Ep. 176: the ethics of AI art

[00:00:04] Speaker A: Right then. So close to your neck of the woods this week. Corrigan, my opener here. Bring it home. Obviously, I've got no physical context for this, so you tell me, where's Willowbrook in relation to where you live? [00:00:18] Speaker B: There is a mall called Willowbrook near me, but I doubt that you're about to talk about the mall. [00:00:24] Speaker A: Well, I wonder. I wonder if you're Willow Brook has any kind of lineage with the Willowbrook facility, which was on Staten island in New York. [00:00:34] Speaker B: Oh, okay. Yeah, that's not like. I mean, that's near me, but it's not like near me. It's not the Willowbrook. For some reason, everything is named Willow around here. Like, my street is a willow something street, as is the cross street, as is, like, another one a block down, as is the mall. I don't know why people were obsessed with willows in New York and New Jersey. [00:00:56] Speaker A: Interesting. [00:00:57] Speaker B: I don't even know what a willow tree looks like, to be honest with you. [00:01:00] Speaker A: Nor do I, actually now impressed on it. But what I will do is I'll just talk to you about Willowbrook on Staten island, if you don't mind, and its deeply questionable legacy and its place in medicine. You see, Willowbrook. Willowbrook was a facility, a building that was built just before the second world War. And in fact, during the Second World War, it was used as an army hospital. Okay, it was called Halloran General Hospital during the Second World War, but after. [00:01:34] Speaker B: The war, Dick Halloran, obviously from the shining. [00:01:37] Speaker A: Obviously, you'd think, wouldn't you? [00:01:38] Speaker B: Naturally. [00:01:39] Speaker A: But after the war, some years after the war, in 1947, it was finally reopened for its original purpose. It was built with the purpose to house and educate children and young adults with, quote, intellectual disabilities, end quote. Okay. [00:01:59] Speaker B: If there's one thing about the legacy of sort of the eastern seaboard and hospitals, it's not usually great when they want to make them for the insane or the disabled or anything like that. There's a reason why abandoned asylums and things like that on the east coast are always considered to be so haunted. It's just like the stories are so. [00:02:23] Speaker A: Terrible that come out of, well, here's one. [00:02:27] Speaker B: Great. [00:02:29] Speaker A: Now, the purpose of Willowbrook. Like I said, housing and air quotes, educating intellectually disabled young adults. Now, as you can imagine, diagnostic tools were less developed then compared to today. Very broad categorizations instead of specific diagnoses. The focus of this building was all about institutionalization, I think it's fair to say. Right. It wasn't necessarily in depth diagnosis, but rather housing and care for young individuals who, for whatever reason, whether by their families or by the state, were deemed unfit for kind of community life. A huge building, a vast area of around about 380 acres. Okay, now. [00:03:21] Speaker B: Wow. [00:03:22] Speaker A: It was designed, Willowbrook was designed to accommodate no more than 4000 children, however. [00:03:31] Speaker B: Stuck to it. [00:03:32] Speaker A: Right, of course. Yeah, they stuck to code. Did they? Fuck. You see, over time, the school faced quite severe overcrowding, and its population, by 1965, had swollen to 6000 residents. [00:03:49] Speaker B: Too many. [00:03:50] Speaker A: Yeah. And if you think about the style of the building, the architectural style of the building, it reflected an institutional kind of vibe. Functional structures, no aesthetic considerations at all. The living conditions were cramped, were subpar. Staffing was insufficient hygiene. It was squalid. Frankly, residents at Willowbrook often lived in squalor, lacking in basic necessities. And over time, conditions at Willowbrook became horrific. We are talking rampant disease, rampant neglect, rampant abuse. [00:04:34] Speaker B: This is post World War II. [00:04:35] Speaker A: Yes, indeed. This was late 40s. Residents living in squalor, lacking in basic necessities. The senator at the time of New York, a guy, Robert Kennedy. [00:04:49] Speaker B: Well, once a guy called Robert Kennedy. [00:04:53] Speaker A: After an unplanned visit to Willowbrook in 1965, he described it as a snake pit exposed absolutely horrific living conditions. The fact is that vast numbers of patients at Willowbrook weren't kind of able to look after themselves, use the toilet themselves, feed themselves, clean themselves. It had become a place where, in a lot of cases, even kind of basic dignity wasn't afforded those who resided there. Like I said, neglect was standard, abuse was rife, and disease was practically endemic. Infectious disease was all but a fact of life at Willowbrook. An early research program indicated that patients at Willowbrook had a one in two chance of contracting hepatitis in their first year of living there. [00:05:48] Speaker B: Jesus Christ. [00:05:50] Speaker A: Yeah. A one in two chance. You see, that study was carried out by a doctor by the name of Saul Kriegman. Dr. Kriegman had been hired by the directors at Willowbrook in 1955 to start to try and address the rampant spread of communicable diseases at the facility. All right. Now, Kriegman was a. His kind of life work as a physician and a researcher was in the field of pediatric infectious diseases, immunology, vaccine development and research. Okay. [00:06:33] Speaker B: Feels appropriate. [00:06:34] Speaker A: Yeah. In particular, the study of hepatitis. Now, as is so often the case in the medical cases that we discuss here in jack of all graves, Kriegman made groundbreaking contributions to understanding and differentiating between the different types of hepatitis A, B, and C. And it was his studies on hepatitis, rubella, measles, were super instrumental in developing vaccines for those diseases. Okay. [00:07:03] Speaker B: Okay. [00:07:03] Speaker A: He saved countless lives. He had a huge impact on public health. [00:07:08] Speaker B: Oh, no. Feel like there's going to be a but here. [00:07:11] Speaker A: But. From 1958 to 1964, Kriegman used his tenure at Willowbrook to perform live human tests and trials on the population of the Willowbrook facility, intentionally infecting residents with live hepatitis virus. [00:07:35] Speaker B: I don't know why I thought that this was going to be different. I was like, oh, wow. The place actually hired someone to come in here and try to fix it. That's unusual. But I was like, oh, that's great. Awesome. [00:07:50] Speaker A: He was hired. [00:07:51] Speaker B: He was brought in by mengolite. [00:07:54] Speaker A: Check this. The New York state Department of Mental hygiene. [00:08:00] Speaker B: That feels eugenicsy. [00:08:02] Speaker A: Doesn't it, though? Yeah, doesn't it, though? Like I said, he intentionally infected residents with the live virus in order to study the disease and to help him try and develop a vaccine. Now the route of administration is fucking vile. In a lot of cases, Krigman and his team directly injected the residents with human kind know immunoglobins containing the live virus. [00:08:32] Speaker B: But in other cases, half of them were getting it. Why did he need to. [00:08:35] Speaker A: Yeah. Well, I'll talk more on this in a little bit. But he defended his methods to his dying breath. He defended his methods right to the end. But in many cases, children were made to consume food and drink containing the live hepatitis virus through infected fecal matter. [00:08:59] Speaker B: Oh, come on. [00:09:01] Speaker A: Yeah, infected. [00:09:04] Speaker B: How do you defend that? [00:09:05] Speaker A: Infected human fecal matter mixed into chocolate milk. [00:09:10] Speaker B: Wow. [00:09:11] Speaker A: And given to developmentally disabled children in order to intentionally infect them with hepatitis for his studies. [00:09:20] Speaker B: That is horrific. [00:09:22] Speaker A: How fucked is that? [00:09:24] Speaker B: It's treating like people like they're not humans. [00:09:28] Speaker A: Absolutely. [00:09:29] Speaker B: You're going to justify this? Would you do this to your child? Would you do this to a wealthy child, a kid who didn't have developmental disabilities? It's like, ask a few questions and it comes down to like, these kids are not people. [00:09:45] Speaker A: Yes. [00:09:45] Speaker B: As far as he's concerned. [00:09:47] Speaker A: And it's worth pointing out that these studies were officially sanctioned. Of course, they were sponsored by the armed Forces epidemiological board as well as, like I said, the aforementioned New York State Department of Mental Hygiene. Kriegman studies made kind of overtures toward ethics. They obtained consent, informed consent, air quotes from their parents and family members. They would give them tours of the facility and so on, and they would spell out the potential benefits of the study to the wider health of the world, believe it or not, even though it was a shithole, literally, Willowbrook was it had a long waiting list. Parents wanted their kids in Willowbrook for whatever, know. [00:10:33] Speaker B: I'm sure they weren't advertising that. It's a course with the limited resources that parents would have had for raising an intellectually disabled kid at the time. [00:10:42] Speaker A: Exactly this. [00:10:44] Speaker B: What do you do? You put them in an institution. [00:10:46] Speaker A: At that point, parents who agreed to the study were guaranteed instant acceptance into Willowbrook. So the ethics even of the consent he obtained are wide open. And like I said, until his death in 1995, Creedman insisted on the kind of the scientific and ethical validity of his work. He argued, for example, that hepatitis was so rife at Willowbrook anyway, they were going to get it. [00:11:15] Speaker B: They were just going to get it. [00:11:17] Speaker A: They were going to get it anyway. And Willowbrook was a perfect kind of unmissable study opportunity. We can't let this opportunity fucking pass us by. We can't miss this chance to feed fucking hepatitis shit to disabled children. [00:11:30] Speaker B: Holy God, it's such a, like, sure, you've got all of this stuff happening and, yeah, study it. That's cool. But study it in the people it's happening to already. You don't need to create further, actively. [00:11:42] Speaker A: Contribute to making it work. [00:11:44] Speaker B: Yeah. And that's the thing is, ostensibly he was brought in to help with the problem, right? And instead of helping, he was like, I have a different plan. What if we don't help at all? We make it worse. But we study it. [00:11:59] Speaker A: But we study it. But just like with the fucking Dr. Mangele, like Dr. Asperger, the work done there played a massive role in the kind of the differentiation of hepatitis A and B, the development of the vaccine. And of course, Krigman was well rewarded. He received the 1983 Mary Woodard Alaska Public Service Award for his work on viral hepatitis. [00:12:27] Speaker B: Such a service to the public. [00:12:30] Speaker A: Yes, indeed. But at what cost? Worth, as a little footnote here, Willowbrook closed in 1987. [00:12:37] Speaker B: Wow. [00:12:37] Speaker A: Just 1987? [00:12:39] Speaker B: I was alive. [00:12:41] Speaker A: Yeah, mate. [00:12:43] Speaker B: I was a toddler when it closed. [00:12:45] Speaker A: I think I might have just been discovering Metallica, right? Maybe a little bit earlier, maybe a bit later. But one of the big nails in Willowbrook's coffin, in fact, came from one Geraldo Riviera. [00:12:59] Speaker B: Really? [00:12:59] Speaker A: Yeah. In the late 70s, Geraldo aired an undercover expose. He and a team got in undercover and kind of broadcast the appalling conditions that residents of Willowbrook were still living under. Even years, years after Krigman's work had still concluded, the place was still a fucking absolute cesspool and only closed in 1987. [00:13:23] Speaker B: That's so wild. And we've talked about this before that what do we do with the discoveries people make that help people, but this at what cost thing. And it's always like it doesn't balance, per se, or at least on that person, because he could have made the same discoveries while helping. He chose to make those discoveries while hurting. [00:13:48] Speaker A: Yes. [00:13:48] Speaker B: And thus, fuck that guy. [00:13:50] Speaker A: Yes. And one thing that is, look, what is Jo? Ag about if not the awful truth? And one of the awful truths which has been drip, drip, drip, drip, dripping, drip. Feeding into my consciousness over these past few months is just how much of what we take for granted today was the fruit of fucking suffering and corners cut and problems made intentionally worse. In the interests of science, what do you do with discoveries that were forged from pain and crime? What do you do? [00:14:30] Speaker B: We'll keep working on that question. [00:14:35] Speaker A: Let me quote directly from my notes, if I may. [00:14:38] Speaker B: Yes, please do. [00:14:39] Speaker A: Fucking look at these nerds. Oh, misel Sen. [00:14:43] Speaker B: I don't think anyone has ever said miselsen in such a horny way before. [00:14:47] Speaker A: The way I whispered the word sex cannibal. [00:14:49] Speaker B: Worst comes to worst, Mark, I'm willing to guillotine you for science. [00:14:53] Speaker A: Thank you. That's really, really sweet. It's cold outside, but my pancreas is talking to me. I'm going to leg it. [00:15:00] Speaker B: You know how I feel about that, Mark. [00:15:02] Speaker A: I think you feel great about. Yeah, here we go. Right, here we go. Here we go with another fucking couple of hours of woke fucking leftist clap. Yeah, from those two fucking yellow bellied liberals, Corey and Mark. Yeah, on jack of all fucking communist graves. Yeah. Fucking talking just absolute horseshit about how all human beings should be treated equally and with dignity and respect. Yeah, fucking I can't bear it. How mankind should, as a species, we should be aspiring towards more than endless economic growth and fucking profit at the expense of human well being and fucking suffering physical and mental health. I'm sick of it. Can you deal with another 2 hours of this? [00:16:13] Speaker B: Fuck. Fucking. I'd turn it off if I were me. [00:16:17] Speaker A: Do you know plenty of times I've said, hey, this might be the perfect episode. If you've never listened to jack of all grapes before, this might be the perfect one to fuck us off completely. Just save yourself the bother. Just delete the fucking series and go and live your life, whatever fucking portion of it you've got left. Go on. [00:16:39] Speaker B: You sound like all the irish people on our YouTube today. [00:16:44] Speaker A: What have you done? [00:16:45] Speaker B: What have I done? Clearly these people did not watch the video. So we got all these comments from irish people on our video about how Irish Americans came to be, why there are so many of us, all that kind of stuff. And what angered these people was the idea of Irish Americans. And listen, we started with this, right? You were like, oh, yeah, I had a healthy. [00:17:14] Speaker A: Sure, sure. [00:17:16] Speaker