Pitchfork and GQ, Taylor Swift and AI

Welcome to another episode of base news network. I am punk revolution now here with Sophie say hi Sophie hi I'm Sophie aka Jonah Varka aka Jonah Varka and today we have a episode where we're gonna be we're gonna be talking about a few thingies about both related to music and both I think are also related to misogyny and technology and technology various things and the internet we have a theme today we have a sort of a theme the intersection of intersection music misogyny and technology it sounds like a college course that no one takes but it's a college course it's a base news college course well I think what's interesting so that just just to for the listeners to know the two news items we're talking about are one Pitchfork being folded into GQ by Condé Nast and then Taylor Swift's AI explicit images all over Twitter that's was you know what's kind of interesting is these two stories happened in the same week and they're both pretty like explicitly stories about misogyny and music and you're wondering about Pitchfork and how how is Pitchfork um becoming a part of GQ considered misogyny well I think Kaio has something interesting to say about that well I was GQ stands for gentlemen gentlemen's quarterly yes I think the thing that's interesting with the Pitchfork story is Condé Nast when they bought Pitchfork back I think in 2015 Condé Nast which is like the media organization that owns GQ Vogue all sorts of I think Vanity Fair probably a lot of magazines I think National Geographic as well um they own like a lot of of magazines very trendy Bon Appetit yeah Bon Appetit yeah it's like it's like the superpower in like print media and I guess digital media now too but you know what I mean yes Vanity Fair the New Yorker so all sorts of things so Condé Nast bought Pitchfork back in 2015 and this was kind of a shocking thing because Pitchfork has always had this reputation Pitchfork is like they have a reputation they have a reputation they have a reputation they have a they're a music journalism outlet has always had a reputation for being like indie and authentic and that kind of bumps up against the the Condé Nast big corporation sort of vibe I guess and when Condé Nast bought Pitchfork Condé Nast was pretty explicit with like yeah the reason we're buying Pitchfork is because Pitchfork is like an audience of like young people who are like young people who are like young people who are like young people who are men and we want to like incorporate that audience into the Condé Nast portfolio which is a really weird I think it's a really weird kind of shallow depressing way to think about media and journalism and I understand from a corporate perspective that's how you think about you know we want to get these audience this audience here so we can buy their data and sell it to advertisers etc. but yeah so but the thing is is like over the past like 10 years I guess like even before Condé Nast bought Pitchfork it was pretty clear that Pitchfork was moving in a direction where they were trying to not be like oh yeah music is a hobby only for men by reviewing more artists who are women just just don't want to be like oh yeah music is a hobby only for men just a just a more diverse kind of coverage covering misogyny and music covering feminism covering just a lot more and like even in their staff their staff moved from basically a bunch of white guys to a more diverse staffing and I think this is a good thing you know like I think this is a good mission yeah I mean I think women are already I mean obviously were before still are kind of like you know like I think this is a good mission yeah I mean I think women are already excluded from this community of like pretentious music nerds not to shade music nerds because you're a music nerd but I mean like the online community of music nerds is really you know male dominated and I I guess like as a woman I know other women who are really into music but um I feel like when women talk about music it's it's more like received as like stan talk you know what I mean like women aren't like women can't seriously like care about music they care more about like stanning the artist and like as like a celebrity or like revering them as like some sort of idol and there's there's you know stan culture is definitely a thing and and women are involved in stan culture but I don't know I think like female music fans are kind of excluded from this like boys club of like you know like um right your music and uh uh pitchfork and um it's still like a problem now you know what I mean yeah I don't know what do you think like being like well you are super I mean you still are super into music but you know you were super into like radio music and you were um you know a music nerd I was in high school in college like not saying you aren't now and now but like you know you know you're like in in that community right well yeah so it definitely is still like a crowd well I I think this is kind of the thing that's a little sad is with Condé Nast saying we're gonna roll pitchfork into the GQ structure Condé Nast said like their lanes are bumping into each other too much too much there's an overlap of audiences with pitchfork and GQ so we're going to consolidate by rolling pitchfork into the GQ structure which is