Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2023/11/03/new-steak-umm-campaign-turns-vegans-into-meat-lovers-to-provide-critical-education-about-ai-deepfakes.html
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They really bring across the inherent creepiness of the AI deepfake phenomenon. There’s a real sense of cold-hearted violation here. I hope it helps more people understand that this can (and will) happen to anyone.
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Who would have thought the producers of nasty processed “meat” would be doing the Lord’s work on media and science literacy.
Good on 'em! But I’m still not buying their product.
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As a trash food connoisseur, I’ll likely buy your share of their product. But I’m glad to hear they’re doing some good while damaging my arteries.
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That was almost as disgusting as that sandwich looked (and I love meat). Good on them for exposing the risks here. I 100% support it being illegal to deepfake someone without their permission.
I would also apply this rule to dead people.
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Wow, good for Steak-umm! That’s awesome. Yay corporate responsibility! Well…maybe not corporate, exactly. The brand is apparently now owned by Quaker Maid Meats, which is a family owned and operated business. Still, it’s nice to see a business that seems to want to be part of the solution rather than the problem.
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Creepy…
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I wonder if they’d actually get more outrage clicks if they deepfaked “red blooded” meat-eaters into hardcore ideological vegans. Though the message of “this is what we coyld do, if we were unethical” is pretty solid.
Also agreed with @Surprise_Puma that Steak-ummms are the most delicious kind of trash.
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It could get more clicks, but this way round is less risky. If you get people raging at the video and not watching to the end then doing it the way they’ve done it means that they don’t actually annoy any potential customers.
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What I’ve always found interesting about their approach: in not trying to buddy up with the waves of brand personalities, they’ve created an extremely strong one.
It’s weird to just have one of those accounts go: “Yes, I’m just a dude being paid by Steakums to get your attention; but, they’re also giving me free rein to actually talk about things that matter, so let’s get down to business.”
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As a media literacy educator, I applaud anyone or any company using their reach to spread important messages on wiser media consumption, evaluation and use.
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A connoisseur, eh?
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I imagine they’re particularly sensitive to the mis-information/dis-information after that whole parody kerfuffle about their social-media account being run by the son of David Koresh that got repeated (unexamined, at face-value) by such journals as the Washington Post.
There is no evidence to support the idea that Nathan Allebach is related to Koresh in any way.
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Yeah yeah, sure sure, they’re doing God’s work but who knew Steak Unms we’re still a thing?
I haven’t had a Steak Umm sandwich since my drinking days back in the 80s.
I just penciled them in on the grocery list but I doubt I’ll get them because my wife loves me and needs me alive to shovel the snow.
These were my other favorite.
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I suppose there are in theory technical ways of preventing deepfakes and other misinformation from being shown, in practice it would probably be too difficult to enforce, or get caught up with moral issues around mass observation and control (eg China’s social credit system). Maybe it could work for politicians or select groups?
But absent a technical fix, how might society deal with the fact that you (living or dead) could be represented as a totally different person? I suppose in the far future it might mean a sort of Butlerian Jihad against the Internet itself and a return to hyper-local face to face society with highly-filtered links to the outside world?
BTW I recall YouTube had (has?) a feature where you can flag representations of yourself for being blurred out if you send them your ID.
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Can I just say I would support the Steak-umm/Budlight 2024 campaign? Much more so than the Pillow/Nazi campaign running in opposition!
Does anyone have “praise STEAK-UMM’s stance on cyber/AI/deepfake issues” on their bingo card? Anyone?
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Interestingly I think the Steakums brand mostly only has a social media following because they actually let their social media reps do this kind of thing.
That isn’t to say they couldn’t have rebuilt a modern brand on some kind of Wendy’s like sass, but they did actually do it on having some sort of moral fiber (or more accurately letting the moral fiber of an employee stand as a corporate social media essage)
I kind of think not. More people like meat then are vegans, but fewer people in general have a lot of sympathy or empathy towards ideological all-meaters (or the more common “it ain’t a meal without meat” folk). So when mr. meat with every meal is deepfaked into saying “bacon is murder, I would never eat it” it comes off more as a joke. Like something they would say before taking a big bite of BLT.
Vegans may be uncommon but more meat eaters feel some empathy. Like “I recognize pigs are living creatures and eating them feels wrong, but it tastes too good…bacon I can never give you up!”. Their message is seen as more pure and more moral. So seeing it corrupted has a bigger impact.