B: And then we took a journey where we talked about, why are Irish Americans a thing? Why aren't they just Americans and things like that? And it's like, hey, America is racist. We sort people into categories and then groups stay homogeneous because that's the group of people they're allowed to live with and that they can build communities with. And thus we end up with Irish Americans, African Americans, things like that. No one ever questions like, if I made a video about why are there so many African Americans? Nobody would be like, you're not african if you're not born and raised in Africa. Yeah, no fucking shit. I know I'm not african, but I live in a racist country. [00:18:01] Speaker A: More views than most. [00:18:05] Speaker B: The rage has caused people to start watching and commenting on it. But it was just so funny to me that it was like, if they had watched the video, not only would they have gotten that explanation, but this whole story of what it was like for people who descended from their families living here. And instead they were just so mad at the idea that I would call Americans Irish that it was. [00:18:32] Speaker A: Let's have some big hits here, Nigel. Ralph Murphy 2852 says, if you're not born and raised in Ireland, you're not irish. Well, that's what we fucking said. [00:18:41] Speaker B: Yeah, that was also. His name's Nigel. [00:18:47] Speaker A: Yeah. Lily, your ancestors left because they were Calvinists. I don't even know. [00:18:52] Speaker B: Oh, I love that one. [00:18:53] Speaker A: What the fuck is a Calvinist? [00:18:54] Speaker B: A Calvinist is a Protestant. And I talked at length about how my family is Catholic. So again, did not watch the video. What? They were all making these reasons not only why Irish Americans aren't irish, but why I specifically am not irish and why the famine wasn't a thing. Actually, I love the guy who goes off about like, oh, nobody in my family was affected by the famine because you had to be, blah, blah, blah. And it's like, yeah, okay, it still happened. Well, I'm not explaining why your family stayed in Ireland. I'm explaining why other people's families left. Good for you if you were able to stay there. It's just like such a funny pushback. Like, occasionally people will comment and take issue with something in one of our videos or whatever. [00:19:45] Speaker A: Speech free country, right? [00:19:46] Speaker B: Yeah, go for it. Whatever. But it was just very funny to me that this really got these people ire up about this. [00:19:55] Speaker A: Well, a big old carton of shitty hepatitis milk to those fucks. [00:20:00] Speaker B: You're here. Take your medicine. How's you in sip of this seltzer like deeply shitty hepatitis milk. [00:20:13] Speaker A: 8 million podcasts in the world, and I'm pretty fucking confident that we're the only one to use the phrase shitty hepatitis milk this week. [00:20:25] Speaker B: And if you hear it elsewhere, please do let us know. I'm very curious. [00:20:31] Speaker A: Yeah, we want to be their friend. [00:20:33] Speaker B: You won't believe I was listening to this parenting podcast and the same exact phrase came up. [00:20:39] Speaker A: Listen, I don't ask much of you, right? I'm quite low maintenance as a co host, but can we please call this episode shitty Hepatitis ma? [00:20:47] Speaker B: So I've been trying to make the episodes labeled what they are actually talking about now, because I'm like, I realize sometimes I go to find an episode we did on something, and I can't find it because I was too clever with the title. So spiritually, that is what this episode is named. So, no, you're saying, no, I'm not going to call it that because I want people to be able to find it. All right, well, listen, that's why I'm the business end of this podcast. [00:21:14] Speaker A: No, that's true. [00:21:15] Speaker B: You're the creative director for the practicality. [00:21:18] Speaker A: Getting your fucking lane. Marco. [00:21:23] Speaker B: How are you doing, though? [00:21:24] Speaker A: Well, I think the last 21 minutes have pretty much spelled out, oh, I'm doing. I'm pretty spiky today, actually. [00:21:30] Speaker B: You are. You are spiky. [00:21:32] Speaker A: Yeah. Don't really know why, but if I vent on you, I apologize. And listeners, if my spikiness offends thee, I apologize in advance. But what Jo ag is, is don't. You don't get a cultivated, kind of masked up version of either of us on this cast. I don't were. If I were to one day find that I had to kind of get in Joag character before I hit record, or I had to kind of shake out and do my fucking vocal exercises and assume the fucking. The Joag Persona, I think I would probably not do it anymore. [00:22:14] Speaker B: That's not how we do things here. If you're in a shit mood, that is what it is. So it's all good if Mark is spiky. It is what it is, yes. I like that term, though. [00:22:28] Speaker A: What? Spiky. That's because you like. [00:22:33] Speaker B: Mean. I do like hedgehogs. I feel like you associate with meeting me with hedgehogs. [00:22:38] Speaker A: As do I. Just thought it was fuck it. I'm going to say it. I thought it was super cute how you just out of the blue texted me. Mark, have you ever seen a hedgehog? Yeah, I have. Yeah, loads. [00:22:54] Speaker B: It had never occurred to me before that you might have seen a hedgehog and I've never seen a hedgehog, or at least not alive. [00:23:00] Speaker A: I think we've done this. We've done this before. [00:23:02] Speaker B: No, I don't know if we know. No, I don't think so. But it doesn't have to be a conversation. But I'm just saying that you've seen a hedgehog, you've seen a badger. You're living my best life. [00:23:18] Speaker A: I've seen a hedgehog this week. I've seen a badger last week. [00:23:21] Speaker B: No, come on. How are you not like texting me when this happens? [00:23:25] Speaker A: Because they're fucking dead. Their insides are always on the outside when you see them. [00:23:30] Speaker B: Their entrails have become their x trails in the word balladutic. [00:23:34] Speaker A: Beautifully put, beautifully put. Yes, that's part of the experience, no? [00:23:40] Speaker B: Yeah. But if you see one of either of those things and it has not yet shuffled off this mortal coil, I would like to be informed. [00:23:49] Speaker A: Okay. It is unlikely. I mean, the only time that you're ever really going to catch hedgehogs out in the wild is like super early in the morning if you're in a field. Cemeteries are generally good for hedgehogs. Plenty of. Yeah, true. Plenty of kind of wild meadow land when there's like a dew on the grass and there's a mist in the air. [00:24:12] Speaker B: That's when you're just continuing to describe my dreams. Wandering through a dewy cemetery in the morning, coming upon hedgehogs starting their day. [00:24:25] Speaker A: If we haven't discussed this on jog before, I'll relay the time when as a kid I was out with some, chumming about with some mates. I can't have been any older than like 1012. And we came across a nest. We came across a hedgehog nest which had a little. Must have been like a freshly born little baby hedgehog in it. And I can think of no better comparison than it looked like a ball bag. It just looked like a fucking nutsack because the spines hadn't come out. It didn't have any spikes yet. Its eyes weren't open. It was just all little, just this squinty little purse of pink flesh. [00:25:04] Speaker B: Where do the spines come from? [00:25:06] Speaker A: I don't know, but this little lad had none. [00:25:10] Speaker B: Do they have spines poke through their flesh? [00:25:15] Speaker A: I guess they must do just like we grow hair. [00:25:19] Speaker B: Yeah. But extra thick, spiky hair. [00:25:23] Speaker A: Yeah. Murder hair. [00:25:25] Speaker B: Murder hair. That sounds uncomfortable. I'm going to have to look into this. [00:25:29] Speaker A: Yeah. I mean, it's also worth adding that after coming away from that nest, I was covered in fucking tick bites because they are riddled, these little fuckers. They are absolutely riddled with ticks and fucking all manner of bugs. Worth it. Yeah. Do you know what? I think it was, on reflection, on balance, sat here at 45 relaying that to an ever dwindling audience of strangers. Yes. I think that is an experience I'm glad I've got. [00:26:04] Speaker B: I feel great about it. I would like to have that experience too, but maybe someday. [00:26:08] Speaker A: Anyway. Do they not exist in the states then? [00:26:13] Speaker B: No, I don't think so. I mean, you can have them as pets, but they're not like, out and about. But I know I have mentioned before that I found out we do have porcupines here, which are also a thing I did not know until three years ago. But no, I don't think hedgehogs live in the wild here. [00:26:33] Speaker A: A little interesting bit of british deep cultural law here. You know what we call potato chips. Yeah, crisps. Crisps. Now, believe it or not, and for the fucking life of me, I can't think why this was a thing. And as I'm talking about it, it sounds like something I've just made up, but it's true. In, I want to say the early 80s. So between like 80 to 85, that kind of era, there was actually a hedgehog flavor crisp brand, like the chip. [00:27:10] Speaker B: Or the crisp was hedgehog flavor. [00:27:13] Speaker A: Hedgehog flavor crisps, yes. And I don't know if it was like some kind of awareness to look out for hedgehogs when you're driving or. [00:27:20] Speaker B: Whatever, but what in the world? [00:27:23] Speaker A: Yeah, I've got to google it because I've got to see if there are. [00:27:27] Speaker B: Do people eat them? Do people eat hedgehogs? [00:27:29] Speaker A: Hedgehogs now? Fuck no. [00:27:30] Speaker B: Okay. Doesn't seem like a thing you would eat. I mean, it seems like it would be way too much work. Like, I understood the guinea pig thing, but not the hedgehogs. [00:27:37] Speaker A: Yeah, here we go. Hedgehogs. Favorite crisp brand of potato crisps. British pub landlord in 1981. Yes, they were a thing. And they were withdrawn. Oh, interestingly, they were withdrawn from sale in 1982 when the office of Fair Trading alleged a breach of the trade's description act as the product was flavored with pork fat and herbs and contained no actual hedgehog. [00:28:02] Speaker B: Stop. That's really the reason? [00:28:03] Speaker A: Yes, it was a legal matter. That's incredible. [00:28:08] Speaker B: Crisps are never flavored with the thing they're supposed to taste like, but these ones are. I mean, I don't even know what, like a. Like, what is cooler ranch? What is that supposed to taste like? [00:28:19] Speaker A: Quite. Well, listen, if we want to do the cultural exchange over here, what you call cool ranch Doritos over here are simply known as cool original. [00:28:33] Speaker B: Cool original. [00:28:34] Speaker A: Cool. [00:28:35] Speaker B: A brit doesn't know what a ranch is. [00:28:36] Speaker A: Exactly. We have no fuck knows what ranch dressing is. [00:28:40] Speaker B: Yeah. I'm like, that's hilarious. Because that is the descriptive part of a cooler ranch Dorito, is that it tastes like ranch. [00:28:48] Speaker A: Yeah, over here. Why is it cool? Original. [00:28:52] Speaker B: Incredible. [00:28:53] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:28:54] Speaker B: Cultural exchange. Cultural exchange. I love, it's my favorite. And I know listeners love a little cultural exchange as well. So glad to have that here. You went and saw some graps. [00:29:06] Speaker A: Yeah, listen, and it was terrific. Right? I am delighted to be able to report that my children and I have now seen professional wrestling both at its highest level. Wembley stadium, 90 od thousand people. Just the most electric anticipated, purest fucking form of the spectacle, right? In all of its splendor. Grand scale pro wrestling televised across the world, making millions and millions of pounds. And we've also seen it at grassroots, spitting sawdust in the leisure center. The fucking turnbuckle was held together with duct tape. [00:29:48] Speaker B: Love that. [00:29:49] Speaker A: Beautiful. Just gaffer tape holding the fucking ring together. Just big lads chucking himself around the ring, wobbling alarmingly whenever there was any kind of. I swear to fucking God. How? [00:30:01] Speaker B: Video of that. It was like someone was tossed into the ring somehow and bounced back up like 3ft. [00:30:10] Speaker A: Yeah, listen, the entire structure, just with the slightest, every move, with the slightest impact, the whole thing would go to like a 40 degree angle and wobble. It was alarming, but hella fun. [00:30:24] Speaker B: The danger is part of what makes it fun. [00:30:26] Speaker A: Just great times. Banter with the heels. Boo. Hit the bricks. I think I was probably the most into it out of anyone. [00:30:35] Speaker B: There's incredible to listen to that video. Like, you're clearly the ringleader. You're helping people figure out what it is. But my favorite thing about this video is, like, you're yelling every time someone comes out. You're screaming, you're getting into it. And then my favorite is when someone hits the ring apron and you go, hardest part of the ring. Hardest part of the ring. Who are you talking to? Everyone who knows. Hardest part of the ring, guys. Hardest part of the ring. [00:31:05] Speaker A: Now, some wrestling fans might know what I'm talking about here. When I say this, but what I'm very cautious and mindful of when I'm at a wrestling show is not to be the fucking obnoxious dickhead fan that wants everybody to know that they're smart. [00:31:22] Speaker B: I know wrestling. [00:31:23] Speaker A: Exactly. And they know the terminology and they know the fucking gimmicks. No, I fucking hate that kind of fan. They're just toxic and I hate them. I approach a wrestling show as just fuck everything you think you know about the business. Just boo the fucking heels, cheer the faces, and get the fuck into it and have a great laugh. And in wrestling, it is a truth. It is one of the fundamental tenets of wrestling, that the apron is the hardest part of the ring. [00:32:00] Speaker B: It's true. [00:32:01] Speaker A: It is. Just like it only takes one glancing blow from an aluminium plated leather belt to render a referee unconscious. [00:32:11] Speaker B: Obviously. [00:32:14] Speaker A: Certain things are lethal. The ring bell, that is lethal, that will strike you. Just a glancing blow to the testicles will knock someone out. Well, just wrestling truths, mate. Wrestling truths. And there are zillions of these. [00:32:27] Speaker B: Yeah. It was very delightful to just watch that little video that you made and listen to. You have as good a time as any of those children there. [00:32:36] Speaker A: No, it was great fun. It was great fun. [00:32:39] Speaker B: I love that. Also, we had a watch along this weekend as well. You were having a hell of a weekend, right? [00:32:47] Speaker A: Yeah, this was the same day, in fact. That's why the watch along was pushed back by an hour this month. And on the few occasions that we've actually watched brilliant films on the watch along, it kind of elevates the whole thing to another level. Right? [00:33:03] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:33:03] Speaker