a car dealership, or a computer dealership, you will often see notes on products that say, "Use only genuine so-and-so's parts. Use only genuine Toyota parts in this car."

There is a rationale for using only genuine parts because the manufacturer made them. In theory, those parts should work better than aftermarket parts. However, people have been so screwed over by car dealerships that insist on genuine parts that when people do use aftermarket parts, they realize they aren't any worse.

We see that claim of authenticity, and the importance placed on authenticity, as a cash grab. That's a case where authenticity has been manipulated for profit, which reduces trust in authenticity. "Oh, authenticity only matters if you're trying to take more money from me."

I had this experience recently with a vacuum cleaner. "Use only authentic so-and-so's parts in this thing." I bought some aftermarket parts, and I bought some genuine parts. The genuine parts broke faster than the aftermarket parts. That's just pathetic. The fact that a third-party knockoff did a better job making this particular part than the manufacturer reduces the value of authenticity to basically nothing.

Part of our understanding of authenticity has to be understanding what value it provides. If we're not providing value, then authenticity doesn't matter. Our brand is ruined, and that means authenticity is irrelevant.

Authenticity of Experience Is Decided By The Audience

How does our audience experience authenticity in the age of AI? Last fall, fall of 2023, MIT Sloan School of Management conducted a study. They studied AI content in two areas. One was creating five pieces of basic product advertising. The second was five pieces of persuasive, cause-based marketing. They conducted a series of experiments, showing different groups of people different content.

They showed one group of people content that was labeled in aggregate. They said, "You're going to be consuming content. Some of it is made by humans only, some of it by humans with AI assistance, and some of it is made purely by AI. We're not going to tell you which is which."

The second group was told, "We're just going to show you some content." Nothing about the experiment was disclosed.

For the third group, they said, "We're going to show you some content, and each piece is going to be labeled, whether it was human-generated alone, human-plus-machine, or machine-generated alone."

The results were stunning. When consumers were not told how the content was generated, AI content performed better than the human-led content - pure AI content. When consumers were told, either in aggregate or piece by piece, AI content was ranked the same as human-generated content. Human content got a performance bonus for authenticity, but AI didn't take a hit.

This raises questions about the quality of content we're creating and whether authentic content - human-led - is better. That performance bonus for content identified as human-generated didn't show up when no disclosures about the content's origin were made. This means that the content that machines created - inauthentic though it might be - performed better. The fake stuff did better.

What is "Better"? Is Authenticity Better?

A big part of the challenge we have to question as marketers is this: What do we define as "better"? In that third part, authenticity of experience, if a machine gives someone a better experience than a human, should we be concerned about authenticity? Or should we be concerned about giving the customer the best possible experience? The rational, unemotional, pragmatic, profit-oriented answer is to give customers the best experience possible.

If the costs are the same, give customers the best experience possible, because better experiences lead to higher customer retention. In the case of AI, if the costs are less and the experience is better, it's a hard argument to make that authenticity for humans matters when the experience people have is better with machine-generated stuff.

That's sort of what authenticity means right now, and the challenges it presents.

Authenticity and the Post-Factual World

There are other angles to authenticity in what I would call the post-factual world, the post-truth world. By that, I mean we're now in a media landscape that is so polarized, unempathetic, anti-empathetic, and married to our identities, that people prefer feelings over facts. People would rather feel a certain way based on something completely false than look at facts and data.

Here's a straightforward example: COVID hasn't gone away. The pandemic never ended. If you look at the data right now, as of this writing, where I live in the USA, we're in a significant surge. We're in a much bigger surge of COVID than we've seen previously. It mirrors the same conditions as 2021. Should we be doing things like masking and vaccinating? Yes. Are we, by and large? No. Why? Because feelings matter more than facts, and people would rather feel like they can be unencumbered and take on an enormous amount of risk. That's the post-factual world, the post-truth world.

In that world, one of the things that is sort of the dark side of authenticity is weaponized artificiality. When you want to discredit someone, dismiss an opposing viewpoint, or sow distrust in something, just say it's AI-generated. "Oh, that's not real. That's machine-generated. That's fake."

When you want to deflect blame, you say, "Oh, I didn't say that; a machine - someone made a deepfake with AI." That erosion of trust, which is already in short supply in a post-truth world, because trust and truth are interrelated - makes proving authenticity very challenging.

Does Authenticity Matter?

So what do we do with this mess of authenticity? Number one: We have to figure out if it even matters - if it matters to our brands, our marketing, our businesses. If trust and truth are important to your audience, there are steps you can take to improve authenticity, to prove you are being authentic.

If your audience does not value truth, then authenticity doesn't matter either. There is no shortage of politicians around the world - I'm not singling anyone out - whose followers don't care about the truth. They care about how they feel, and so authenticity and truth are irrelevant. They believe what makes them feel the way they want to feel, rather than looking at data.

That's the first determination you need to make: whether truth and authenticity matter to your audience. If they don't, don't worry about it. If they do, you need to do a few things.

Proving Authenticity

First, you need to figure out what value people place on authenticity. How important is it to them? How important is it that I actually wrote this newsletter?

Step two, if people do care, is radical transparency. You have to show how the sausage is made. You have to show your work, from ideation through the entire process. For example - and we'll talk about this in part two - I'm saving all the pieces I'm using to write this issue of the newsletter so I can show you how I made it with AI. It will come out as - not inauthentic - but it will definitely be processed. It will have the shine, the veneer of being massaged by machines to some degree. It's inevitable.

