How Does AI Affect Your Online Shopping?

[Belen]

I am well aware of the approach. It gives you a small chance of better wording, a high chance of worse or incorrect wording, and remains disconnected from the work because it's not able to consider the whole. Its use is likely to muddle the writing and confuse the writer, and is thus most likely to result in a poor product. This is not an effective replacement for skill.

Agreed.

If people are not making the content RAG ready, then the AI can misread it.

 

[Morrus]

Apropos of nothing, since I've been sternly informed that this thread is not about TTRPGs, there's a MASSIVE industry on Facebook of AI-generated 'historical' photos, usually featuring actors and often described as 'candid' shots, 'behind the scenes', or 'X and Y on the set of...'. And it's growing at an alarming rate.

One of the biggest problems with AI generated images is their potential for deception and fraud.

It's not long before we will be at the point where we can't believe any photo we see, because only a tiny percentage of photos will be genuine. And a lot of those creating the fake stuff present it as real.

Video will follow behind by a few years, but give it 5 years and you will be able to see a million videos of anyone you want saying or doing anything, and you won't be able to tell whether it's real or not. And that will happen; it will be an avalanche of it.

I imagine that photographic and video criminal evidence will, at some point, also be rendered valueless. It will become trivial to 'prove' somebody's innocence or guilt via AI generated videos.

I guess in a sense, that all might have a silver lining. If we want to see anything real, we'll have to go and see it with our own eyes. Because if it's online, it will almost certainly be AI-created. Simply by the numbers--AIs will be spewing out billions of photos and videos per second online, at a rate a million times faster than humans are. The chance of something you see being made by a human will be one in a million or worse. But it might get us to go out and actually experience things.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

There are lots of people in this thread who believe the value of a product is lessened by use of generative AI. But what if the product was a system to hunt down Nazis, and a website to out them? Is the value of that service diminished by the use of AI? Would you still use the website, or boycott it due to ethical concerns? Would you want the creator to continue their work?

False positives and hallucinations are still a problem with AI uses in law enforcement and other forms of identification .

Perhaps you’ve seen the recent example of the AI test that thought a policeman had “turned into a frog” and had other errors in subsequent tests.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/larsdaniel/2026/01/04/cop-transforms-into-frog-according-to-ai-generated-police-report/

Or the guy researching Kon Knueppel, a NBA rookie. His AI assistant provided all kinds of info on the player, among which was the note that he was African-American.

(He’s a white guy from Wisconsin.)

 

[Belen]

Apropos of nothing, since I've been sternly informed that this thread is not about TTRPGs, there's a MASSIVE industry on Facebook of AI-generated 'historical' photos, usually featuring actors and often described as 'candid' shots, 'behind the scenes', or 'X and Y on the set of...'. And it's growing at an alarming rate.

One of the biggest problems with AI generated images is their potential for deception and fraud.

It's not long before we will be at the point where we can't believe any photo we see, because only a tiny percentage of photos will be genuine. And a lot of those creating the fake stuff present it as real.

Video will follow behind by a few years, but give it 5 years and you will be able to see a million videos of anyone you want saying or doing anything, and you won't be able to tell whether it's real or not. And that will happen; it will be an avalanche of it.

I imagine that photographic and video criminal evidence will, at some point, also be rendered valueless. It will become trivial to 'prove' somebody's innocence or guilt via AI generated videos.

I guess in a sense, that all might have a silver lining. If we want to see anything real, we'll have to go and see it with our own eyes. Because if it's online, it will almost certainly be AI-created. Simply by the numbers--AIs will be spewing out billions of photos and videos per second online, at a rate a million times faster than humans are. The chance of something you see being made by a human will be one in a million or worse.

I am involved in an industry initiative to watermark all metadata so that the source of the data is clear.

It is a big deal. The goal is to include this data in all devices to prevent people from hiding the source that generated the content.

 

[Morrus]

I am involved in an industry initiative to watermark all metadata so that the source of the data is clear.

It is a big deal. The goal is to include this data in all devices to prevent people from hiding the source that generated the content.

I have absolutely no insight into the tech behind such a thing. How does it deal with bad actors who just ignore or fake it? What stops them developing tools to circumvent whatever you are putting in place? How do you force every company on the planet to incorporate it into every device?

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

Video will follow behind by a few years, but give it 5 years and you will be able to see a million videos of anyone you want saying or doing anything, and you won't be able to tell whether it's real or not. And that will happen; it will be an avalanche of it.

I’d say the lag is months or weeks, based on some of the AI-generated ads for sketchy tai-chi programs I’ve seen.

 

[Morrus]

I’d say the lag is months or weeks, based on some of the AI-generated ads for sketchy tai-chi programs I’ve seen.

Video quality seems quite far behind photo quality to me. Videos are still pretty clearly AI, while photos are getting close to indistinguishable.

 

[Belen]

I have absolutely no insight into the tech behind such a thing. How does it deal with bad actors who just ignore or fake it? What stops them developing tools to circumvent whatever you are putting in place? How do you force every company on the planet to incorporate it into every device?

Most of the major device makers are on board so it will be embedded in the tech like a e-fingerprint.

From my point of view, we need to stop paper mills from flooding the journal industry with fake papers. I am working on a project where authors would use an online editor to write there paper for a publication where every edit is captured in the xml.

 

[Morrus]

Most of the major device makers are on board so it will be embedded in the tech like a e-fingerprint.

But a bad actor could develop a device for bad actors to use? It just takes one company.

Is this mandated by legislation? And if so, where?

(Sorry, not trying to sound demanding, genuinely curious)

 

[CleverNickName]

Video quality seems quite far behind photo quality to me. Videos are still pretty clearly AI, while photos are getting close to indistinguishable.

And with things that can't be photographed (like fantasy monsters), AI won't have a steady source of images to refine itself with. As more and more actual artists are forced out of the industry, there will be fewer and fewer new and creative drawings of, say, a mind flayer...so in a very short time, all mind flayer art will be indistinguishable from any other mind flayer artwork.