A: And all I'll say about this month's watch along is this. Right? To those who were there, my thanks, because I consider it an absolute privilege and one of the most. Fuck it. I'm going to fucking bear my soul here. [00:33:16] Speaker B: I'm going to do it, man. [00:33:17] Speaker A: Make myself vulnerable. Right. The watch along night of a month is a precious, precious thing to me because it's a kind of an arms across the world thing. We've got our core of regulars. I love it when we get people dropping by. We had a couple of people in this month who just kind of watched a film and just hung back and weren't really so active in the chat. And that is fucking great because I love the fact that just for that kind of 90 minutes or 2 hours, it's a weird kind of ephemeral connection across the globe that a handful of people share. And over the years it's become something very, very special to me. And long may they continue here, here. [00:34:00] Speaker B: And of course, this month we did the fly. So it was just great all around. Great company, great movie, great vibes. [00:34:10] Speaker A: You think you remember a film. You think you remember how good a film is, but then when you come back to after a few years and you realize it's every bit and more the movie that you thought it was, it's kind of like a Cormann esque idea of a picture, isn't it, guy? He thinks he's invented teleportation, and he becomes half and the original, the fucking, is it Vincent Price or is he in return of the fly? [00:34:37] Speaker B: I've never actually seen the original. [00:34:39] Speaker A: Oh, it's great. It's a good laugh. It's a good laugh. [00:34:42] Speaker B: Yeah, it's on my list. [00:34:43] Speaker A: Vincent Price is in return of the fly, but it's excellent. But the remake could have been more of the same. It could have been schlocky. It could have been a b movie. But fuck me, the caliber. The caliber of the work on that movie, elevated writing and performances and the gore and the fucking makeup is amazing. That Goldblum could do what he did under latex, covered in fucking fly tumors, and yet caught in a shaft of fucking moonlight from his broken roof, waxing poetic about insect politics, the entire thing is elevated to the fucking moon and beyond. It is such a great piece of work, and I couldn't have been happier to share it with everybody the other night. It was wonderful. A wonderful moment. [00:35:31] Speaker B: Yeah, absolutely agree. So thank you to everyone for coming out to that. [00:35:35] Speaker A: That's what I'm trying to say. Yes. [00:35:37] Speaker B: Yeah, you said that I was in. Yeah. We will pick out, oh, next month's watch along is going to be book adaptations as brought to us. The idea came from Ryan. [00:35:50] Speaker A: Nice. Very nice. [00:35:51] Speaker B: We'll pick a date and we will figure out what we're going to watch from the book adaptations. Mark will put up a poll. It'll be a grand old time. We've got a let's play, God damn it. We'll do a let's play and a snack this week for you on the ko fi and for those of you who want to follow along with Kristen's journey for what she's watching this month, by the way. Yeah. For this. For April, we're going to be doing these the second week of every month. So the second week of April, we'll be talking about frailty. So rent or wherever watch frailty so you can come along this journey. I love frailty. I'm excited to talk about this one with her. [00:36:39] Speaker A: I've only seen it once, and if pressed, I couldn't remember much about it. [00:36:44] Speaker B: Yeah, rewatch it. It's a good ride. [00:36:48] Speaker A: Bill Paxton, do you do a lot of digging? Is he digging a hole? [00:36:51] Speaker B: In quite a bit of digging, yeah. [00:36:53] Speaker A: There we go. [00:36:54] Speaker B: Frailty. Yeah, it's quite a flick. I think it's very fun. Bill Paxton directed it, which is also cool. I'm a total stan. Really, really fun time. So if you want to keep up with us, like I said, watch frailty. Second week of April, we will be coming out with that episode, and I'm very much looking forward to hearing Kristen's takes on that movie. And I think the episode will talk about some pentecostal religious nuttery. So if that appeals to you, nice, make sure that you tune in. [00:37:30] Speaker A: Nice. [00:37:30] Speaker B: But what did you watch this week, Mark? [00:37:33] Speaker A: Oh, man. I mean, the first film I watched this week, because it was on Monday, I watched four lions again. Right. And I was in a particular frame of mind when I just had an itch, and I didn't know what would scratch it. I didn't know what would sate me. [00:37:52] Speaker B: I know that feel. [00:37:53] Speaker A: Yeah. Hey, it's to be human, isn't it? To have this fucking. These questions, these unanswerable questions within. And I've happened upon four lions, and that was it. That was the one. Just politically and quite relevant now and again, you're struck by just how meticulously researched a movie it is. [00:38:20] Speaker B: I'm going to guess there's probably a lot of people who have never seen four lions. The fact that I've seen four lions is, like, random. It was playing at Alamo Draft house when I was in Austin, and my friend wanted to show me Alamo draft house, and we're like, we'll go see this movie. And I deeply remember it's my same friend that I went to Philadelphia and saw this past week, my friend Chelsea, my best friend from high school. And this movie, I adored it and was, like, laughing out loud the whole time. I was really into it. And dear Chelsea was like, I don't get it. I do not get this movie. Most Americans, I would say, are not familiar with it. So do you want to explain the premise of four lions? [00:39:02] Speaker A: Do you know, weirdly, it's had quite a big cultural impact in the UK for lions. [00:39:08] Speaker B: I mean, that makes sense. [00:39:10] Speaker A: Yeah. It's a very quotable screenplay, and just the sleight of hand with which it gets you to empathize with a kind of a boogeyman it's very deft in what it does. It's a movie that follows a group, a cell, a very kind of. I use the word loosely of would be jihadists, muslim jihadists in the UK. And I think it's set in like, Leicester or Leeds or somewhere like that. Somewhere just unremarkable as these five just dickheads try amidst infighting and arguing to decide what should be the target of their jihad. It involves a trip to a training camp in Pakistan. It involves just some absolutely hilariously ridiculous attempts at working out what their target should be. But all along the way, as I say, it's meticulously researched. It has absolutely fucking spot on temperature taking of the kind of the politics at the time. It's post 911. So the fact that it fucking got made at all is incredible. In fact. In fact, I'll tell you a little tale about this. Before crowdsourcing was really a thing, right? So before Kofi, before was Kickstarter, before any of those, the writer and director Chris Morris, one of my fucking idols, appealed to the public for help funding for lions. [00:40:58] Speaker B: Oh, wow. [00:40:59] Speaker A: And he appealed through the medium of the email fucking celebrity gossip newsletter pop Bitch. [00:41:10] Speaker B: Oh. Which I just learned about last week, right? [00:41:14] Speaker A: He had a little column in pop bitch asking readers of poppage to pledge money because he simply could not get it funded, as you can imagine. [00:41:23] Speaker B: Right? [00:41:25] Speaker A: I contributed. I chucked him 20 quid through pop bitch. And some weeks later, he announced further that he had actually got the funding that he needed. So pledges would be returned, which it was. And here's the thing, right? I'm looking at it right now. Everyone who pledged support through pop bitch to the creation of four lions was sent a little gift, which was a tiny clipping of celluloid from the movie. Wow on a commemorative card. And each one, each fucking one of these hundreds and hundreds of mailouts was individually signed by Chris Morris himself with a phrase written on the back. And I'm looking at it right now. It's up there in a frame. [00:42:12] Speaker B: That's so cool. Yes, it is really cool. I mean, the levels of that, so many people overcrowdfund or whatever, and it's like, oh, well, is what it is. Now we got more money. Which he easily could have done and no one would have thought anything of it. It helped. Cool. But then also on top of that, to give people a perk just because, like, hey, thanks for caring. Absolutely. [00:42:39] Speaker A: The phrases which each one has written on the back, I've seen other people sharing theirs online. Mine simply says, the opposite of shrugs with a signature from Chris Morris. [00:42:47] Speaker B: The opposite of what? [00:42:49] Speaker A: Shrugs. Eh, the opposite of shrugs. [00:42:52] Speaker B: I like it. [00:42:53] Speaker A: Yes. It's one of my most prized possessions, apart from my kids. It's something I would run into a burning building to retrieve. [00:42:59] Speaker B: I thought you were saying apart from your kids as a possession. I was like, no. Yes. Okay. I absolutely love that. And I think the thing about four lions is that it manages to take on this topic and be very funny and like you said, somehow drum up some empathy for these people. While I haven't seen it in ages, but I remember thinking, and somehow this is not super. [00:43:27] Speaker A: No. [00:43:27] Speaker B: In the sense that it's going to challenge people. Right. But it's not racist, it's not islamophobic or anything like that. And it gives us Riz Ahmed, it gives us Nandor from what we do in the shadows. Yes, it does. Yeah. Just a solid movie. Four lions. [00:43:48] Speaker A: I highly recommend lots of other Chris Morris regulars pop up. The actor Kevin Elden is in it. Julia Davis from 90 night, she's in it. And yeah, it's a real fucking work of sleight of hand that it's a similar kind of, you know, in the end of. Right, right. When you've got Kevin Spacey, curses be upon him as John Doe. Only in a world this shitty would what I do be considered a crime or words to that effect. And for a fucking moment you're like, oh, fuck. He's uh oh, right. And you find yourself empathizing with the fucking bad guy. [00:44:33] Speaker B: Right? [00:44:34] Speaker A: Four lions does that in an together more drawn out and subtle way. Because these guys are just dickheads, right? [00:44:43] Speaker B: Yeah, total idiots. [00:44:44] Speaker A: And there is slapstick and there is prat falllery and there is just titting around. But by turns, you go along with them on the ride. Because we're all dickheads. Everybody in the world is a dickhead in some way, shape or form, but that kind of light hearted, the comedy and the satire is punctuated by just the occasional reminder of just what the fuck these guys are planning. The tonal shifts in the film are just ballet. It's wonderful, wonderful, wonderful movie. [00:45:24] Speaker B: Definitely got to rewatch that. Thank you for that reminder. Of course, this week I was having one of those like, what am I in the zone for? I mean, I told you, I've been home alone all week. My husband came back today, but I've been by myself for the past week. And normally I like that, but I was just in this place, like real understimulation and it was like wearing me out. I couldn't make decisions about anything. I was super tired. I was lonely, which is not a feeling that I am used to. I'm a super introvert. I have no problem being by myself. But I was like, God, I'm super lonely right now. And so I was having trouble picking out what I wanted. And for some reason, my brain was like, you need to rewatch the Hunger Games movies. [00:46:15] Speaker A: Oh, christ. [00:46:16] Speaker B: So I did that. I tried to watch the most recent one and got about halfway through it and I was like, I hate this. I don't want to watch this because it's a prequel. So I was like, I'll watch that first and then I will watch the other movies. It's like classic modern blockbuster. You can't see shit, you can't hear shit. It's weirdly like a musical. Don't like that. I hated it. I hated everything about it. But I rewatched all of the other Hunger games and I think compared. It's also when you place it against a lot of the movies that have come out lately, it becomes so much stronger of a series of films when you're just like, this was so good. And they don't make movies like this, these big blockbusters right now. We're in a weird moment. [00:47:10] Speaker A: We all be sitting. [00:47:11] Speaker B: But I've always really liked. I think the first one is brilliant. Catching fire is not my fave. Don't love it, but it's fine. And then the last two I've always thought were genius because they are war movies and they really deal with war and with class warfare and with watching it now, kind of like watching four lions was like, oh, this is so prescient. Where you've got basically like an occupying force in the Capitol who is punishing these other districts for rebellion that they did before. And you end up with this resistance that is led by someone who ostensibly is better, but in the end wants to do the exact same thing. Just wants to switch who the dictator is, essentially. So your two parties are the same thing. There are two sides of the same coin. Meanwhile, you have Katniss, who understands you do need armed resistance. You can't just sit back and let them murder people at the same time. Seeing Gail lose his humanity in that process. Right. And eventually end up blowing up a hospital and then killing Katniss's sister in this and feeling like, these are the sacrifices we make. And he says, in this, there are no innocence. The children of the Capitol are not innocent because they're connected to them. And you're like, holy shit. This is really what this shit is like in real life. And as far as teen dystopias go, it latches onto something that other ones don't really get to. And I think the temptation for something like this could very well be like, oh, well, it's the pacifist mindset versus the violence, and violence never solves anything or anything like that. I think that's often the way those things go, where this instead is. No, like, resistance is brutal and it's hard, but then you have to have the cast of it. I forgot Philip Seymour Hoffman was in these. You've got, obviously, Jennifer Lawrence, who's Hutcherson. They're so good. I had a new appreciation for these movies, rewatching them, and then it turned out I saw on Jack Quaid's instagram yesterday that it was the 14th anniversary of when they came out. So I don't know, maybe that my brain just felt it. [00:49:54] Speaker A: Well, yeah. Strangely, we're having a Hunger Games moment here in the Lewis household as well. Peter has just through the books, and he's been working them through for the past couple of weeks, too. Nice. They've been on kind of around me. I haven't really watched them because sat and watched them. Yeah. But, yeah, we spoke about this before we hit record crew about how. Isn't it fucking weird how. And I don't know if it's a recency bias or if it's. What is it? I don't know, but I know there's a name for it when you see or do something, and then suddenly you see it everywhere. [00:50:28] Speaker B: Yeah, exactly. But sometimes you're like, just