just it's just a way of saying I mean there's so many different things wrong with it but the primary thing that sticks out is saying we're just gonna concede that yeah music is a hobby for for guys and that's that's just how it is and instead of using this platform we have to you know continue trying to diversify our audiences by diversifying the type of content we publish on our website we're just gonna say you know what we don't we're just gonna roll it into each other and it's just it's really it's really disgusting and frustrating on so many levels the thing that's really bizarre though is like while there might be some sort of like pretentious internet community that is like mostly made up of like teenage guys there's no doubt that like music is equally appreciated by both men and women so it really doesn't have to be that particular way yeah and I mean I think it extends to film too for sure like yeah there are I think now at least on Twitter I see lots of like women like film nerd types I would consider myself like kind of like that I don't know I'm not like in the community really but I um I'm like really into movies um and so I see women more like visibly um doing that now online but uh I feel like in the past and like that like that film was sort of again like a boy's hobby you know being into film and and discussing it and analyzing it and um you're right though like in that you know women men and women equally enjoy music and they also equally enjoy movies but when you think of like women who are into movies you think of like chick flicks and stuff like that and um it's not very fair yeah yeah so that sucks and I I think the thing is like just taking like a hundred steps back like regardless of what you think about like should Pitchfork try to appeal to more people should it just do its own thing and if mostly you know if it's just like you know if it's just like you know if it's just like you know guys are reading it then that's how it is regardless you know whatever you think the thing that I think is just so insane about it is GQ is like the polar opposite of what Pitchfork was before Kanye Nast owned it GQ I think of as just a very I don't think any journalists who are writing for GQ are really set out to change the world I think that people who write for GQ are like oh this kind of a cool interesting story that like men can like flip through in the magazine while they're waiting for uh you know their doctor's appointment they could read about what watch a celebrity war or something like it's it's it's extremely gq is a very casual magazine well pitchfork 10 years ago was like every single article or review even though it's a freaking album review like there was just so much passion and creativity and like insanity in every review that like it was every single person had who followed pitchfork had to read every single best new music review that came out it was like a whole epic phenomenon that was so like impassioned and i feel like trying to basically say well pitchfork and gq oh according to our analytics both are read by men um we're gonna structurally consolidate whatever it's not only is it sending like a message of like yeah i mean i think well not only is it it's it's a demonstration of just how like i know this is gonna sound very college student but like how like patriarchal structures reinforce themselves or like why is why is like the are these are these outlets that are primarily read for men read by men maybe it's because like their target that's like that's who they're targeting like why is that who that's who they're targeting because it's like it's like gee it's what they're doing is saying like we're just gonna reinforce this like reinforce this like these gender they're just they're just reinforcing the gender roles for money that's just that's like that's the not that's the easy way of saying it that's just like that what they're what they're basically saying is that music criticism is for men and that um in order to you know be a serious um fan of music um who thinks critically about it and uh you know wants to read analysis and criticism whatever you you're a man that's like a man's thing that's basically what it's saying yeah and yeah it's really upsetting it is upsetting but i have to say though there is this other element that's like worth thinking about which is like they're doing this because pitchfork is primarily read by men like still like in 2024 pitchfork is still the vast pro we don't know the statistics but probably you know just from looking around at the numbers i was seeing from like speculation of best you know their the lists of albums that their their readers vote on and stuff like probably like 75 of the people reading pitchfork are men so you know i think changing that 75 number oh i guess several let me ask you why do you think most people reading pitchfork were men well it's already the expectation that like thinking critically about music is a man's uh hobby and i think like how i don't know like hearing that message hearing that message at a young age is probably um a factor in like pushing girls and women away from that interest not that we don't listen to music because we certainly do and we do um think about it critically it's just that um i think a lot of women are like turned off by the type