The AI Slop Backlash Is Actually Having an Impact
The AI Slop Backlash Is Actually Having an Impact
对“AI 垃圾内容”的抵制正在产生实际影响
I was recently digging through my Instagram settings, trying to disable Meta’s now-defunct feature that allowed anyone to create AI deepfakes of me without consent. Anger bubbled up inside as I tapped through the Kafkaesque opt-out process. 最近，我正在翻看 Instagram 的设置，试图关闭 Meta 那项现已废除的功能——该功能允许任何人在未经我同意的情况下创建我的 AI 深度伪造（deepfake）内容。在经历那套卡夫卡式（Kafkaesque）的退出流程时，我内心怒火中烧。
Rather than throwing my phone across the room, I blurted to my partner that we should leave San Francisco behind and be off-grid sheep farmers. Something analog. In that moment, anything sounded better than this ongoing, generative-AI-induced hell. 我没有把手机扔出房间，而是脱口而出对伴侣说，我们应该离开旧金山，去过那种与世隔绝的牧羊生活。做点模拟时代的事情。那一刻，任何事情听起来都比这种由生成式 AI 引发的持续地狱要好。
Many Americans are having similar reactions to the growing prevalence of generative AI in daily life. “The AI revolution has happened, and everybody hates it,” says Meredith Broussard, a data journalism professor at New York University and author of Artificial Unintelligence: How Computers Misunderstand the World. In a recent Gallup poll, Americans’ increased familiarity with generative AI coincides with negative attitudes about the technology. This is especially true for young people between 18 and 29, where almost half see generative AI as doing more harm than good. 许多美国人对生成式 AI 在日常生活中的日益普及有着类似的反应。“AI 革命已经发生了，但每个人都讨厌它，”纽约大学数据新闻学教授、《人工智能的无知：计算机如何误解世界》（Artificial Unintelligence）一书的作者梅雷迪思·布鲁萨德（Meredith Broussard）说道。在最近的一项盖洛普民意调查中，美国人对生成式 AI 的熟悉程度越高，对该技术的负面态度就越明显。对于 18 到 29 岁的年轻人来说尤其如此，近一半的人认为生成式 AI 的弊大于利。
While this AI backlash has been brewing for the last few years, more companies appear to be directly addressing these concerns. LinkedIn added a “seems like AI slop” button for reporting AI-generated content on the platform, despite still hosting plenty of generative AI tools. Snapchat announced that fully AI-generated videos would no longer be eligible for its discovery feed. Substack recently added an AI detection tool to police writers. 尽管这种对 AI 的抵制情绪在过去几年里一直在酝酿，但越来越多的公司似乎正在直接回应这些担忧。LinkedIn 添加了一个“看起来像 AI 垃圾内容”的按钮，用于举报平台上的 AI 生成内容，尽管该平台仍托管着大量生成式 AI 工具。Snapchat 宣布，完全由 AI 生成的视频将不再有资格进入其发现（discovery）信息流。Substack 最近也增加了一款 AI 检测工具来监管作者。
The backlash’s “why” is simple at its core. Many Americans feel like they never consented to any of this. I had no idea that my online interactions would one day be scraped en masse for AI model training. I didn’t ask for Instagram to enable deepfakes on my account. I didn’t want Google to push AI-generated answers at the top of search results. I woke up one day, and generative AI features were stuffed into every corner of all the software I rely on without my consent. 抵制背后的原因归根结底很简单。许多美国人觉得他们从未同意过这一切。我根本不知道我的在线互动有一天会被大规模抓取用于 AI 模型训练。我没有要求 Instagram 在我的账户上启用深度伪造功能。我也不希望谷歌在搜索结果顶部推送 AI 生成的答案。有一天我醒来，发现我所依赖的所有软件的每一个角落，都被未经我同意塞入的生成式 AI 功能填满了。
Whether it’s AI models scraping your data or noisy data centers popping up in your backyard, the AI revolution seems to be an event happening to us without making us feel like active participants. 无论是 AI 模型抓取你的数据，还是你家后院冒出的嘈杂数据中心，这场 AI 革命似乎是一场强加于我们身上的事件，而我们并没有感受到自己是其中的积极参与者。