like, that's such a weird thing to suddenly see everywhere. Yeah. Hunger games being a thing all of a sudden. Fascinating. I mean, obviously last year or whatever that movie and did come out. So there's like, a little bit of, like. Yeah, it's kind of in the zeitgeist, but, yeah, it was just my mind wanted hunger games, and I'm glad that I watched through those. [00:50:54] Speaker A: Good. Yeah, good. [00:50:55] Speaker B: Very good about that. [00:50:56] Speaker A: Let me see. We watched a few together, didn't we? Didn't we? Hey, let's talk about double blind. [00:51:02] Speaker B: Double blind. [00:51:08] Speaker A: I wanted more from double blind than I got. So the premise of double blind is a group of kind of young adults are together in a medical testing facility. Now, do you have those in the states where you can sign up, get paid some money, and go and live in a little facility? [00:51:26] Speaker B: I've seen them on drugs and stuff like that. [00:51:29] Speaker A: Yes. I know a guy. [00:51:30] Speaker B: Never done it myself. [00:51:31] Speaker A: I know a guy who went to one. A good friend of mine. Good friend of mine by the name of Mike Williams, who's gone on to have a glittering career. He now edits sight and sound magazine. He edited. [00:51:42] Speaker B: Yes. He gave us some of our first exposure. [00:51:44] Speaker A: Yes, he did. My boy Mike, he went in for one of these drug tests for a company called Simbec and he went and lived in their facility for a couple of days and they tested fuck knows what on him. So I know of these places. I know they exist and I don't know if they still do, though. There was some really bad publicity from one here in the UK a while back. Got to be like 15 years ago easily. Where some of the people who went in for the tests developed like, massive swelling heads, big head swell syndrome, which is a bad look. And similarly, the drug test in double blind goes along similar routes. I was captivated by the line on the poster. Side effects may include death. Double what a fucking great line. [00:52:32] Speaker B: Yeah. That's a classic 80s style tagline. [00:52:36] Speaker A: Yes. Reaches out from the poster and grabs you, piques your interest. And I didn't get what I wanted from it. It kind of pulled back. But it's a really tight. It's a drama, isn't it? It's a drama. There's a ticking countdown clock. They've got 24 hours to stay awake because if they fall asleep, they will die. What a great premise. [00:52:54] Speaker B: Right? [00:52:55] Speaker A: Nice and stripped back. Nice and streamlined. Let me see. It won't surprise you, Corey, what you're about to hear will not surprise you. But I think there was room in double blind for lots more gore. [00:53:13] Speaker B: I can see that. Yeah. I mean, it did go pretty hard at times. Everybody had a pretty bloody death. [00:53:20] Speaker A: Yeah. But short of, like, violent nosebleeds and blood coming out, your eyes look all right. Fucking I pass. Ama. Way to work. What I wanted. I would love this experimental drug to have caused like, explosions, bodily fucking, just stuff coming out of people. [00:53:38] Speaker B: Right. [00:53:39] Speaker A: I don't know. I usually think there's room for more gore, but I think with double blind, I think they could have really turned that up and elevated that movie and made it something quite spectacular. It was good. [00:53:51] Speaker B: I feel like it's one of those limitations of budget type things now too, because if they did have more gore, you know, that the way they would have done it would be CGI and it would have, like, what they did do with the gore was largely practical and I think that's what makes the gore actually work in they didn't. There's a guy who dies in a fire or whatever. They didn't light a room on fire with a guy in it. But other than that, I think they did what they could with what they had. Practical effects tend to be very expensive in this day and age, and that's often why they just go with CGI. [00:54:28] Speaker A: Now, you've mentioned that I think CGI fire is almost as guaranteed to take me out of a scene than CGI blood splatter. It never quite looks right. However, what I will say, double blind was further proof, if proof be, need be, that I have a fantastic talent for predicting when the no phone signal line is going to come in a movie. [00:54:53] Speaker B: Incredible. [00:54:54] Speaker A: I got it to within a couple of seconds, didn't I? [00:54:56] Speaker B: Yes. You texted me, you said, like, no service in three, two or something like that. And it was like immediately they were like, oh, we've got no phone service. [00:55:09] Speaker A: No signal down here. [00:55:10] Speaker B: Oh, my God. [00:55:11] Speaker A: Got you. [00:55:13] Speaker B: This is. I spot the twists, you spot the no signal moment in these. This is our gifts when it comes to watching films. [00:55:21] Speaker A: Yep. I have had a look on YouTube for a super cut of those because I would deeply love a super cut of those moments. [00:55:25] Speaker B: Yeah, that would be good. I wish I was the kind of person who made those kinds of things, but I'm not that kind of neurodivergent. [00:55:31] Speaker A: Nor am I. I am not that person. I'll enjoy them. But life is short. [00:55:36] Speaker B: Yeah. We also watch. So there is a filmmaker that I follow on Blue sky who is like, he watches horror movies all the time. He goes to the festivals, all that kind of stuff. So I started pillaging his letterboxed for horror movies I'd never heard of before, which led me yesterday to stop motion, which we watched a story about a woman who, a young woman whose mother sort of a legendary stop motion filmmaker, which I like that. That's a thing in this movie, everyone's like, everybody works in stop motion. Everybody worships stop motion art. I just like that as a conceit in this film. Nobody's like, fantasy. Yeah. And so she's sort of trying to make her own way in stop motion filmmaking while in the shadow of her mother and sort of not being able to get the opportunities that she thinks that she deserves. And over the course of this film, she begins sort of trying to finish a movie that her mother was working on, but starts sort of having various hallucinations. I would say, yes. [00:56:52] Speaker A: She starts to be visited by a creepy little kid. What are we thinking is like, a version of her. [00:57:00] Speaker B: Yeah, I feel like, especially, like, well, I don't want to give anything away, but there's sort of a line in it that sort of basically says as much. It's sort of like a projection of herself that then tells her, like, hey, why don't you start using flesh for your stop motion? And then things spiral from there. It's very gross. This has the juice. [00:57:22] Speaker A: It does. [00:57:23] Speaker B: This movie. I was many times just throwing my fingers into my ears and going so that I couldn't hear sounds of, like, ripping flesh. [00:57:33] Speaker A: Yes. It's got some really nice kind of close up gore, which I really appreciate pulling into wounds and ripping stuff open. Also, the stop motion aesthetic is nice if you've never seen a tool video. [00:57:47] Speaker B: Yeah, it's like, this is a crazy tool video, man. But, yeah, I thought it was quite good, quite effective. Really creeped me out. There was a point in it where one of the little stop motion dolls appeared in one space, and it caused me to look to my own door to make sure there wasn't one in my own house. Very nice. And Paul Duane, the filmmaker that I was talking about, he was like, I actually had nightmares after watching this, which doesn't normally happen. So I would recommend stop motion. I had a good time with it. [00:58:19] Speaker A: It also, towards the climax, has almost like a kind of a ring moment, I think. [00:58:25] Speaker B: Yeah, right. [00:58:27] Speaker A: Yeah, no, you can't not recommend stop motion. It's good fun, indeed. [00:58:35] Speaker B: I also watched with the scream and chat. We watched a movie called the Midnight man, which at this point I remember very little about, except that it was, like, nonsense. Like, super nonsensical. This is a 2016 movie. Yeah. It made absolutely no sense whatsoever. The internal coherence of this movie is nonexistent. You're constantly like, the rules of this make no sense. Whatever, but what is it? [00:59:10] Speaker A: Like a slasher? What is it? What is it? [00:59:12] Speaker B: Yeah. So I was like, look at this. Trying to parse how I can make a synopsis of this movie. It's about, like, an urban legend, basically, about this thing that's like a boogeyman kind of situation. He's like a creepy pasta situation that comes to life. [00:59:37] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:59:38] Speaker B: Okay. And this is a real fuck them kids movie. It does not shy away at all from gruesomely murdering children. [00:59:48] Speaker A: Always love that. Always love that. [00:59:49] Speaker B: Yeah. From the beginning, we were like, straight out the gate, there's just brutal child murder. And we were all like, oh, okay. That's what this movie is. I recommend watching it. Like I said, it's insanely stupid. There's no internal coherence to how the urban legend works in this movie. It's just making it up as it goes along. But there's great gore. Yeah, it's just a very. I mean, you're going to love the gore in this. [01:00:23] Speaker A: What's it called again? The Midnight man. [01:00:24] Speaker B: The Midnight man. Yeah. While watching it, I had that thought that I was like, the premise is very stupid and all this kind of stuff, but Mark will get a kick out of the gore in this movie. So I recommend it for that. [01:00:40] Speaker A: 2016. [01:00:41] Speaker B: Yes, that's the one. It's on shutter in the US. I don't know if it is for you there. [01:00:46] Speaker A: Okay. [01:00:46] Speaker B: But very worth your time. I watched Frog man after you recommended it last time. [01:00:51] Speaker A: You enjoyed it. [01:00:52] Speaker B: It was really fun. I had a great time with Frog Man. I won't go into it too far because you did talk about it last week, but a found footage about an urban legend. And it does what I want, which is like in a frown footage. I want the people to act like people. [01:01:09] Speaker A: So please. [01:01:10] Speaker B: This does that. I especially like the sort of side characters they have to it. Like the guy who, every time they walk by him, he yells from across the street. Frogman can read minds. It's like such a real thing that would happen. You're in a small town and there's just some guy who you're like, no, I get it. Okay, thank you. Yep, got it. Frogman can read minds. Yeah. Really enjoyed Frogman. Good. So if you like, found footage, it's a fun little journey. Fun little cryptid journey. Good. [01:01:47] Speaker A: I picked a winner. Good. [01:01:48] Speaker B: Yeah. And I watched the classic silent film Metropolis as well. This was again one of those moments where I was like, I don't know what I want to do with my life. And for some reason my mind said, you want to watch Metropolis? And so I did. And boy, that is a banger. That is a hell of a film. Another sort of class warfare film, basically. Have you seen Metropolis? [01:02:13] Speaker A: I don't think I have ever voluntarily watched a silent movie. [01:02:20] Speaker B: Okay, fair enough. And that's understandable. But it is incredible, the art, like, the design of this movie. There's so many moments in it where you're just like, how did they do this? How did they do this effect in 1920 or whatever it was made. And it's sort of a story about a guy who lives in sort of this really nice, like, his father is very rich and he lives in this beautiful world where everything is sort of made for him and stuff. Like that. And then in this one moment, he realizes that his world is powered by a bunch of people living in squalor underground. And he wants to essentially sort of free these people who are being subjugated by his own father. And it's a journey. It's got some very creepy parts of it. There's a character in it called the thin man who just. His mere presence makes my skin crawl. You obviously have to sit and pay attention because it is a silent film. But it is absolutely worth it. It keeps your attention. You're never like, sitting there like, oh, I wish I was not watching this. [01:03:38] Speaker A: Let me ask you, given the choice, would you prefer movies in foreign language movies with subtitles or a silent movie? You'd pick silent, would you? [01:03:50] Speaker B: I don't know that that's the case. I think in both cases it is fully dependent on my mood. I think the benefit of a silent movie is that it's not depending on dialogue. Because obviously my problem with subtitles is just that I read them the whole time and so I don't watch the movie. And so, like a silent film, it's not expecting you to be reading stuff. It's not like there's constant text at the bottom of it. It is simply showing you the story and then occasionally giving you a screen that you have to read. So, yeah, I guess maybe to an extent I kind of prefer a silent movie in that way because there's nothing else for me to look at. Yeah, of course, my issue is not that I don't like foreign language films, it's that I can't get myself to not read the subtitles. [01:04:40] Speaker A: Yes, of course. And that's something I have to appreciate. [01:04:43] Speaker B: But, yeah, I would recommend Metropolis. I think you would really appreciate visually how stunning this is. Like, if you like a movie, like the movies Dennis Villeneuve makes, if you like a dune. He's absolutely sort of grabbing from that legacy of a huge a. Metropolis is. [01:05:06] Speaker A: Old as fuck, isn't it? We're talking like the. [01:05:09] Speaker B: No, way older than that. It's really the 20s. Yeah. [01:05:11] Speaker A: No. [01:05:12] Speaker B: Yeah. There were talkies in the silent films were long dead by the 40s. [01:05:22] Speaker A: No, this was 1927. [01:05:25] Speaker B: There you go. 1927. Isn't that crazy? [01:05:28] Speaker A: God damn it. That is fucking mad shit to me. [01:05:32] Speaker B: It's literally just about a century old. [01:05:35] Speaker A: Wow. [01:05:36] Speaker B: Yeah. Watch it and think about that. Watch Metropolis and consider that was made almost 100 years ago and it will absolutely blow your mind. Big recommend. [01:05:50] Speaker A: Cool as fuck. [01:05:51] Speaker B: Yeah. And the last thing aside from our main topic will be talking about one of the movies we both watched this week. But I watched, like everybody else, the documentary series quiet on the set, which was about Dan Schneider, ostensibly the showrunner from Nickelodeon, who was behind most of the huge Nickelodeon shows in the late ninety s and two thousand s. Most of the shows that he made, I was too old to have watched. [01:06:27] Speaker A: What were some of those huge shows then? Drake and Josh. [01:06:29] Speaker B: You said Drake and Josh iCarly. [01:06:32] Speaker A: Yeah. Okay. [01:06:33] Speaker B: Victorious things like that. Yeah, I was too old for these at this point. But for kids who are literally like four or five years younger than me, they would have been super into this, maybe ten. Mac was into a lot of this stuff, and he's like nine years younger than me. But over the years, it's