Questionable content, possibly linked

Series: Fakes

“Proof” of Ancient Quatria, the Quantum Conspiracy, and Related Mysteries

Brand Nation on Post-Reality Era, Margaux Blanchard

This piece is an interesting read on the fake AI journalist known by the alias Margaux Blanchard. The whole article is worth reading, but here’s the ending:

Margaux Blanchard and the Velvet Sundown are emblematic of the ‘post-reality’ environment we now inhabit – one whereby AI agents, synthetic personas and AI-generated content intertwine with human work, often undetected. When they are exposed, they become stories in their own right and their reach grows.

The implications point to a future where trust, authorship and authenticity must be constantly interrogated.

Welcome to the post-reality era.

Fake, The New Normal

Psychology Today:

The sad reality is that believability has replaced truth as the new currency of cognition. We prize, even affirm what seems plausible, not what is proven. The fake isn’t only tolerated. It is functional and smooths the edges of uncertainty, offering just enough reality to let us keep scrolling. Just enough. […]

We once said “seeing is believing,” but that perspective has flipped. Now, believing comes first. Algorithms and filters shape our perception long before our eyes do. A fake image that aligns with our worldview feels more real than a genuine one that contradicts it.

In that sense, maybe fakery is less an act of deception than of collaboration. We participate in it, polishing the world until it reflects back a version we can live with. The fake doesn’t impose itself on us, we invite it in. Perhaps we have even become (willing or unwilling) co-authors of our illusions.

Does AI Music “sound bad?”

Sometimes, yeah for sure. Definitely not all, the more I have listened. And I would say that I have kind of had to learn to listen to it, because it sounded wrong and weird at first. Absolutely. But over time, I’ve come to actively like certain aspects and sound qualities inherent to it.

One good example I saw a lot in Suno v4.5+ was what I’ve come to call the “AI warble” particularly more noticeable on male versus female generated vocals. Something about that model does women’s voices better than men’s to my ears.

But yeah there is def a crunchy sonic weirdness that sometimes veers into off-putting depending on the track. I always select against generations like that and hard delete anything I myself wouldn’t want to listen to. But I’ve also noticed that the sound quality of these songs varies tremendously between devices, formats, streaming platforms, and speaker quality. Flaws or embellishments you hear in one might be rendered very differently through listening in other contexts.

I think also what we coming from a prior “real” music background might hear today as “bad” will in a not a long time sound nostalgic as we look back on the AI tools and how they’ve progressed in the intervening time.

With generating AI artifacts for production and artistic purposes, I think there’s always a forward-facing consideration too. What might have “bad” sonic qualities in a tune today, you might be able to remaster it and get a new render using better systems in 2 or 5 or 10 years. So is what is perfectly good or bad right now really the best and only consideration? It’s a strong “it depends” on all this I guess…

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