of men who read pitchfork does that make sense um so like so that exactly kind of just goes back to like the whole like point we're making here which is so sophie's saying that probably why you're seeing that like pitchfork readers is dominated by men is because of social factors that kind of push women away from it and boys or men towards it and now by putting it under the gq umbrella you're just completely reinforced like you're you're actually coming out explicitly saying exactly you're just going out and explicitly saying yeah pitchfork is a man's you're literally incorporating pitchfork into a magazine that's like main basis is that it's a man's magazine like that's for men that's literally what gq is um so while its readership was already like primarily men you're just you're just like solidifying that by explicitly saying it and endorsing it basically yeah i don't know i don't know and i i i feel like and this is like i feel like this is such like a like uh i know we've said this already it just feels like such like a like a critical theory class analysis sort of thing people i feel like you know there's there's it's it's it's it's rare that you see such explicit like you know what you say intersection of capitalism and patriarchy coming together to reinforce each other like you know all those kind of like leftist theory kind of like language that's we you know we've all we all have read if if you took college um now now it's now it's actually happening in real life another thing too is that the the um editor-in-chief of pitchfork huja patel who is a woman um is being laid off as a part of this process like a bunch of pitchforks that wasn't so so pitchfork over the past like i said even before condé nast took pitchfork over pitchfork has been you know moving in this direction of trying to diversify their staff trying to diversify their output and like was pitchfork perfect no pitchfork has never been perfect i'm not saying like they achieved the the leftist dream of you know reviewing so much diverse stuff they transformed the entire the social consciousness or whatever but a big part of this movie okay so so just everyone so everyone's clear as of right now and this this stuff could always change pitchfork is is still going to exist as its own name and it's its own entity it's not like they're completely deleting pitchfork and then moving like a music section under gq for now uh it's like more of like an internal condé nast internal corporate structure thing where they're they're basically fired a bunch of pitchfork writers including the editor-in-chief puja patel and are just kind of moving all those staff to fall under gq so now if you write for pitchfork you're employed by gentlemen's quarterly i work for gentlemen's quarterly i am writing a piece about a hundred gags for gentlemen's quarterly i'm not even going to respond no no one moved at that so anyways um i don't really know what to make of it um i feel bad about it and you know it's when when this first okay so when this first happened my reaction was kind of like i don't care i actually thought it was kind of funny because for the past maybe like honestly three years four years i have like really stopped caring that like about pitchfork like i said like 10 years ago every single album they gave at least an eight out of 10 like i would listen to that and i would if i didn't like it on first listen i would re-listen to it because i was like well pitchfork give it a good score so it must be good so if i didn't like it on first listen i gotta re-listen and i don't know i don't know i don't know i don't and then now whenever they get they could give an album nine out of ten and i wouldn't care um and i've always and i think with my youtube channel i've like critiqued you know punk revolution now the punk revolution has critiqued pitchfork for being corporate now and being less interesting and more corporate with their whole approach and so my first reaction was like okay this is just kind of funny because now this is like pitchfork going mask off like yeah yeah all that stuff we published in the past five years about misogyny and music and because they've you can search you can go on pitchfork and search like their articles i'm not i'm not saying this they actually have published articles about underrepresentation of women in music and discrimination against women um in music and it's like the hypocrisy is crazy because these are articles that have been published since pitch since condé nas has has purchased pitchfork you know and i'm not saying the people who wrote those articles are hypocrites or the editors it's just it's just it's just kind of a road's trust you know obviously you shouldn't trust any of these big gigantic conglomerate corporations but i don't know it's like everything it just feels like there's no there's no driver at the wheel um it's it's depressing i i guess like it's probably just time to like let pitchfork die you know i think so let's move on to something better um and no good things come out of minnesota so just kidding because pitchfork's had originally headquartered in minneapolis fun fact um i was just shading my home state but um yeah let's let pitchfork die let's find what's what's going on in minnesota let's let pitchfork die let's find what's going on in