kind of come out like I remember going down spirals on Livejournal and stuff like that about the fact that he tended to be kind of abusive to people on set. He also had actors doing really inappropriate young actors doing really inappropriate things. Like Ariana Grande is in multiple scenes in whichever one of the shows she was on where she looks like she's jerking someone off and stuff explodes all over her face and things like that. [01:07:25] Speaker A: And she's like, 13. [01:07:27] Speaker B: Yeah, he seemed to be really into feet. So a lot of these young actresses have foot scenes in a lot of these things, including, like, putting their feet in their mouths and things like that, making jokes that are very sexual, like, really inappropriate things that. What is wrong with you? He was always having people who worked for him massage him on set, stuff like that. So really kind of this work environment that led to a lot of issues for people who worked on it. But of course, the real sort of mic drop of this was that a guy who worked on some of those shows, he also worked on boy Meets World, was found to have. He was arrested, charged, thrown in jail for molestation of a minor. And it turns out, as is, it's never been public who that was. And it turned out it was Drake Bell from Drake and Josh. And so he comes on and sort of tells that, you know, I kind of recommend quiet on the set. The unfortunate thing about it is that, like so many things now, it's made in that really tabloid style that I think doesn't do justice to how serious the story is. [01:08:52] Speaker A: It's packaged up as entertainment. [01:08:55] Speaker B: Right, exactly that. And it's got, like, culture writers, including people I like. Like Sashi cool is one of the people who's talking about it. But explaining what happened in here where I'm, like a narrator, would have been a better choice instead of someone who talks about pop gossip and stuff like that to tell this. And so I hated the way it was made. Also, Drake Bell famously later got in trouble for grooming young people as well. And it doesn't really address that. It kind of does, but in a way that really makes it seem like it kind of happened because he molested this person. And also, we misunderstood what really happened. It wasn't really like that. And so it kind of lets Drake off the hook. Obviously, that was, like, in the terms of having him out himself for the first time as the victim of, you know, that's complicated. And I don't think this is the kind of program where you deal with the complications of someone who was horribly raped by this guy repeatedly over the course of years, but who also then victimized other people. That's a tricky subject. And you don't do that in MTV style. No, certainly not docuseries. So I think it's worth watching just to know this stuff happened and talk about that. But just be aware, the format is iffy. [01:10:29] Speaker A: Yeah. And it's definitely a topic that we've mentioned on here previously, and one that we keep threatening to go back to is, what is it about? I'm answering my own question, but what is it about power and influence, which outs fucking creeps, right? How difficult is it to not be a fucking scumbag? [01:10:54] Speaker B: Right? Yeah, exactly. To be able to victimize people in that way is something that is so incredibly unfathomable to me. And there's actually for people who like to listen to podcasts. The podcast pod meets world deals with the fact that not only were the cast of Boy Meets world friends with this guy, but then they wrote letters in his defense at his trial. And so this episode of Pod Meets World, they come to terms with what it means to have defended a monster and how it was incomprehensible to them at the time that this could be true. There's no way my friend could have done this kind of thing. So there's sort of adjacent things to this that I think deal with it better, to be honest. And the complications that are sort of involved with being complicit while also having this deep repulsion. [01:11:54] Speaker A: It sounds like you're saying that this one in particular, this story in particular, unlike the netflixification of adding fucking episodes just to pad out the runtime and pad out the episode count, is the kind of opposite way around. This could have done with a bit more space to breathe, right? [01:12:10] Speaker B: Yeah, exactly. And to be taken in a more serious light. These are huge allegations. And yeah, the problem is not so much the stretching of it as the, like, we're not parsing this. We're not really dealing with what all of this is so much as making the viewer like, oh my God, I can't. Oh, wow, that's sensational. As opposed to like, yeah, what the fuck is. How do you deal with this? How do you process this? So, yeah, interesting story. Just a warning. It's very tabloidy instead of the kind of thing you'd like to see around something as huge as both child sexual abuse and a power tripping dude who uses that to act out his weird sexual fantasies with children in a tv show and stuff. Like, like, there's a lot. [01:13:04] Speaker A: Get that. I get that. [01:13:06] Speaker B: But mark. [01:13:07] Speaker A: Yeah, there was one more movie, right? [01:13:09] Speaker B: There's one more movie that we are going to sort of focus our closing discussion on this episode. You mentioned last week that over the course of this podcast, we've gone from sort of looking at like, oh, how we could be fucked potentially, to like, oh shit, we are. [01:13:29] Speaker A: Yes. The degrees and the angles more the kind of the approach vectors of how fucked we are. [01:13:35] Speaker B: Right, exactly. And I think there are a few things that really show the shift on our own show better than AI going from sort of your dolly dickscapes on the show a couple of years ago. [01:13:49] Speaker A: I remember those. I was so proud of those. [01:13:52] Speaker B: Yeah, right. Those unintelligible blobs of things, surreal kind. [01:13:57] Speaker A: Of knots and walls of scar tissue and blisters and cracked skin and thumbnails and dicks. And I was like, oh, this really looks like if you made a table out of dick skin. Wow. [01:14:09] Speaker B: Yeah. And that was where we were. [01:14:11] Speaker A: And just a few 6 million podcasts gone. [01:14:18] Speaker B: But now we've come to the point where anybody can create passable art from their computers, and this has obviously become a huge conversation since then about sort of the ethics of this and what it means for people to be able to generate AI art and all of that. And we'll sort of get into the intricacies of that. But it manifested this week with the release of Late Night with the Devil, a movie we've both been looking forward to forever. And it came out in a letterboxd review, of all places, that this movie had used various AI generated interstitial images in it. [01:15:04] Speaker A: Can we maybe start by just like we've been doing for the last 20 minutes, talking about the movie first? [01:15:10] Speaker B: Sure, yeah. Let me just finish this one thought. [01:15:13] Speaker A: And then we'll talk about it. [01:15:14] Speaker B: Yeah, just to say why we're talking about this? And it's not just part of our what we watch section and we're keeping this as a separate thing. [01:15:21] Speaker A: Yeah. [01:15:22] Speaker B: So what came out was that they had used, like I said, a few interstitial images that they had created using AI. And this led to sort of calls for people to boycott the film. Don't go see this. This is using AI. If we go and see this movie, it is basically giving a pass to people using AI art in films. So that's what we're going to discuss about this is sort of like, where did this uproar come from? Why are people so upset? Is there grounding in that? Is it overwrought? What is this wide issue? What's happening when it comes to AI art, not just within this movie, but beyond that as well? What does it mean outside of late night with the devil? What are we wrestling with when it comes to the concept of AI art? That said, yes, let's talk about the movie itself first. [01:16:21] Speaker A: There are some movies that are. [01:16:24] Speaker B: Sorry, by the way, I will put a timestamp in the description. I just realized probably a lot of people were like, oh shit, oh shit, oh shit. I will put a timestamp in the description for when we stop talking about the plot of this movie so that you don't get spoiled. So if you're using podcast attic, just hit that little forward button. It's going to take you straight to the next section. Otherwise, just check underneath and you can skip us talking about this movie and spoiling it and just get into the AI. Because the AI part of this movie. Nothing to do with the plot of it or anything like that. [01:17:00] Speaker A: No, you know what? [01:17:01] Speaker B: Not spoil it at all and nothing. [01:17:03] Speaker A: To do with the actual content of the film. I think that was part of your disappointment with the direction that they chosen to go for those kind of art cards because they were so fleeting, just seconds of screen. [01:17:20] Speaker B: You could have just not done it. That's my take on it. But we will get into that, obviously. So that's to say, once we get past discussing the movie, there will be no spoilers beyond that because it has nothing to do with the movie itself, the content of the movie. [01:17:34] Speaker A: Talk to me a little bit about the audience that you saw with Corey. Was theater full. [01:17:39] Speaker B: This was actually really funny. I was going to text you about this afterwards, but know it had kind of escaped my mind by that point. I was the only person in the audience who. No, not the only person in the audience. The only person in the audience. Who was not a white Manny. Like, I was just looking around. Every time someone came in, I was like, surely the next person will not be a white man. Like, they can't all a lot of. [01:18:05] Speaker A: Beards of a man in this. [01:18:07] Speaker B: Yes. So many beards. It was incredible. But that's to say, it wasn't packed. But there were probably like 1520 people in there, which is plenty. [01:18:21] Speaker A: Throwing it back to four lions. Again, I caught that in a theater. I drove quite a distance and saw it on my own in a cinema. And again, it was all bearded white gentlemen. Just beard fest. [01:18:35] Speaker B: The filmmaker perhaps has an audience built. [01:18:38] Speaker A: Yeah. [01:18:41] Speaker B: But it was not the most interactive audience in the world. But I liked the fact that there was the feel of us watching this together. [01:18:51] Speaker A: For sure there was reaction to the audience, which I've. I've seen somebody on my socials, a good friend of mine, Mark Jones from Mercer, posting about how he wished he'd seen it for the first time on know. I know. I couldn't really make sense of that because this was a movie made to be seen with others for the first time in a cinema, right? And what a fucking. It is definitely testament to the film. But there wasn't a fucking. You could hear a pin drop, man. You could hear a pin drop. The atmosphere, it was so tense and so fucking highly wrought. Just wound up perfectly. The movie had the fucking crowd in the palm of its hand the whole way through. And it has been a hotly anticipated film. People have been looking forward to this for ages. So it paid off beautifully in the crowd that it was in. And I also think that's testament to the pacing of the film. It builds itself up beautifully. It drops. [01:19:56] Speaker B: And one of the things about that is that tension, I think, was definitely there in my theater as well. And there's like, certain moments that break that tension with, like, a joke or something like that. And the laughter is almost nervous in. [01:20:12] Speaker A: The breaking of completely. [01:20:16] Speaker B: I was wound up, man. [01:20:17] Speaker A: The cuts to the commercial breaks get progressively more and more funny just as what's happening on the set gets weirder and stranger and more dangerous. Every single cut to commercial is funnier than the last one word from our sponsors. Really, really good shit. The moch is brilliant. Breakout fucking role for him. Breakout role. We all knew what he had up his sleeve. Exactly. Fucking brilliant in this conflicted little bit sinister, avaricious, you know what I mean? Fame hungry, but genuine, honest, charismatic, vulnerable. It's a great performance by him and he's given a lot to work with because he's on screen the entire fucking time, right? [01:21:01] Speaker B: Yeah. [01:21:02] Speaker A: So had he been less of a performer, the film would have suffered for it. But he does a great job because he is literally front and center of the screen the entire fucking time it's on. And he's great. He's absolutely terrific. [01:21:15] Speaker B: Yeah. 100% agree. And I'm assuming that anyone who is listening to this part still has seen it. So we don't totally need to explain the plot. But if you're one of those people who you're like, I don't mind things getting spoiled for me, and you're still here. We have this set up in which a talk show host has suffered a tragedy that caused him to sort of downward spiral and tank his show. Essentially, his show suffered as a result of the crisis that he was going through. And so he's giving it another go to sort of revive this. It's sort of very important that this show goes well and maintains viewers this Halloween night show so that his show doesn't end up being canceled. And as such, he sort of tries to pull out all the stops. There's going to be like a costume contest and things like that. He's got psychic medium who's going to come in and he's going to read people in the audience, and he's got also, like, a skeptic who's going to be there to. [01:22:20] Speaker A: Who was also terrific. I thought. [01:22:22] Speaker B: Yeah, like, I hated him to my gore. But you're supposed to the skeptic there to challenge all of this stuff. And then sort of the icing on the cake is this girl who supposedly was possessed and the parapsychologist who has been working with her and that they're all going to come on here and show off this incredible thing that has happened. [01:22:48] Speaker A: Yes. [01:22:49] Speaker B: And predictably, it goes terribly, hideously, hideously. [01:22:54] Speaker A: Awry in so many fucking cool ways. It builds and builds and build tent because you know it's coming. You know something is going to go fucking heinously wrong. But it saves all of the visual stuff. It saves all the effects and the very pleasing gore when it does arrive. It keeps it all up its sleeve until you're nice and tense and until you're just waiting for the fucking the release valve. And then, yeah, it goes spectacularly fucking wrong. I thought the format was smart as fuck. It's part mockumentary, part found footage, and it sticks the landing with both of those. It frames itself as a documentary at the start. This is the first time that these tapes have been unearthed. This is the first time we're able to show you in full the forbidden episode of Late Night with fucking what's his name? [01:23:45] Speaker B: Don't. I can't remember what it is. [01:23:50] Speaker A: Yes, but they've obviously seen Ghost watch. It's Ghost Watch adapted. It's Ghost watch. The