AI in Pop Culture

Regan Burkart, Editor

Lately, artificial intelligence can be found more now in pop culture than ever before. Recent boosts in AI related online content can be found as a result of many things, such as widespread business improvement interest by many companies in hopes of using this newly developed technology. Even something just as simple as the interest and amazement of general public interest plays a large factor in the recent growth of AI popularity. Let’s take a look at a few ways that AI has made it into pop culture as of late. 

Starting back in February, Snapchat made available it’s new artificial intelligence bot, @MyAI, but only to it’s Snapchat+ users. Two months later on April 19th 2023, Snapchat made this revolutionary technology free for anyone and everyone on the app to use. Users can interact and talk with the bot, ask questions, and play games with it too. Users can even customize the bot’s bitmoji to look however the user pleases. “I think it’s so funny and it’s so fun to talk to and honestly I love it so much, it’s a little creepy but I love it,” Kayla Barker said. 

Another way that AI has made it’s way into the mainstream line of online content is through AI generated photos and videos. Whether it was an AI generated video of all the Harry Potter characters as Balenciaga models, or the Pope walking down the street in a Balenciaga puffer coat, I’m sure we’ve all run into at least one of these viral content creations at the hands of an AI machine. Some AI is so realistic that you can’t tell the difference, and it takes a trip to the comments section to set the record straight. As cool as this is, it could be used in a very dangerous manner if someone with the wrong intentions got a hold of an overly realistic AI program. “I think that AI is a good product to use for certain situations, but I think also it could be also very dangerous because of how it’s rapidly growing, and people not actually knowing the effects of it,” Deputy Ish Weekes said.

Although AI is cool and opens many doors for people, humanity will have to be careful with how we handle it and what we will do with AI next.