“Consent is really important,” Broussard tells WIRED. “We can connect that to the way that women, queer people, people of color, and minorities get exploited and abused online. Tech companies have never really been sensitive to issues of consent.” “同意权非常重要，”布鲁萨德告诉《连线》（WIRED）。“我们可以将其与女性、酷儿群体、有色人种和少数群体在网上被剥削和虐待的方式联系起来。科技公司从未真正对同意权问题保持敏感。”
Public backlash appears to be working, at times, in getting unwanted AI features shut down. “They just roll them out and see what sticks, because nobody really knows what this is for,” says Nick Seaver, an associate professor of anthropology at Tufts University focusing on technology and society. Google recently rolled back the ability for people to use generative AI to tweak satellite images on Google Earth almost immediately after launching it, following reporting from 404 Media. Additionally, Meta turned off the aforementioned deepfaking tool for Instagram users after three days of public outcry and viral videos with millions of views criticizing the feature. 公众的抵制似乎在某些时候起到了作用，促使一些不受欢迎的 AI 功能被关闭。“他们只是把产品推出来看看效果，因为没人真正知道这东西是干什么用的，”塔夫茨大学研究技术与社会的副教授尼克·西弗（Nick Seaver）说。在 404 Media 报道后，谷歌最近在推出“使用生成式 AI 调整 Google Earth 卫星图像”功能后几乎立即将其撤回。此外，在公众抗议以及批评该功能的病毒式视频获得数百万次观看的三天后，Meta 关闭了前述针对 Instagram 用户的深度伪造工具。
There’s also a growing rejection of generative AI in marketing materials. Many people online reacted negatively to major brands, like McDonald’s and Coca-Cola, incorporating generative AI visuals into their ad spots. Even local shops see backlash for promoting events using AI-generated posters. 营销材料中对生成式 AI 的抵制也在增加。许多网民对麦当劳和可口可乐等大品牌在广告中加入 AI 生成的视觉效果反应负面。甚至连使用 AI 生成海报来宣传活动的地方小店也遭到了抵制。
Beyond online outcry, more people are starting to protest against the building of data centers that power these AI tools. “There’s a lot of pushback coalescing around data centers,” says Emily Bender, coauthor of The AI Con. “Data centers are important because they are focal points of environmental and economic damage.” Americans across the political spectrum have recently united in these data center protests. 除了网上的抗议，越来越多的人开始反对建设为这些 AI 工具提供动力的数据中心。“围绕数据中心的抵制声音正在汇聚，”《AI 骗局》（The AI Con）的合著者艾米丽·本德（Emily Bender）说。“数据中心之所以重要，是因为它们是环境和经济破坏的焦点。”最近，不同政治立场的美国人都在这些针对数据中心的抗议活动中团结了起来。
While tech workers in San Francisco, especially software developers, have latched on to generative AI tools as central to their everyday work, many of these uses are obligatory. “Top-down mandates to use large language models are crazy,” one Block employee told me during the layoffs earlier this year at Jack Dorsey’s fintech company. “If the tool were good, we’d all just use it.” I don’t want to be forced to use specific tools at work, especially one that’s morally questionable and shown to be wrought with errors. 虽然旧金山的科技工作者，尤其是软件开发人员，已经将生成式 AI 工具视为日常工作的核心，但其中许多使用是强制性的。“自上而下强制要求使用大语言模型简直是疯了，”杰克·多西（Jack Dorsey）旗下的金融科技公司 Block 的一名员工在今年早些时候的裁员期间告诉我。“如果工具真的好用，我们自然会去用。”我不想在工作中被迫使用特定的工具，尤其是那种在道德上存在疑问且被证明充满错误的工具。
It’s easy to feel helpless when pushing back against the whims of giant, well-funded tech companies, but the recent rollbacks of some AI features stand as a reminder about the power of collective action. “I would definitely encourage people to organize using traditional methods as well as digital methods,” says Broussard. “Remind people that public pressure works.” 在对抗资金雄厚的巨型科技公司的任性决策时，人们很容易感到无助，但最近一些 AI 功能的撤回提醒了我们集体行动的力量。“我绝对鼓励人们利用传统方法和数字方法进行组织，”布鲁萨德说。“提醒大家，公众压力是有效的。”