Transparency, disclosure, clear labeling, opening up your processes for validation and verification, maybe by third parties, showing your work - these are the ways you prove authenticity. You prove authenticity by showing your work, by being open and explaining to people, "Here's how this was made." It's not enough to say, "Here are the ingredients." It's, "Here are the ingredients; come on over to the factory floor, and watch us make this thing." That's how you prove authenticity in the final product.

The second thing you can do is create outputs that are challenging for machines to create. I will frequently put on a bright orange construction helmet in videos because today, video models just can't handle that kind of randomness. The same way they do a poor job dealing with it when you put your hand, or an obstruction, in front of your face. Video synthesis tools aren't that good yet. They will get there, and then we will need newer, better ways to demonstrate authenticity.

Live streaming is a possibility - live streaming with a studio audience so they can validate that you are, in fact, doing what you say you're doing, that you are really there, doing the thing. That's how you tackle authenticity: You disclose. You make content that is difficult for machines to replicate, and you go all-in on transparency.

Is Authenticity Valuable?

Is authenticity valuable? The rational answer is... maybe. I say "maybe" because there is a percentage of your audience that will value authentic, human-led stuff. The question is whether or not your business can afford to do that. Can you afford artisanal, handcrafted, small-batch content creation when your competitors are all using mechanized methods?

I go back to this example from agriculture: One person can pick a bushel of corn on a farm in about 10 to 20 hours. It's hard work, rough work, very labor-intensive. A John Deere X9 1100 combine can pick 7,200 bushels of corn on a farm in 1 hour. Can you sell artisanal, hand-picked corn? Yes. Will people pay much more for it than for a nearly identical product that was picked at a much lower unit cost? The answer is less clear, especially when the difference is that huge.

Authenticity only has value if people are willing to pay for it, whether they're paying in attention, currency, or loyalty. The nature of AI, just like the nature of automation, means that there are some things that become scarce. Human-led content will become scarce because AI content will be the vast majority of content - but just because something is scarce doesn't mean it's valuable.

This is where we get to the equation that everybody loves and hates: "Fast, cheap, good - choose two." If you want content that is fast and cheap, "good" has to be out of the question - for humans.

What's different about machines? Machines can do all three. Machines can do fast, cheap, and good. AI can do fast, cheap, and good. Humans have to choose: Do we want good and cheap? It isn't going to be fast if a human does it. It is if a machine does. Do we want fast and good? It isn't going to be cheap unless you use a machine.

Authenticity has to be something your audience values enough to pay a premium for. If they aren't willing to pay that premium, then authenticity is probably something you shouldn't worry too much about. I know that's going to rub a bunch of people the wrong way; a bunch of people are going to find a lot of uncomfortable things in that sentence, but it's the ugly truth.

Figure out what your audience values, and then provide it. You may find that your audience doesn't value authenticity enough to pay more for it. It's not the most uplifting point of view, but it's the most honest, and the most reality-based.

Part 2: How I Made This Issue

Okay, that's the end of part one of this newsletter. Like I said, there are two parts. The second part is how I created this, because I want to talk you through the process, to show my work, to show the authenticity behind it. Since this newsletter is free, authenticity is a nice add-on, because the process I'm using doesn't actually save me that much time. It does save me the labor of putting my fingers on the keyboard.

Here's how I built this newsletter: First, I had a collection of seven or eight random thoughts about what is real, which I put in a notebook. When I'm out and about, I often jot down sentence fragments.

I thought, "There's something here, but I don't know what it is." So, I fired up Google Gemini and said, "I want to talk about authenticity in the age of AI." We went back and forth about different aspects, some of which are in this newsletter.

I said, "Here are the notes I jotted down. I want you to work these into an outline, build me an outline for this issue of my newsletter - actually, build me an outline for a keynote address," because I find that gives me a nice narrative flow. "Write a newsletter," as a prompt doesn't seem to work as well.

With the outline in front of me on the screen, I opened up Adobe Audition and started recording. I recorded myself reacting to the different pieces of the outline. I skipped some parts, because this outline is verbose. There are some pieces that should probably wait for another week, or another issue, because I think they'd be distracting. So, I recorded myself talking through this. Then, I run the recording through transcription to get the exact words I said, with all the verbal stumbles, repetitions, lost trains of thought, and rabbit holes.

That gets put back into Gemini, with a transcription prompt I use to clean up transcripts. I say, "I want you to clean up the grammar, spelling, and punctuation in this transcript, but preserve my words, my tone of voice, my writing style - preserve me." I want this newsletter to sound like me; I want it to be consistent week to week, so you know what you're getting. It's a differentiator. I don't sound like anyone else. I sound like me.

Once Gemini cleans up the transcript, I turn on the video camera and assemble the newsletter. Then, I read it aloud. You'll notice in the video - I put the teleprompter just above the camera - that from time to time, my eyes move, or I stumble and get lost.

That's the process I used to create this issue. It's different from my normal process. Normally, I write it out, but I wanted to try this approach because I didn't have a fully formed point of view on this yet. I needed that dialogue partner to talk through these ideas with, to answer the question of, what am I missing? What did I forget? What angles am I overlooking? Then, I needed to develop the process for creating the newsletter.

As always, shameless plug, if you want help with scaling your generative AI systems and proving authenticity, this is literally what my company does, so if getting started with this use of generative AI is of interest, hit me up.

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