minnesota let's find let's make something better i hope so the thing is is that like the pitchfork audience i feel like i don't look i don't even know who still reads pitchfork anymore you know um and yes even though the core pitchfork audience going back to like seven eight years ago were a bunch of pretentious white guys we can all make fun of that audience but i was a part of that audience and i felt like we we had something kind of nice going on we were the we were the least bad group of pretentious white guys on the internet so now and so sorry so this is this is my story so yeah so this is so we're framing this story as if it's about feminism but really it's about me it's really just about him women are like i it's bad because of this yeah i i got i'm sure you have many fond memories with pitchfork i don't know a single i don't know a single guy who like i feel like gq is literally read by like republicans i don't think that's true but um i think gq is more read by the girlfriends of boyfriends who they have no swag well it's like gq always comes out with like a best gifts for men article every year for like christmas and they probably have birthday articles too like just like once a year but it's usually just like or anniversary valentine's day they have all those lists and i do look at the list to know like okay should anyone anything what are these men like i i did look at the list i've read on there but there's nothing really good on there for for you um i feel like gq is like andrew tate for liberal men okay there there you are now you've got it like that's right that's like liberal guys who want to be alpha go on gq instead of watching andrew tate exactly that's exactly right like i'm on i just went on gq right now and the huge front page article that's like takes up the entire page is six show-stopping new watches all serious watch guys will be talking about you know what this is this is literally an advertisement this is well to be fair it's not it's not much different from other like digital magazines these days see that's the thing is the reason why because i've also read that pitchfork generates more clicks and more page views than gq i don't know if that's true but if we're if that is true and you're wondering why would they move it to gq if pitchfork is doing perfectly fine as its own independent website it's because gq is more profitable because not only do they get a bunch of clicks but they also also shamelessly publish advertisements they make money off of advertisements and their articles are basically advertisements so it's a doubly profitable thing so basically what i'm trying to say is like that's the polar opposite like pitchfork has always been like it could have been sustained on donations i mean they didn't need to because lots of people read it but it's about it's it's it's like the op you know what you're saying it's like the it's it's it's like i don't know i can't think of a prop it's like i it's like if stanley kubrick started making only marvel movies and just completely stopped just never took a break talked about all the good stuff he made well that's a very pretentious very pretentious white guy way of putting it i don't think that's too pretentious but um yeah no it's it's as um you know as we've been saying like society is crumbling the institutions that we used to rely on and trust are failing us and this is just another example of that well look i i don't know i think i'm i think i'm right you you might be the state of media right now is awful the state of media is awful and journalism is dying not because i'm by the way i'm a journalist dan i love journalism and media um but base news network is journalism basically in in the way it is in a way it is but um you know uh if you haven't seen there are a lot of layoffs going on in the media industry particularly in journalism for all these um you know public digital publications um you know there's like a there's been a rise of like ai um journalism that's been like awful um there's this phenomenon of like ai that will write like fake obituaries for people that aren't even dead or if they died they'll just like explain someone's death in a way that's not accurate um you know like media the institution of journalism and media is like crumbling um and i think it's very sad and i think this is just another sliver of that um yeah you know it's it's it's kind of weird too because yeah there's there's a bunch of other like there's the sports illustrated um i think they're i think sports illustrated might just be dying yeah it it's i think it might be shutting down or it basically effectively is shutting down um tech crunch just laid off a ton of people um there i i there is um i can't i think conde nest is literally striking right now or they were for a bit so yeah and this probably i mean i don't know in a sense i feel like all of this is a little bit trivial um like or it sounds kind of trivial like okay moving pitch moving one piece of a corporation into another piece of a corporation or whatever but i think at the same time it's actually really not trivial like i feel like what i mean if if our entire society is spending all of its time on the internet and consuming digital media is all we do nowadays and the quality the quality of that is going downhill in ways that are