movie isn't. It's ghost watch adapted for a horror movie. Kind of know. [01:24:05] Speaker B: One of the things that is interesting about this for me, Jack Delroy, is the. [01:24:11] Speaker A: There you go. Thank you. Thank you. [01:24:13] Speaker B: But I have to believe they didn't see this movie. But also, it's crazy if they didn't. The setup of this movie is almost exactly the same as a movie I talked about watching, like, eight months ago called history of the occult, an argentinian movie that is straight up. It's the final broadcast of this late night show. And you've got a guy who does occult stuff and is sort of this religious leader, and then you've got a skeptic there who's dedicated to calling out his bullshit and unfolds sort of very similarly within the tv show that you're seeing now. This also comes out of the tv show, and you have these people who are investigating like a conspiracy or whatever, like a demonic conspiracy. But the basic through line of this movie is the same, including down to when the psychic in late night with the devil starts bleeding first from his nose, and all the exact same thing happens to the skeptic. There's tons of parallels between these two movies. And then it's just like, where it goes with it is different places. So one is connected to, like I said, a conspiracy. And obviously this is connected with a deal with the devil sort of situation. But the movies are so similar. And I'm very curious, did they really never see this movie? [01:25:48] Speaker A: It's 2020, so I don't know if the development have overlapped. [01:25:52] Speaker B: No, because I read an article about late Night with the devil that they started the idea in 2021 and then it was filmed in 2022. So did they see this? Do they think, like, oh, we can kind of adapt this for an american audience or what? I like where this movie goes better than the other one, but that's like, I was just confused by the other one. Now I want to rewatch it. [01:26:26] Speaker A: Oh, I can't wait to see it again. [01:26:27] Speaker B: Yeah, no, I meant the other one. [01:26:29] Speaker A: History of the occult. [01:26:30] Speaker B: History of the occult. I kind of want to rewatch it now because I was like, oh, this brings it back. I want to watch this movie again. But that one confused me with, like, I was like, what the fuck happened? Whereas this has, like, a much clearer ending to it or what the fuck happened. [01:26:47] Speaker A: Late night with the devil has pre release done a fantastic job of building itself up? The trailers were great. They seem to have just played a really cool stroke with even the length of time between trail and release. Everybody was really fucking pumped to see this film. And our topic notwithstanding, I left that fucking cinema on a cloud of air. I was fucking floating back to my car because I felt it really delivered. It was worth the wait. It was everything I wanted it to be. I fucking really enjoyed this movie. [01:27:22] Speaker B: Yeah, I think it didn't hit as well for me, but still really liked it. I didn't come out with the like, holy shit, that blew my mind again, I think because I'd seen that other movie. So it was similar that I think maybe I was looking for to do something a little different than that movie. But at the same time, like I said, I really liked it. And I think that third act is crazy and fucked up. [01:27:49] Speaker A: And it delivers. [01:27:50] Speaker B: Super delivers. Yeah, very much so. I mean, just descends into absolute chaos. That also, to me, is kind of reminiscent of if you were able to fully engage with the scene in. Nope. Where the chimp goes crazy or whatever. It has that same chaos unfolding feeling. But you see it all in this. [01:28:16] Speaker A: It lays clues as well. It sows seeds. It tells you everything you need to know. I'm sure you guessed where it was going within the. [01:28:24] Speaker B: Oh, yeah, absolutely. I don't know. I don't know if it's hiding it or not, is my question. I mean, that's the thing. It's like I'm never sure whether I've guessed a twist or it wasn't a twist. It was always, yeah, sure, out on the table. [01:28:40] Speaker A: But, yeah, remembered. [01:28:44] Speaker B: I was pretty sure, pretty out the gate, what had happened. As soon as you kind of figure out, like, his wife had died under these circumstances and whatnot, I was like, oh, I see what he did. I see what happened here. But that didn't take anything away from me. Like, if spotting twists ruined movies for me, I would never watch a movie. [01:29:06] Speaker A: Well, that's actually quite apt to bring everybody up to speed. So it came out on letterboxd. Every time the movie throws to a commercial, they play, they show just for a matter of seconds, three or 4 seconds, a title card. We'll be right back. As was the technology of the time, it worked. [01:29:27] Speaker B: Yeah. [01:29:28] Speaker A: And it emerges that those images were created, at least in part, by generative AI image making tools. [01:29:38] Speaker B: Yes. [01:29:38] Speaker A: Now it doesn't seem as though it's had much of an impact on the film's bottom line. I think it was the biggest ever opening for one of the studio. [01:29:47] Speaker B: Yeah, exactly. [01:29:49] Speaker A: Released it. [01:29:50] Speaker B: This is one of those things that probably seems a bigger issue if you're very online than for most people. [01:29:57] Speaker A: Yes, but those who are very online, I think it's fair to say that the response has been a big kind of yuck. [01:30:06] Speaker B: Yes, exactly. That people were really looking forward to this movie and that that kind of took the wind out of their sails, which I understand. It's disappointing. Like you said, my big thing with this is the movie wasn't improved by it being there. It didn't change anything about the story. It didn't need to be there. And so making a stupid choice like that and having that affect a film that's like an independent horror movie that otherwise people are super excited to see, I think that's a very dumb choice for them to make. And it sucks that that ruined this thing for a lot of people. [01:30:55] Speaker A: Okay, that said, yeah, go on. [01:30:59] Speaker B: And I will go into after I'm going to talk first, and I think you as well. Let's talk first about this movie and this, and then we can go into more of like broadly what this is. For me, I think this movie is the wrong target for this ire for a couple of reasons. For one, this movie was made two years ago. We were not having the same conversations about AI two years ago that we are having now. And what I imagine happened when they did this was that these tools came out and people were able to use them and they were like, dude, this is sick, let's play with it. And that was as far as they thought into it. They weren't trying to pull one over on us or anything like that. They thought like, oh, this is a cool tool that no one's ever used before. And let's play with this. And we're going to create these little interstitials or whatever with it. Yeah. And even the fact that one of the things that gave it away was like, the skeleton's messed up fingers and it's like, now we all know AI can't do hands, right? So the fact that that didn't occur to them shows me that it's like, this is before we're really having the conversation. And I don't excuse it or whatever. They had plenty of time to fix it or whatever. But I think when they made it, it was more like, this is a cool tool. And now we talk about this a lot differently. How did those images get into that program that you use to make this? I also think this movie being. I don't even think it was a cutting a corners thing. Right. It was made by the designers that made the rest of the movie. Right. So it's not like they didn't pay someone. The art department was paid the same either way. So, again, that element of it, I can't really fault them for that. I think they just didn't think through the ethics of this whole idea. When it comes to Marvel doing this in the opening credits for something and things like that, or. [01:33:19] Speaker A: It'S a total. [01:33:20] Speaker B: Detective, then we're talking about a systemic issue here and things that we have been talking about this, and anyone who is using this now should be aware they are stealing someone's art in order to make it and stuff like that. And they're making tons of money, all this kind of stuff, reaping the benefits of this and learning that, hey, people talk about it for a second, and then they'll get over it and they're going to watch our show or whatever. That's a problem. I think this movie is just simply the wrong target. I understand. I'm not going to fault anyone for being like, I don't want to watch this now, but for me, it feels like it doesn't deserve the level of acting like this was a malicious act that I think a lot of people are putting on it. [01:34:12] Speaker A: I don't disagree with any of that. Right. And I know I've said this to you offline, the only kind of noise from the audience when I saw this movie came after the first four investor logos, and then they were fifth. [01:34:32] Speaker B: Yes. Everyone laughed in my audience. Did they laugh in yours? [01:34:35] Speaker A: Yes. Fucking five, six, seven fucking investor logos. And what that tells me is that this film had to fucking scrape and hustle and fucking huckster every cent they could from wherever they could to make the product that we saw on screen, right? Unlike that fucking HBO special, true detective, that just fucking shat out a couple of pieces of the worst fucking zero quality control dal e bollocks and used it right there up front on the screen and hoped people wouldn't notice, right? [01:35:17] Speaker B: To me, that's not an excuse, though, right? You can't say, like, oh, my company isn't. Like, my bakery isn't making enough money. So I decided not to pay someone to make the cupcakes anymore, certainly. [01:35:31] Speaker A: But I mean, when you also take into account what you said there about two years ago, the conversation hadn't really evolved at this point. And also art directors worked on those images. They didn't just fucking hit enter on the prompt and right click say it. [01:35:50] Speaker B: Wasn'T David des Malchin. Like, they were like, hey, can you mock something up? [01:35:53] Speaker A: Real nobody, nobody didn't get paid because of that use of AI in late night with the devil. Whereas true detective, I'm sure they could have had people know, collecting a wage for that stuff and maybe didn't. I don't know. [01:36:09] Speaker B: Well, and on top of that, I think fundamentally the issue is not even necessarily like, who didn't get paid for that. Again, it was probably just the art department too, or whatever that did that. But the issue being that sort of AI is inherently unethical because the people whose work was used to generate that were not paid for it. And there's no opting in or out of having your work used for AI, right? These companies that make this stuff are copying other people's work sometimes very like, sorry, you were going to say something? [01:36:51] Speaker A: No. Help me understand this a little more. Right. [01:36:55] Speaker B: Yeah. [01:36:56] Speaker A: So if I'm entering a prompt, scary Skeleton in a kind of a 70s art style, right, the response I'm getting back is that a direct act of plagiarism? [01:37:13] Speaker B: I mean, I think for a lot of people, and to a degree myself, I think it is. Right. Because it's not generating it out of its own knowledge. Right. Like, one of the things about the way we talk about AI is as if it has its own intellect and its own, of course it comes up with this itself, but there's a reason it's like it's machine learning, right? It's learning from people's work and often intentionally mimicking a style that someone else has made. And there's one guy who's kind of famous for talking about this who he does like dungeons and dragons art. [01:37:52] Speaker A: Yeah. [01:37:53] Speaker B: His name is Greg Ritkowski and he talked about this, that he said that people putting his name into these AI generators basically has made it so you can now generate a work of art that looks exactly like one of his dungeons and dragons covers or game know, all that kind of stuff, which inherently affects him. Right. Because if you are making something now for dungeons and dragons or something that is adjacent to that, do you pay Greg Rutkowski to make that? Or do you tell the AI software, make a Greg Rutowski style cover for this? And we see that happen all the time. If you look at the Amazon store, not only are books written by AI and stuff like that, but they have covers that are generated to look like other people's art, right? All of this is trained on stuff that other people made. And again, you can't opt in or out of whether your stuff is put in here. [01:39:08] Speaker A: I'm still feeling out my opinion on this, right. I'm still exploring this, why we're talking about it. Exactly. So let me put a scenario to you, right? Completely fictional scenario, little thought experiment. Come with me on this, if you would. Imagine, for me, if you will, let's say a pianist, right? And this pianist attends college, attends school, learns their craft, travels the world, and builds out their kind of their musical knowledge. And they're a concert pianist, and they compose, of course, but throughout their career, they've been deeply influenced by fucking, I don't know, list or fucking the big concert rack maninoff. I don't know, when composing their work is no doubt inescapably, inextricably imbued with the flavor of those artists in the past that she has learned and trained from, and worked from and been influenced by. Now, when she writes, their work is present in hers or theirs. But is she crediting them individually? No. Is she paying them individually? No. Surely no. Art exists in a vacuum. Everything is imbued with the flavor of what's come before it. And I know that's not a like for like comparison, but the concepts are similar. Surely everything I make is by nature influenced by what's come before it. [01:40:33] Speaker B: Yeah, I think that's a perfectly valid question. And influence, of course, is a part of the artistic process. Right? But I would say it's more like if you are doing something in AI, it's more like if you traced someone's drawing, like traced a bunch of people's work. And, okay, now it's assembled into a new picture because I traced a little bit from this person, and I traced a little bit from this person, but I traced it all. None of this I created. I just took a bunch of people's stuff and I traced it. And now I tell you that I have invented this, that this is brand new art, and no one is responsible for this but me. No, you traced something. And certainly, yeah, you could get paid for that or whatever, but it would be sleazy to just sell stuff as your own. And that's a poor example, I suppose. But the idea to me is that nothing is being created from the brain of an AI, right? [01:41:42] Speaker A: Yeah. That I get. [01:41:44] Speaker B: Obviously, I work in a creative industry, right? And I'm influenced by people, but I'm not taking their stuff and simply writing it back down and going, I made this right. That's not how that works. Certainly if I is anyone