A couple of months back I had joined an online course on Digital Content Writing and our trainer decided to have an icebreaking session by throwing in a topic for our discussion - AI: can it replace the writers/authors and content writers? My take on it was that any creative field will always look for the human, emotional touch and cannot and should not be replaced by any technology. The hardcore writers still prefer to pick up their pen and paper to write. For non-creative fields, it can definitely be a big helpful technology.
Though I had zero idea about AI or ChatGPT till that day, we had gradually been introduced to this tool to keep ourselves upgraded, with a caution: always be a writer at heart. Use AI as a helper.
However, there are few who would use caution. In a competitive world, I know those in this field who blatantly use AI to 'create the original content' before anyone else does. Still, creating content may seem like a harmless usage of AI. It gets ugly when those with the criminal mindset grab any latest technology to rob people of their hard earned money and respect.
We were all enjoying AI generated images of celebs - the cast of F.R.I.E.N.D.S. if they wore Indian ethnic, Avengers on Indian streets, Ed Shereen enjoying Indian street food, 'living' Ram lalla idol, and so on. But it soon turned out to be a nightmare for celebrities and several people when their morphed and AI generated images were used for not-so-pleasant purposes and obviously, without their consent. A few months ago, a well known music composer of the Indian music industry created a duet song using the AI generated voice of two late veteran singers and though divided reactions, but a lot of people were in awe of what this new technology could do.
"We could literally keep on getting blessed with new songs in the voice of our favourite singers even when they are long gone. Being made 'amar' in true sense"
Now the same technology is creating havoc when people with criminal bend of mind are generating voice of your loved ones begging to save their lives by giving money to these impersonators!
I read about it a few weeks ago. One morning, I just watched a reel by the Tech expert Rajiv Makhni on how criminals are posing as CBI or Narcotics officers and claiming that your family member has committed a gruesome crime and if you want them to not get tangled in the web of police and court hearings, pay a certain amount of money. I downloaded this reel to share with my family and guess what, my father told that my first cousin just had a narrow escape with his quick thinking. Another cousin of mine had also got such call about his son. Luckily at that very moment, his son was sitting right next to him. But they were lucky. Everyone is not. Criminals have siphoned off lakhs of money by misusing this technology.
Many months back I had watched a video where the man removed the SIM card from his mobile and even switched it off and roamed about in the entire city throughout the day. Still, at the end of the day, his phone had the entire details about where all he went.
Can I just throw away my 'smartphone' which is literally listening to me all the time? Probably, smartphones are better listeners than our husbands! Jokes apart, even if I would want to throw it away, I don't think I can. Every communication whether it is from banks, schools, offices etc are on Whatsapp. People are being discouraged from 'crowding' institutions. Do as much online as you can. Even the artists now have to use the social media to reach out to the larger audience. On one hand, government is encouraging digital transactions. On the other hand, well known and some of the biggest companies in the world are selling our data.
'Once you have created a digital footprint, you become a part of the web. You cannot escape. Every movement of yours is seen, every word that you speak is heard, even every thought in your mind is being read.'
Its like a few extremely intelligent people all around the world work really hard to solve the problems of the world using the technology and even before the world could start seeing the benefits of those inventions, the criminals start working on the crimes that they are going to commit using these latest sophisticated technologies. We step on those marshy patches to use these advancements and by the time we realise that we are getting trapped, its too late to come out of it. Who knew that mobiles which were extremely bulky and expensive and owned by the exclusive set of people would one day enslave the entire world?
Sometimes I just wonder about how much technology is too much technology?