hard to really quantify like it's it's it's it's it's you know i can't do like a math equation to demonstrate why moving pitchfork into gq is bad for society and why it's like misogynistic and stuff like you just kind of have to trust us you just gotta trust us that's not a good thing and i'm not a doomer i'm really not a doomer i'm not here to like we don't i don't think we try to be all super negative it's just i don't know i don't know like i i think sophie was making a good point about how ai artificial intelligence is is kind of accelerating this kind of death spiral but i kind of just want it all to i i'm i'm kind of looking forward to ai kind of just destroying it all because i just don't like what's become of it and i don't want to be i'm just ready i'm like accelerationist i'm ready for ai to just just just destroy it all well i don't know if i agree with that i mean i understand what you're saying we've already been like so disillusioned with the state of journalism and media not not the journalists themselves really just the um the fact that like publications literally have to you know um i feel like that that just i mean that's been going on forever but the state of like digital ads and like native advertising in newspapers and in magazines um all of these like you know fake articles these sponsored articles it's it's just become like trash we've kowtowed too much to the like advertisers i can't blame them because they they need it to survive but um what i'm trying to say is that it was already just like going down the drain like newspapers news has been already flopping no one trusts news it was already flopping and now ai um not that i don't not that i don't think that ai um can't help writers write because i think it can but more so that like if you're relying completely on ai to write an article because you don't have someone who can get on that story for the day you come out with some like pretty shitty journalism um so well yeah that kind of goes back to the point where i was making is like maybe in some quantitative way you can demonstrate that ai will increase the amount of facts produced on the internet or you know articles and that might be true like it might increase productivity but there's something like almost beyond that that's like a like for the soul like the human soul needs to sit down and read a good maybe it's maybe maybe it's poorly written maybe it's written worse than ai would write it or something but like we need to read some some screeching insane person reviewing music for the soul like art art is for it's art for the soul i agree now challenging you kaio do you feel the same way about ai art no you do not what do you mean do i feel good about ai art well you're very optimistic about ai art and oh yeah well this is this is this is part of my my accelerationist kind of feelings where i feel like the state of art right now is bad and maybe maybe it's maybe it's because of the state of digital media is bad maybe maybe pitchfork becoming more profit seeking has affected the way musicians you just want to watch you just want to watch the world burn i want to watch look the point of yes the point of art well i don't know everyone has a different feeling for me like the purpose of art is to like feel something and i feel like the way things are currently structured right now is a lot of the art output of art doesn't make me feel anything so i feel like if artificial intelligence just kind of burns down the entire system that's going to make me feel something and that will be a work of art so true i feel like that's a good good transition wait i just want to say one more thing real quick well actually this this this is this connects to we can use this as a transition i was gonna say i'm very much outside of the accelerationist stuff like i think in terms of art and journalism ai is gonna destroy it in some way but you know overall though i'm very much pro artificial intelligence like i think people who are anti-artificial intelligence are missing the bigger picture like artificial intelligence is gonna help us like cure cancer and it's gonna help us solve climate change i mean it's gonna not do all of that perfectly but it's gonna it's it's gonna help so i think that's good i'm less of an i'm less of an optimist optimist about ai but i'm not a complete hater of ai and i i do think that it is a useful tool and it's not going away so we should learn how to use it well i'm i'm a hundred okay i am a hundred okay i am a hundred thousand percent an ai optimist well this this next story does not make me an ai optimist so that's right that's not oh that's not that's not okay i'm not okay i take i take it back i'm i'm i'm 51 an ai optimist you own 51 of open ai's company just kidding um that was a gay joke okay the fact the fact wait wait the fact that artificial the fact that grok which is elon musk's artificial intelligence is woke rock fall off like grok fell off who's using grok well no one's using grok anymore because grok is woke and the only people who use the only people who use grok were conservatives who are paying for the blue check mark on twitter but now that grok is woke basically that means no one's using grok anymore but the point is the fact that grok is woke in the first place to me is makes me optimistic about ai