I had some serious reservations about creating and posting this video.
(Watch the video before reading the rest of this post. Otherwise, I'm going to spoil the ending.)
Now, this isn't the first AI-generated video I've made of myself. Over the summer, I had some fun creating over-the-top AI videos, including my Mission Impossible and Cast Away satires. But those were obviously ridiculous. Nobody was supposed to believe I was actually doing those things. That was part of the joke.
This video is different. It's deliberately designed to look completely ordinary.
And that's what made me hesitate.
From this point forward, people might look at my videos, photos, and even written posts and wonder whether they're actually mine. I'm introducing doubt about my own authenticity. And once you open that door, it's pretty hard to close it.
I almost decided it wasn't worth it.
But after reading CNN's recent article about LinkedIn encouraging more "human" content, I think there's something much more important at stake.
The article states: "Instead, the team encourages users to embrace imperfection in their posts — to make videos by leaning a phone up against a coffee mug, rather than shooting in an expensive studio, or to dash off a post to start a conversation, even if it isn't a complete thought."
I hate to break it to you, but we are already in a world where AI can convincingly imitate the very things we're being told make content authentic.
The imperfections. The casual settings. The spontaneous walking videos.
And here's what I really want to emphasize: I created this using tools that are readily available to anyone. I didn't need any special technical skills, expensive equipment, or particular talent. I'm not a professional video editor or an AI researcher. If I can do this with publicly available tools and relatively little effort, imagine what someone with malicious intentions, a budget, and real expertise could accomplish.
And I worry that by encouraging people to associate casual, imperfect content with authenticity, we're making them more vulnerable to deception, manipulation, and scams.
I don't have all the answers. But "embrace imperfection" is not a solution to the problem of authenticity. If anything, it risks creating a false sense of security, making the people most vulnerable to deception even easier to fool.
We need to stop teaching people what authentic content is supposed to look like and start teaching them to be far more skeptical of what they see, hear, and read in this brave new world. Sadly, that's the reality we're living in.