When do you and ChatGPT cross the Milli Vanilli Line?

When do you and ChatGPT cross the Milli Vanilli Line?

I recently engaged in an energized LinkedIn discussion with?Frank Prendergast?and?Jason Ranalli. We were trying to discern the "Milli Vanilli Line" when it comes to personal disclosure and AI. Never heard of it? It's probably going to impact you soon, so let's dive into it ...

How much authenticity can we lose?

The debate began with Frank's comment on my recent blog post (Where humans thrive in the hierarchy of AI content):

"If I read a blog post from someone on the assumption it's written by them, and I find out it was actually AI, I'll feel cheated," Frank said, "like I've been a victim of the old bait-and-switch.

"But where's my line? Is 20% AI OK? 40%? 60? I have no idea. And how would it even be measured?

"Will that question be a thing of the past when AI is ubiquitous?"

How much authenticity are we willing to lose?

ChatGPT makes everyone a competent writer, just like the calculator made everyone competent at math in the 1980s. We don’t feel compelled to declare to the world that we use a calculator to do our taxes or run a business. When does AI simply become … life?

The Milli Vanilli Line

Now let's get to the Milli Vanilli part.

In 1989, Milli Vanilli rose from obscurity to superstardom almost overnight. Their debut album sold over 8 million copies and spawned three Number One singles. All of that was swept into the dustbin of pop history by disgrace.

By the time Milli Vanilli accepted their Grammy award for Best New Artist in 1990, many in the music business had suspected something was wrong with this duo. It was soon revealed the two singers -- Rob Pilatus and Fabrice Morvan -- never sang on any of their recordings and lip-synced live performances. The ruse torpedoed the act – radio stations stopped playing their songs, fans destroyed their records, and the Grammys rescinded their award for the only time in history.

Milli Vanilli became cultural shorthand for hubris and deceit.

Jason Ranalli provided his observation:

"Anyone remember Milli Vanilli back in the 80s? BIG scandal because we all felt cheated that they didn't actually sing the songs themselves -- they had zero part in the production other than lip-syncing and dancing.

"How did the world react? We rejected them entirely and stripped them of their Grammy.

"What are we doing now with AI content? Well, the line is somewhere between singing yourself and a TON of auto-tune/effects.

"Perhaps AI ends up drawing the same muddy lines of authenticity."

The fellas in Milli Vanilli were clear-cut cheats. An absolute. But how do we interpret "cheating" in a world where everyone can get an AI-assist on their writing, their voice, their music, and even a LinkedIn headshot? Let's look at a couple of scenarios.

Crossing the Milli Vanilli Line

Weeks after ChatGPT entered the scene, a friend asked me to help promote his new book, which I discovered was entirely written by ChatGPT. Literally, he had just cut and pasted responses to prompts into a manuscript. There was no human commentary, editing, or insight whatsoever.

Although he was transparent about the AI assist, he put his name on the book as the author.

I told him I would not promote the book and observed that this was the very worst use of ChatGPT imaginable. In essence, he was lip-synching his book. He crossed the Milli Vanilli Line.

Example two: I have a friend who, by her own admission, is a terrible writer. Once she discovered ChatGPT, she told me that she could put her ideas into this machine and create serviceable content for the first time in her life.

"I can blog every day," she exclaimed, "I could even write a book!"

This is the beauty of AI -- unleashing a new creative power in a person with a creative deficit. She's not lip-synching. She's the author of her work with a little auto-tune to keep her on key!

In between these two extremes, we face nuanced ethical decisions about ownership, authorship, and authenticity.

We face these decisions now

Today, or in the near future, every one of us will have an opportunity to cross the Milli Vanilli Line.

What percent of AI work can we still claim as ours, as "authentic?"

I haven't used AI in any of my writing. My blog posts are my stories and observations and insights about our marketing world. It's faster and easier just to be "me" than try to prompt a bot into it! Could AI have written this post? No, at least not as effortlessly as me pecking on a keyboard for an hour. I am uniquely connecting dots, creating something unique, insightful, and connected to my own life experience.

But what about my next book? Could I edge towards the Milli Vanilli Line?

My last book,?Belonging to the Brand?was finished about a month before ChatGPT was unleashed. One of my first AI experiments was to ask ChatGPT to write an essay based on an idea from the book, in the voice of Mark Schaefer, with academic references. It did it. It did it well ... and in five seconds.

It would have taken me?a day to write that essay. So in the future, I'd feel stupid not to use AI to some degree and save days, or even weeks, of my life!

But another choice might be ... to be stupid and keep doing it the hard way. Or, maybe it's the?right way?-- to just always be me. Perhaps my reward is in the toil that comes with authenticity.

I never want to explain to somebody how close I am to the Milli Vanilli Line.



I appreciate you and the time you took out of your day to read this! You can find more articles like this from me on the top-rated?{grow} blog?and while you’re there, take a look at my?Marketing Companion podcast?and my?keynote speaking page. For news and insights find me on Twitter at?@markwschaefer, to see what I do when I’m not working, follow me on?Instagram, and discover my?RISE community here.

Jodie Rocco

Marketing/Social Media/Public Relations at Jodie Rocco

1 年

Four people; me, my twin sister Linda, Brad Howell, and John Davis actually sang on the tracks that are still listened to today. In fact, our Spotify page says 1 million tune in monthly, (I own this page). This was not an AI facsimile. Real musicians and real vocalists made up this group. Some of the best musicians and some of the best vocalists in Europe. My sister and I spent 3 months on each album, however, the second album was never released in the US because I went to CBS News in Las Vegas and told them my story in November 1990. I created a ChatGPT page to monitor the false information about Milli Vanilli and to make sure that the REAL group is credited when prompted as they should be. We are in the process of getting our Grammy back as the award was a 'group' award and not a Rob and Fab award. A new documentary regarding our group will start streaming on Paramount+ on Oct 24th. Although my sister and I are featured in the film, our story has not been told. Stay tuned.

Jessilyn Rosado

Digital Marketing Manager at Gems Group, Inc.

1 年

Great read! Most people at this point can spot a bot, spam or ad. It’s getting easier and easier to spot a AI/ChatGPT written email, blog, post…ect. People will soon take a side…

Adam C.

Videographer and Creative Director of the award-winning #PitchSlap Growth Marketing Consultant | Virtual CMO | HubSpot Solutions Provider | Chartered Marketer

1 年

Brilliant insight as always. I've written about my AI experiments in my LinkedIn newsletter on a regular basis. What I do, do happily is take my personality written newsletter and feed it into ChatGPT to provide a summary for the LinkedIn post promoting it It's never perfect but it gets me 90% of the way there and because the output is based on my own words, I'm comfortable that it's doing a better job of summarising my newsletter than I ever could in a fraction of the time. I started doing it because I couldn't read what I'd written when publishing, so I'd always miss something unless I copied my newsletter into Word and flicked between the two. AI has taken my least favourite part of my newsletter writing process into a much easier one.

回复
Andrey Kolchurin

General Manager of Food and Beverage at LEGOLAND? Florida

1 年

Very relevant question. And the further we go into the rabbit hole of AI, that line will become more and more blurry…

回复
Kensel Tracy CMC-The Marketing Coach

Helping Organizations To Grow and Prosper - Kenseltracy.ca

1 年

Great article thanks for posting Mark.

回复

要查看或添加评论,请登录

社区洞察