all right that's all well yeah i'm sure i have no doubt that ai will um get better in its like accuracy like we know that ai tends to hallucinate and like make up information that's not true um there's a lot of like biases in ai and especially like in its image generation and stuff like that like there's a lot of problems and i'm sure they will be flushed out quickly so that's not why i'm a pessimist about ai but i mean i'm already kind of cautious about it but um i don't know i'm sure it'll help in some ways but you know you know transitioning into our next story about the taylor swift ai i need photos i'm i'm very much like worried about it in um in terms of like how it will affect real people especially women um because ai porn and like deep fake porn is is huge right now and the the so yeah so the artificial images of taylor swift just for just just for context if you if you didn't see the news they they went viral on twitter and not just like a little bit viral but literally like over a hundred thousand likes on twitter and i'm not just saying that but i'm just saying that it went viral on on like fake taylor swift porn on twitter and there was a lot of it too it was a lot of it yeah it was very like horny explicit not like obscene it was like obscene like like showing her with like characters and it was gross it was really gross yeah so that went viral yeah that went viral i'm not surprised about it going viral but um i think a lot of people maybe people who weren't aware of the fact that it was going to that ai porn could exist you know like the normies maybe didn't know i now i sound now i sound creepy for knowing that ai porn was a thing but like i'm very online okay so i i'm i'm reading about this stuff i'm i'm following it well and you can't avoid it you can't really avoid it yeah no i think i think a lot of women know about it that's true because they're scared of like the fact that some random guy they they go to high school with can take a picture of their face off facebook and then like make that yeah so it's interesting you say that there was just a case in a new jersey high school where um several girls girls's images were used in to make ai porn and was distributed among boys in that school in like a group chat um there was another instance i think this was in the uk no it was in france i think um a girl was like uh used in like fake nude photos i'm not sure if it was an ai or i've read reports of ai i've read reports of photoshop anyway like uh she uh died by suicide um because of like that harassment and bullying from you know boys in her school and you know being used in these images like that so i don't know like basically ai and um i don't know like fabricating nude photos of real people um has very real consequences for people and um it kind of just goes to show that like if you're a woman you can't really avoid being pornified in some ways it's like there's no protections um against that and so everyone like online was like a lot of women a lot of swifties were like we got to make this illegal like fake fake nudes ai nudes of real people are immoral and should be illegal and i agree but it's extremely difficult to actually um put that into practice because um technically um and this and i i learned this that like um the case with the um high school girls um if they wanted to sue or or take legal action or somehow you know try to punish these boys like criminally it would be difficult because technically it would not count as child pornography because they weren't engaged in sex acts it's just like them as a nude and that's not technically considered that under law um and there's there aren't any laws like widespread laws about um porn and like uh and ai porn of real people and uh there was actually like a bill that was vetoed um that would protect um people from like false images like that um and that was because it was really broad because it could also like outlaw parody or like stuff on snl um or like like political cartoons stuff like that um so basically in summary like trying to like ban ai porn of real people um might technically be a violation of free speech as crazy as that sounds i don't know if i explained this well but um basically the point is like as abhorrent as it is it's it's gonna prove difficult to actually like um regulate it regulate it yeah hmm yeah that's a difficult one uh it's really difficult see this is where when i you know my excel my pro accelerationist artificial intelligence kind of takes it's like where the rubber hits the road it's like ah damn maybe maybe being maybe an accelerationist perspective is not so good on it even though i like to believe in a few years we'll you know figure out the cure to cancer or something i think i'm sure a will help in many ways but this is bad because before like is what like i want to say like i think it is normal it is absolutely normal for like when you're a teenager to like fantasize about someone you know in like a sexual way you're going through puberty you know like that's i think absolutely normal thing to do but it gets murky and it feels immoral when now with the touch of like a few buttons said teenager can you know take an image from some girl who likes on facebook make deep fake porn or ai porn with it um there's now technology where you can mimic