Deepfake Drake + HatGPT + Ben Smith on the End of the BuzzFeed Era
Show notes
A song featuring A.I.-generated versions of Drake and the Weeknd went viral — before being taken down by streaming services. Is censorship of A.I.-generated songs the way forward? Or can singers benefit from synthetic voices, as some artists like Grimes are suggesting? Then, HatGPT: Kevin and Casey pull headlines out of a hat and generate their own takes on the news. And Ben Smith, the former BuzzFeed News editor, discusses the end of the 2010s digital media era. On today’s episode: Ben Smith is a journalist and co-founder of the digital media company Semafor. He was a New York Times media columnist and the first editor in chief of BuzzFeed News. Additional reading: An A.I.-generated song made to sound like Drake and the Weeknd went viral before being taken down by streaming services. Grimes invited fans to make songs using A.I.-generated versions of her voice. Snapchat saw a spike in one-star reviews after users criticized its “My AI” feature. Taylor Swift did not invest in FTX, the collapsed cryptocurrency exchange company. Researchers turned a goldfish into a cyborg. The Republican National Committee released an A.I.-generated ad slamming President Biden. The U.K. blocked Microsoft’s $69 billion bid for the video game company Activision. Ben Smith’s book, “Traffic: Genius, Rivalry, and Delusion in the Billion-Dollar Race to Go Viral,” is an origin story of digital media. A BuzzFeed article set off a viral debate on the color of a dress. Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. You can also subscribe via your favorite podcast app here https://www.nytimes.com/activate-access/audio?source=podcatcher. For more podcasts and narrated articles, download The New York Times app at nytimes.com/app. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.
Guests
Analysis: done · source seed