The other day, while waiting for a video to play on YouTube, I was forced, by whatever algorithmic authority makes such decisions, to sit through a short ad for an app billing itself as a tool for “self-discovery” and “wellbeing”. The ad was a cutesy animation, clearly AI generated, in which a cartoon man was depicted dragging himself miserably through the motions of his day, looking cartoonishly stressed and anxious.
Over this animation played an obviously AI-generated song, in which a male voice crooned, in a smoothly soulful style, the following series of declarations: “Procrastination is fuelled by trauma response, not laziness/You keep putting things off, not because you’re lazy/You wake up tired, and beat yourself up, for not doing enough.”
As the song reached what you wouldn’t quite call its chorus, and came to its eventual crooning sales pitch – “That’s why we created [this app] /To help you break free from the cycle” – I was struck by how this weird little ad seemed to encapsulat
Continue Reading on The Irish Times
This preview shows approximately 15% of the article. Read the full story on the publisher's website to support quality journalism.