voices and other things like that so you can really make it realistic um and then you're you're putting that out there um for yourself maybe but you might even distribute it with your friends and you never know how far that could go yeah unless you're already putting someone's face into it so that face you know stays in the system as far as i know um and it's like you're actually externalizing your fantasies which in turn actually have like real consequences on that person as opposed to just like keeping it in your head if that makes sense yeah it's it's like if it's one of those things that like it's um it feels it is it is very unethical and creates all sorts of problems um and it's like trying to figure out a solution to it i mean that is that's really hard i guess maybe i just don't really know enough on on like how i will actually the special thing is a little bit scary is no one really fully understands like you know how artificial intelligence really works um so you know being able to to is like do we have to just completely shut down artificial intelligence entirely to stop this from happening do we need do we need people to just like if they generate it to not post it you know um well i think there's a few things that can and should be done these um i think it's interesting to to note that uh the software that was used to generate the images of taylor swift was um microsoft's ai image generator um and like microsoft put out a statement basically saying like we're working on it so like these platforms need to like better safeguard their um tech and make it harder for like bad actors to bypass like their content moderation um there's ways to do it by like using different languages putting things in different order like words in different orders because obviously they have um systems in place to stop that kind of content from being created but it's not um real safe you know people can and do bypass that so for they need to develop a more robust system to uh prevent those kind of images from being created and then second platforms need to uh make a conscious decision to ban that kind of content and uh ban the ban users who do it because um uh social media platforms like twitter or instagram reserve their right to create their own content moderation policies they are not um they're not they don't they're not subject to like free speech laws because um they're private private uh corporations they're like private institutions they're not government institutions so if they can set whatever content rules they want um so banning someone for posting ai porn of like someone uh is perfectly legal for like a platform to do and they should do that i think so they so platforms like that need to create content moderation policies that um target and punish users who post that kind of stuff i guess so well i don't know my perspective on it and i agree with everything you said i just my concern is that yes maybe we can get a bunch of like the big tech companies to to cut down you know stop this which they probably they can and they should but you know i do think the technology is getting so good that like five years from now any jackass can just start their own website where you can just plug in any name you want or upload any face you want and it'll automatically generate so i think exist those already exist so i think there needs to actually be like a law like laws oh i agree i just think it's it's good it's difficult it's going to be difficult well okay so what we have well there's already laws in place against revenge porn yes so i feel like this is kind of like falls into the same bucket it does it does and there have been articles um making comparisons to that those laws um i agree it's a difficult road but it should be taken i yeah you know i i i think this is this is so this is such an interesting thing because i you know experts say that it will be difficult as i guess is what i'm trying to say like expert like legal experts um on on like this in this area say that it will be difficult to do yeah i i don't care what experts say we should just do it you know i mean look if we can oh i agree i just think it it's gonna it might take a while which is scary you know it's gonna it's well it's probably gonna take a while uh well i think it's gonna start at the state level like there's probably gonna be like california or new york that kind of does it first a few states have started i think california might be one of them they have some laws but um there's no like widespread policy yet and like you said ai is advancing so quickly and accelerating so quickly that um it's very difficult to just like i don't know like the the rules that you come up with or this the safeguards that you create um could be just destroyed in a week you know what i mean with it yeah well developments that are occurring true well i think there needs to be another element of this which is i think there needs to be a cultural change too where like for example like the like the images of taylor swift you know that were pornographic artificial intelligence like the people who post that post and like that post should be treated like scumbags you know like for example like child pornography is illegal and you can make the same arguments about how it's hard to regulate and this and that and free