At a recent meeting at work, the conversation has turned to AI ethics. That's an argument I fear. Partly because every time I have it recently, it finds it very cumbersome. Once that starts, you won't put a lid on. “ChatGpt made my life easier,” someone would say. “It's a slippery slope,” the other replies. “You need to learn to use it responsibly,” the first person may respond. “Using Gen Z using these tools is out of control, and they're all writing essays with them,” the other might applaud.
I felt the same anxiety this week when I saw this version of the conversation in response to a homage to Ozzy Osbourne. One of Osborne's companions, rock star Rod Stewart, faced a string of online criticism to screen videos generated by the strange AI of the late Black Sabbath frontman.
In the video, Stewart, shown at an Osborne concert at a concert in Alpharetta, Georgia, he holds a selfie stick and laughs as he poses with other dead celebrities in the creepy slow-motion effect with an airbrush typical of AI content. Covered by the blue sky and cloud background, this meant that Osborne, Tupac, Michael Jackson, Freddie Mercury and others were taking selfies in heaven. I wrote one person who shared the video, “This is the craziest and most rude s*** I've seen in my life!!!”
Another compared it to “making a video of your dead grandma's break with Princess Diana in heaven and putting it on a huge screen as part of my tour where people paid to watch,” adding, “and I'm going to do it without your knowledge or permission.”
It's not hard to see why these conversations about AI can feel so divisive and almost inconsistent. There are all the constitutive parts that make a twisting, decisive argument: rapid social change affecting multiple parts of everyday life, including ethical challenges, economic considerations, perceived generational divisions, and sensitive extremes of human experiences such as birth and death.
Importantly, there is no simple answer either. AI is not really “good” or “bad”. Rather, the way you use it requires consideration, responsibility and discretion. There are a lot of grey areas and we have to use our own judgment to think about where to draw the lines. And just because we can do it doesn't mean we should, as always, in new scientific and technical developments.
Many feel that Stewart's AI montage has no good judgment and that he has made the wrong call. I tend to agree, mainly because I found the video aesthetically offensive. It was very inadequate as literally every one of us could make it at home. Still, the 80-year-old shouldn't assume he felt he was showing off his new shiny toy. Our contribution to the meeting, reverberating in the ears of my Gen Z colleagues, was able to hear “Boomers Love AI.”
The video is not only sticky, but it's just an extra thing. What happened to the good old black and white “Memoam” photos? Do you really need to see an AI-generated star kicking it in heaven? I felt the same way when I saw the CGI recreation after Peter Cushing's death Rogue One: The Story of Star Wars Aptly named Harold Ramis Ghostbusters: After Death. Certainly, without a revival like Frankenstein, like these gimmicks, was there another way to pay homage to their previous performances?
There are also questions about the ethics of not letting the deceased rest peacefully. It's more of an emotional instinct than a material reality, but when you see these kinds of respect, you often find yourself realizing that some of these people are still in their work. It also drove other questions about the exploitation of the stars for profit at death.
You can create computer-generated star behaviors as you like. This may be a dream for industry executives, but it may be a nightmare for the stars themselves. Actor Susan Sarandon is one of many people who spoke against the practice, warning that AI can make her do something “say something I don't choose.” Surviving families may be able to weigh themselves, but there is no way to say whether the person in question agreed to be puppetted like this at a concert. In particular, Ozzy Osbourne was thought to be the Prince of Darkness. Something is commemorated to shine in the clouds and tells me that I chose to swing my selfie stick around. Singers like Whitney Houston and Aaliyah, both included in the video, also had a very traumatic and exploitative experience in the industry, and perhaps contributed to their premature death. Shouldn't they be allowed to rest?
On the other hand, it can be argued that inclusion of Michael Jackson, who passed away in 2009, is essentially giving him an updated platform. This undoubtedly brings very mixed emotions to those who accused him of sexual abuse, facing the ongoing trauma of Jackson's image being revived and celebrated through post-mortem cash cows MJ Musical.
No matter which staff member Stewart, and whoever was involved in the video, I can't help but think that when they launched it, they didn't hand over any of these emotional or ethical questions (it could take a few minutes, by the way).
It leads to my stance on the horrifying AI debate: it seems impossible to stop these tools from surges, so we can also work on educating ourselves about them. This means that you are involved in the social, economic and moral considerations that come with the use of AI and remember to use it in restraint. While we might assume that these kinds of interventions should be targeted at younger generations, I think Stewart's recent signal of hiccups requires everyone to engage in debate about one of the most important issues of our time, no matter how complicated they are.