claiming that. [01:42:00] Speaker A: AI is doing that, though? Because that would be an issue, of course. But I don't think anyone is saying that AI is making something completely new. [01:42:07] Speaker B: I think that's no, but it is how you acknowledge your source, right? So if I write something and I use something from somebody else, I have to write that down. I can't just say, oh, I did this, right. I have to at least credit the person for having given me that thought. [01:42:29] Speaker A: I'm not sure, particularly in the case of late night with the devil. I don't think that's what they're doing. They're not kind of quoting works, but. [01:42:39] Speaker B: They are inherently because AI didn't invent that. That came from things people had already made and they just took those things and turned. It generated something from those people's art. The issue here is, as you and I both talked about, as I keep saying, people can't opt in or out of that, right? If it was that, people could be like here, if you use canva, right, or you use Adobe Express or something like that, there's a bunch of stuff in there that is art from other people that you can use because they paid for it, right? Someone got paid for the stuff that you put into your flyer, for your event or whatever you're making. Someone got paid for you to have that stuff and put it on there. If AI is going to use people's stuff, then it needs to be like that. It needs to be know. If you're going to use my art, fine, let me license it to you. But you can't simply drag through Google images and take all of my shit. [01:43:55] Speaker A: But I don't think that's what it's doing, and I don't know if it's the same. [01:44:00] Speaker B: Well, and here's the thing that I was going to say. What it ultimately comes down to after all of this, and this may be because art is not your field or whatever, that it's like the ownership people have over the stuff they create. Would you consider yourself an artist? I don't know. [01:44:17] Speaker A: No, certainly not. But am I precluded from an opinion then? [01:44:20] Speaker B: No, I wasn't saying your opinion is not valid. I'm saying you may not be thinking about it like someone who is an artist. And those people tend to be very protective over the stuff that they have honed over years to create a style and something that is truly theirs. And for then anyone to just type their name into something and be able to make their art is troubling. On top of that, like I said, with the dungeons and dragons guy or with my own job, what ends up happening as a result of this is that when I look for jobs and it's content writing things like that, the jobs now, as opposed to what they were a year ago are, AI will write this and we will pay you minimum wage to edit it and make sure that it makes sense. And that's what's happening with artists here is not only is their work take the dungeons and dragons guy, not only is that being filtered through AI without his consent, without him opting in and getting any form of royalty for that, it's then being used so that people can say, I don't need to pay you anymore, or I can pay you less to fix it up. [01:45:37] Speaker A: So a couple of things, I absolutely get where you're coming from. I get the angle. So a couple of things. Firstly, AI is coming from my job as well, right? Yeah. [01:45:47] Speaker B: Right. Like we talked about that both of us are, and most people are in places where AI can easily, that isn't. [01:45:55] Speaker A: Limited to the creative field at all. So in your example with the dungeons and dragons guy, right, replace AI with a human artist who is heavily influenced by his work and isn't using his name, but is heavily influenced by his work. If I'm not verbatim copying and pasting or tracing in your words, if I'm not copying his work, but I'm just heavily, heavily influenced by it. [01:46:26] Speaker B: Because that's a different thing. You're not stealing his work and then printing it back. That's what AI. Nor is AI AI. Yes, it is. It is being trained on his work. [01:46:37] Speaker A: And creating an back of a lot of other artists. [01:46:41] Speaker B: Exactly. No, that's the thing is you can type in his name and it will use the generates things from his covers that he has created. Right. [01:46:50] Speaker A: Okay. [01:46:51] Speaker B: And as such, now you don't have to pay him or any artist to do that, but you can make money off of creating something that he would otherwise someone will be paying him to do. Right. And so the thing here for people who work in these industries, and again, like you said, AI is coming for all of our jobs. This is why we have to talk about this now, to talk about how do we circumvent this and how do we make it so AI is a tool and doesn't replace us, and we become the tool to just fix what AI did. And that's what right now it's basically you can snag other people's art for free and avoid having to pay someone. But they did it. They're the ones who made it. And the AI just spat it back at you, changed a couple of things, couldn't figure out how hands were supposed to work, but all it did was steal from the body of work that a person created and spit it back out. And that is different than someone being influenced by someone and spending all this time to hone a craft. And then it's just two different artists. [01:48:03] Speaker A: Of course. Listen, it isn't for comparison, I know this, right? [01:48:08] Speaker B: But the point being there's a difference between artists having similar styles and someone going, and basically it's like if I took someone's book cover and put it on my instagram was like, I made this. Or like if I took someone's book cover and then I changed the eye color on everybody and then said I made this, that's what AI is doing is it's taking people's work, making a mistake here and there and going, tada, I have created this. [01:48:39] Speaker A: Yeah, I mean, look, I see the threat, I really do. And I lean closer to your way of thinking. I'm certainly not saying this is dandy, but it's also worth fucking. It's complicated and it's also fucking inevitable. I mean, if you're going to, well, that's boycott every film using AI, you're not going to be seeing many films. I mean, OpenAI this weekend last were all over know the press meeting with studios whoring Sora around various production companies. [01:49:13] Speaker B: And it's about how it's right, like because it is inevitable. And the thing is, there's a difference between using it as like a guiding tool, using it like, oh, I have an idea but I'm not sure how I want this to look or something. And then using it for inspiration. And people are still trying to figure out how do we make this a tool. And also if we are going to use it the way it has been used, then how do we make that fair? And I think what's important and what people are asking for is that we don't just go, oh, well, it's an inevitable rollover then, because that's the danger and that's why people push back against it is to like, okay, if that's the case, then we're all just fucked. It's not like we'd live in places with universal basic income or anything like that. If we could all just do art for the fun of it. That is sure, no harm, no foul. Let AI do its thing and the rest of us will live and get paid for living and just do art because it's for the love of the game. But as long as it's a job, if we simply say, well, fuck it, you're just not going to be able to see movies anymore if you're going to be that principled. You're condoning people, of course, not getting paid. We have to have the conversation to decide how to do this ethically, instead of being like, meh, oh, well. [01:50:39] Speaker A: It. [01:50:39] Speaker B: Doesn'T have to be like this. Let's license stuff. Like I said, do it like canva. Let people opt in or out from being a part of this. Is that going to be expensive for these companies? Yeah, fuck it should be for me. [01:50:54] Speaker A: The danger that screams at me is of AI being used as a loophole, of it being used as shorthand for, well, we want this. We want this, that this guy does so well, but we're not going to fucking pay that guy for it. We'll just get AI to fucking knock us up a past each and use that. [01:51:13] Speaker B: Exactly. [01:51:14] Speaker A: And we've generated it way. That is bullshit. That is absolute bullshit. [01:51:19] Speaker B: Right. [01:51:21] Speaker A: I still think I'm vague on legally, yes, legally it's clear, because you aren't copying work, you're not spitting out an exact copy of someone's work. So it does dodge plagiarism, but it doesn't. [01:51:40] Speaker B: Plagiarism isn't like that. See, because that's the thing. We're having a conversation about plagiarism right now after H bomber guy's video about. [01:51:47] Speaker A: Sure, sure. [01:51:49] Speaker B: And even if, as an academic, if I write something and the idea came from somebody else, even if I didn't use their words, it is plagiarism. If I don't say according to this person, even if it's not a quote when I write, I need to acknowledge, this wasn't my idea, this was somebody else's idea. Otherwise I have plagiarized. That will get me in trouble if I don't do that. [01:52:21] Speaker A: Right, we might be veering, but what? So two people can't have the same idea independently of one another? [01:52:26] Speaker B: You can, sure. But if it's not, then you need to attribute that, especially if it's like, something that is specifically someone's concept or something like that. If I say the sky is blue, I don't need to cite according to so and so, but if I have a deep philosophical idea or something that someone else has hashed out before me and I read that I need to write that now if I accidentally do it and someone goes, hey, this is so and so's idea, that's a different thing. But if I knowingly do that, that is plagiarism. You can't take someone's ideas. Ideas are intellectual property. [01:53:13] Speaker A: No argument at all. But I think it happens all, it's claimed. It happened all the time. In comedy, for example. I didn't steal your joke. I thought of it at the same time. [01:53:24] Speaker B: Yeah, we all have similar ideas. Sure. That's not what AI is doing. It's not having a similar, oh certainly. [01:53:29] Speaker A: Yeah, we'veered a little bit. I'm not sure I, why shouldn't it. [01:53:37] Speaker B: Be held to the same standard I am? Like if I, a real life human, would get in trouble for doing what it's doing, why does it get to do it? [01:53:48] Speaker A: You're telling me to use late night with the devil as an example. You're saying you would get in trouble? [01:53:53] Speaker B: I've already said I don't think that that is the same, but yeah, if I were like an artist. Yes, absolutely. [01:53:58] Speaker A: So for drawing a spooky skeleton in the same manner that somebody else before you had drawn a spooky skeleton, you shouldn't get in trouble because spooky skeletons are broad. [01:54:08] Speaker B: But when people make like if someone were to make the exact same art piece as someone else, of course they. [01:54:15] Speaker A: Looked at that art, of course. [01:54:17] Speaker B: And they went, yeah, I'm going to make that. And then I created this. Yeah, people would rightfully be like, you stole that. That's somebody else's thing. Which is exactly what's happening. It's just a machine doing it and it's compositing many people's stolen art, but it is exactly what it's doing. [01:54:40] Speaker A: Again, not a like for like example. But what about tribute acts and covers bands? [01:54:47] Speaker B: Have you ever seen a tribute act that's like, oh, this isn't, I'm a not Britney Spears cover band, but I do all Britney Spears songs. [01:54:55] Speaker A: Yes. [01:54:56] Speaker B: What? They pretend they're not doing Britney Spears songs. They're like, this was not by Britney Spears. I wrote this. [01:55:01] Speaker A: Yeah, but, and again, to use late night with the devil as an example isn't claiming to have been the first person to have come up with that image. [01:55:08] Speaker B: It's not about the claim. The thing is that the person who did come up with that image, the people who did come up with that image, they did not give consent for that, nor were they compensated for their art to be used to create that image. [01:55:24] Speaker A: But no one person was the first person, or can be traced to be the first person to have ever drawn spooky skeleton. [01:55:30] Speaker B: But there's no arguing that this did not come from other people's art. It doesn't have to. [01:55:37] Speaker A: There's also no claims. Nobody claims that it did. [01:55:40] Speaker B: Right. The issue is not the claim. That's the thing. It's not about it claiming it created it on its own. The issue is about it created it from non consenting artists who were not compensated for the thing. And that thus from. If we accept that as being fine, this then comes for people's actual jobs. [01:56:07] Speaker A: Basically, I'm on board with. [01:56:09] Speaker B: Right. We're normalizing the idea that you can take somebody else's work, spit it out of a machine without their consent, and then not have to pay someone to actually do that job. [01:56:24] Speaker A: I'm just circling back now to my initial kind of scenario about if my work is influenced by others who've come before me, do I have to individually recognize and recompense every single one of them? [01:56:37] Speaker B: No, but there is a difference between being influenced by something and actively copying it. And we see that with copyright law, too. Take the Hare Krishna song, my sweet lord. Right? He had been influenced subconsciously by. He's so fine by the chiffons. Right? He's so fine that one. And his thing is my sweet lord. And so he was taken to court and lost over that. And he himself was like, I did not even realize that I had done that. Right. But if you take somebody else's art, whether you meant to or not, you're not allowed to do that. [01:57:32] Speaker A: I'm not convinced that that's what AI does, copy and reproduce verbatim previous works. [01:57:39] Speaker B: But it's not. That wouldn't be. Yeah, that's not what it's doing. But it can't do. [01:57:44] Speaker A: But all of your examples. I can't repeat a song note for note. Of course I can't. [01:57:49] Speaker B: I'm just trying to. Like, that isn't what AI is doing. The reason that there's no analog for this is because humans can't do what AI is doing. There's no direct analog because we can't upload people's music into our heads and then repurpose it into different kinds of things or whatever via theft or whatever. But they can. They can simply take data that people have used, they can take music, they can take art, things like that, and simply put it into a computer. And if they did not do that, here's my point. If we removed the pool of stolen art from them. It couldn't create it anymore. It would be impossible for the AI to generate this stuff without the art that it took from other people. If it could do that without it, fine, cool. Whatever. But the point is that it inherently needs to steal it from other people or to pay for it, which should be the case, right? Like, let people opt in single and. [01:59:08] Speaker A: Pay work that does not draw from that which came before. [01:59:11] Speaker B: That's