speech blah blah but we but we have we as a society have collectively agreed that that's just a hell no that's that's got to be illegal and even if it's hard to enforce we're gonna crack down on it and then there's the additional layer where if you know you post anything like that on twitter you're just everyone immediately recognizes that you're a scumbag the taylor swift post i i'm actually you said you weren't surprised by how many likes it got i am surprised i'm not at all i'm sad well i think this is something unfortunately you understand if you're a woman it's like you're not surprised by this at all i mean and by the way deep fake porn is not new this is this these were more ai generated porn but deep fake porn is not new um it's extremely popular actually um i did know that already um a lot of uh like influencers youtubers like streamers especially i guess you can do the math the kind of guys who watch female gamer streamers are the type of guys to make ai porn and deep fake porn but anyway like there have been like youtubers and streamers like female youtubers and streamers who have talked about how they had to pay to get those images taken down and those videos taken down um and how it haunts them and and really fucks them up mentally um so i've heard stories about that forever um i know this happens to celebrities i know that there are sites where people photoshop celebrities in porn and in like nude images and stuff like that so that's not new um i'm seriously not surprised that um men would find like these ai images of taylor swift appealing because it's i think like unfortunately a lot of men take pleasure in like violating women and i hate to say it but i i don't know that's just kind of how i feel not all men but a lot of men do especially if you're on x.com um and you are willing to like explicit photos in general publicly on your twitter account well yeah it's i think it's a good point because a lot of men who hate taylor swift and look i don't like taylor swift music uh and i don't i don't find her appealing whatsoever taylor swift's woke let's humiliate her by well yeah well a lot of well i think a lot of guys just don't like taylor because she's a woman and then find and then just being able to like humiliate her is like a weird like it's a pathetic thing like i feel like if you like it's you only find that you only find that thrilling if you're a pathetic human being yeah pathetic men like to humiliate women and look down on them but they're also like aroused by it at the same time it's really sick so if you like to humiliate women and look down on them it's that post that's who you are you're a pathetic human being and you're like liking liking a post of taylor swift nude ai is basically openly saying i'm pathetic because that's the only way yeah you could have the human psychology that could find humiliating someone like that and it's like i don't think like likes equal endorsement all the time but i gotta be skeptical if you like like to that on twitter i'm sorry like that's just weird so yeah well one thing i wanted to say though i think it's really interesting that these are two big stories in in music that are that are like misogyny like that have like a really important element of misogyny in it and i haven't seen anybody like make that connection like i've seen lots of articles about how pitchfork being rolled into gq is misogynist and obviously a lot of discussion about how the ai taylor swift stuff is misogynist but i haven't seen anyone say like damn it looks like the trend lines right now for music is going or art is going in a in a misogynist direction like it's a it's a bigger story i think yeah technology is accelerating misogyny and music music just has to um just happens to be part of that story right now yeah yeah yeah yeah i i think that's right i think it's not even just about music i think the technology element is the bigger part of it good point um but that's why we're gonna have a better part of it because i don't know we're gonna fix it somehow i hope so well this was an interesting discussion depressing but um i mean this is the news and this is you know what's going on and uh i think there are some parallels in a way get the get the story out everybody everyone needs to know that if you liked that picture of taylor swift on twitter i'm going to go ahead and post it on my social media and i'm going to post it on my social media and go i'm going to go on twitter find that picture scroll through the likes and everybody it's been deleted they you literally can't did you know you can't search taylor swift ai it will say tweets not loading you can't even search taylor swift right now no they brought that back but you can't search taylor swift ai anymore so you can't even look and they're probably all like mostly gone but i'm sure they are exist somewhere on the internet in some corners well that's a scary thing too it never goes away especially if you're someone like taylor swift but um well yeah and then i i yeah elon musk okay all right well i think that's the end of the episode all right well yeah i think yeah we're done all right we're done all right well thank you everyone so much for listening make sure to check out our slaytreon patreon um yeah this has been a episode of base news network thank you thanks bye