not what I'm saying. [01:59:13] Speaker A: You are. [01:59:13] Speaker B: I've said over and over again, that's not how it works. [01:59:16] Speaker A: It feels that you are. Everything that I create has to be mine and mine alone. [01:59:22] Speaker B: No, absolutely not. I've not said that once. But there is a difference between spending your life honing a skill and listening to things and being influenced by it, because that is what the human experience is, right? Every word that comes out of our mouth is coming out of our mouth because we learned it from somewhere else, as opposed to mining a whole bunch of stuff and simply regurgitating that in a slightly changed form. We can't do that as humans. It's impossible for us to simply do that. And if we do, like I said, if I were to take someone else's idea and present it as my own, I'm not allowed to do that. That's not a thing that we can, because that's theft. Even if I have rephrased it. And the words are nothing like the words the person used before. If I'm taking their idea, I have to credit them with that idea. Even if that's what I'm talking about here. [02:00:27] Speaker A: Even if it isn't a new idea, even if it's something that's pretty universal to all of. [02:00:35] Speaker B: No, that's not what I'm saying. [02:00:38] Speaker A: So you can't draw a flower because somebody else has drawn a flower? [02:00:41] Speaker B: No, that's not what I'm saying. The point is, okay, all of us can sit down and take an art class where we look at the same still life and draw that thing or whatever. It's not that people can't have. [02:00:58] Speaker A: And even though the mechanism is entirely different with AI, I think the principle holds. It's learned. Not learned, no. It's created a kind of a collage, a pastiche of work that's come before it and spat out a different version of that work. And I don't think that's the same as lifting verbatim and thefting the way that you're saying it. And I don't necessarily have an opposing opinion to you. I'm exploring it. [02:01:27] Speaker B: Yeah, I mean, I think it's just the thing I keep saying here is that would be okay, right? The issue is not that we can't use that as a tool. The problem is that you are taking people's real work, not ideas, not like, I saw this once and it reminded me of something, so I came up with this. You are taking actual work that people have made in order to do that. And if you took that away, it wouldn't be able to do it, and it has to steal that work, right? Like, it can't just experience the world and be influenced by it. It has to take actual existing things and feed it back to you. It cannot come up with a unique idea at all. And we don't accept that with people. You can't simply, as a human, you can't simply make stuff that is exactly the same as someone else and pass it off as your own. [02:02:33] Speaker A: I'm sorry if you think it's semantics, but that isn't what AI is doing. It isn't creating a work that it is exactly the same as somebody else. [02:02:40] Speaker B: I know, and I think this is the issue, is that you think it has to be an exact copy. And I'm saying it doesn't have to do that. The problem is that it took from. [02:02:48] Speaker A: People, the composers my pianist learned from, did actual work to write their music. Everything is a work, and we learn from everything else. [02:02:57] Speaker B: But am I then stealing it? I think, like I said, the problem is that humans can't do the same thing as a computer. We can't simply scrape data and regurgitate it. We have to have a lifetime of experiences in order to do these things. And so it's like, it's very difficult to come up with an analog to explain why it doesn't have to be the same thing for an, like, you see this with Adam Ellis, for example, that there are a lot of people who just copy his style to gain followers because people think it's know. And so they make comics that look exactly like Adam Ellis comics, and thus they're able to play off of his fan base in order to then get their own fan base, and people subscribe to them. They're not making original art. They're just going, I can make a ton of money off of tricking people into thinking that this is his art because it looks exactly like his. And I don't have to credit him. I don't have to do anything to acknowledge that I am simply stealing his work. And when people know that here, in this case, there's never going to be a direct analog because humans aren't computers. I think that's what you have to wrap your head around is like, of course I'm never going to be able to give you an example that's the same, because I can never go through millions of things on Google and simply feed them back. That's not how humans work. So there's never going to be a. [02:04:25] Speaker A: Direct analog to this somebody intentionally and without any pretense to any kind of act of independent creation, taking somebody else's style for financial gain, right? Yes, but again, that isn't what happened in late night with the devil. Nobody claims. [02:04:43] Speaker B: Again, I'm not talking about late Night with the devil, but again, yes they are. They are implicitly saying, we made this. When you watch a movie you assume. [02:04:54] Speaker A: They made, but they haven't a piece of work. They haven't verbated, they have a single piece of work. [02:05:00] Speaker B: The AI did that for them, right? AI made it from sure, it's not one person's work, but it is only from scraping work that already exists. [02:05:11] Speaker A: And what is influence if not scraping the work of the past? [02:05:18] Speaker B: I don't know how to get. Maybe someone else can explain this better, but it's very different, especially to an artist. It's an entirely different process. And ultimately, here's the point, right? Whatever you believe about that, I should be able to choose whether I am teaching the machine to use my art or not. It's fine if this is a thing that people want to do, and you don't have to tell me you did it, you don't have to credit people or whatever, but people should be able to say, I do or don't want you to be able to take my work and recreate it. And that, I think is key here is that people's stuff is being taken again, the machine could not do this. It could not make those dungeons and dragons covers without taking that. It would not be able to come up with those ideas if it didn't steal his actual work to know what his stuff looked like. [02:06:21] Speaker A: So as an artist, then you're saying I should be allowed to release my work into the public domain, yet also retain full control over who sees it? [02:06:30] Speaker B: And that's what art is, right? Like you're not allowed to steal it off the wall of a museum, right? [02:06:37] Speaker A: I don't think you can have your cake and eat it and put something out into the world, yet remain completely 100% in control of who consumes. [02:06:46] Speaker B: That's a terrible thought, though. But say what's happening on Amazon right now is basically there are a ton of authors that are not real on Amazon that are taking the content of other books created on Amazon and just turning that into whatever aggregate thing and selling that as their work. Those people should get paid for the fact that it could not make a copy of their books without reading their book and spitting it back out again. That should be a choice that the author has. And if we say, nah, once you've released it in the world, people can take it and use it for this. No one's going to pay an author to write a book. No one is going to pay someone to put a cover on a book. Things like that. And there are people who are very cavalier about like, no, I still think people will want the humanity of art. They can tell the difference where, look at what I sent you earlier today. A thing on Facebook. And even after I corrected this woman that this was AI generated, she and everyone else ignored it and were like, amazing. This is so, you know, it was a picture of a girl with this glass bird that allegedly she had made, and this girl had extra fingers and all kinds of things like that. It was clearly AI. But people don't buy it. The idea that this is safe because the general public will know the difference is not true. They will buy this shit and they will not recognize. [02:08:28] Speaker A: Oh, completely. [02:08:30] Speaker B: I think we have similar ideas about it, but I think the sticking point here is the idea that people should be compensated if their work is going to be scraped into the machine, because it's not the same as influence. [02:08:47] Speaker A: Yeah. And my kind of rebuttal to that is have an original thought now gone. You can't. There isn't such a thing as an original thought. [02:08:55] Speaker B: That's a terrible precedent, though. Like, okay, then nobody should ever get paid for anything and we should all live in poverty. No, of course there's no. [02:09:04] Speaker A: What point have I said that? I've never said that. [02:09:09] Speaker B: If you justify it as, oh, nothing's original. So fine, if I take this and don't compensate you for it, that doesn't fly in other areas. [02:09:20] Speaker A: But the word take is absolute. That implies a verbatim lift and shift and a refusal to accredit the original. [02:09:29] Speaker B: Which, I mean, they don't. But they do take, of course, but. [02:09:34] Speaker A: Is the act of creating in itself taking from those who've come before you. It's the difference between theft and influence that I'm hung up on. I don't believe that it's theft to use somebody else's ideas in creating something of your own, even if, and it's what you've created. [02:09:51] Speaker B: But I think there is a difference. And we can circle and circle and circle on this, but the point being that humans are not able to, without putting any work into it or anything like that, scrape a huge database of stuff and then be like, this is an influence, and put it out. They have to experience these things. They have to learn for themselves. They have to teach themselves a skill. And there's no way for them to emulate this stuff without these kinds of tools. And if you are using those, just like if you're using clipart, if you're using canva, if you're using Adobe, there's an expectation that you will not just scrape stuff from somebody else without compensating them, even if it is a rectangle, right? Like, we've all seen a rectangle. Nobody owns a rectangle, but if you're going to use one you didn't make in adobe, someone got paid to make that rectangle to put on there for you to use. This is how we do these kinds of digital art and create stuff. And the idea that people are not entitled to be paid because, oh, it's influence, we understand, okay, there's boundaries on influence. [02:11:15] Speaker A: Getting closer to your point of view here. So it isn't the fact that I've drawn a rectangle, it's that I've stolen somebody else's picture of a rectangle. [02:11:22] Speaker B: Right, exactly. We all have seen a flower, we've seen a dog or whatever, and nobody owns the idea of those kinds of things. But if you take the one that. [02:11:35] Speaker A: Somebody else made, I'm getting close, okay? [02:11:40] Speaker B: And so I think that's ultimately what's key here, is that if people have made things, they are entitled to be compensated for someone else using that. It doesn't have to be the exact same thing, but you wouldn't have been able to make it without that artist's work. And I think that's really what the precedent is about here with AI, is that we have to be able to use this in a way that is ethical and fair and doesn't simply take people's work and say, and now we don't need those people anymore. And I think you agree with me on that point, even if it's not necessarily that impossible. [02:12:18] Speaker A: Disagree and add one more thing to the list of ways in which we're fucked. [02:12:25] Speaker B: Right? But I don't want us to be. And I think that's the thing when it comes down to why I say I don't fault people who are drawing a line in the sand around late night with the devil because they're worried about the slippery slope, right? Like if we say, well, we forgive this movie because it's an independent movie that otherwise does great things, or because it doesn't add anything really. And because it's generic, it's just a few pictures of a skeleton or an owl or things like that, who cares? What they're looking at is like, what does this mean systemically? What are we saying about how we pay for art whose art is used as influence? Things like that. Can things be mine anymore? Does copyright mean anything if a machine can take it and it doesn't have to worry about that anymore? We want to create a world that we aren't fucked and that we get around this problem and say, sure, use these tools. This is incredible that we can make this. The problem isn't that the technology exists. It's that people want to use it to replace the humans while using their work in order to do it. And that is the thing that we need to actually think really hard about and make IP laws around that make it so that we just don't create more impoverished classes as soon as all of these AI things take our jobs. [02:13:59] Speaker A: And if there's one thing that humanity has proven itself good at, it's getting ahead of technology and really taking responsibility for the things that we've come up with for use in the greater good. [02:14:12] Speaker B: This is what with the SAG contract, they didn't totally stick the landing on this, but this was one of the things that was central to that was actors have to have control over their likeness. And a big fear is that actors will not have control. They'll be able to be AI generated later because of some contract they signed. Or that people breaking into the industry will be coerced into signing away their likeness to AI, or otherwise they won't be able to break into the business. And so that contract, what they did negotiate, was trying to address before it gets out of hand. Like, just because you own my likeness for this movie and it's publicity things and stuff, doesn't mean you can take me and use me in something else later on. [02:15:00] Speaker A: I think what we're trying with the devil has done is got itself a place in the history books as the movie. That kind of kick started this conversation in the wider kind of social space. And what I'd also love to do is to maybe set a little calendar reminder for us to check in on this a year from now. [02:15:16] Speaker B: Because, yeah, definitely have we done anything about it, or is everything going to be made by AI next year and neither of us will have jobs? [02:15:29] Speaker A: Yeah, that's true. [02:15:32] Speaker B: That is the question. [02:15:33] Speaker A: All right, let's wrap it up. That was fun. [02:15:36] Speaker B: Indeed. Let us know your thoughts, because it's a hot button issue. If you have a better way of phrasing what I was trying to explain to mark about this, please do let me know. But also, if you disagree, tell, tell us, what are your thoughts on this? Are you boycotting late night with the devil? Are you going to see it? What's your take? Are you an artist? Are you scared? Are you like, nah, no big deal. Let us know. [02:16:03] Speaker A: Okay. We'll see you next week, folks. Please do stay spooky, won't you? Bye.