Ep. 12: Boys Will Be Bots

Boys will be boys? With the use of AI, now boys may become bots. Hold onto your virtual hats, because we're diving into AI and how it can become a nightmare when used against women. Join us as we unpack how AI is reshaping the landscape with manipulated videos and pictures. Spoiler alert: it’s not all glitter and girl power. Tune in as we turn up the heat on the gendered use of AI, deepfakes, and manipulation. This is an important one!

What is We Are More: Sisters Talk Faith & Feminism?

We are Alyssa and Bri, two sisters who believe God wants more for women than we've been taught. Join us as we dive into the intersection of faith and feminism, learning together as we go.

Welcome to the We Are More podcast.

My name is Alyssa.

And my name is Bri.

We are two sisters passionate about all things faith and feminism.

We believe that Jesus trusted, respected, and encouraged women to teach and preach His

word.

And apparently that's controversial.

It's a bit comfy.

Hello.

Hello.

It is hot.

It is hot.

It has been in the 90s in Michigan this week.

This will be in your past.

Yeah.

Have you survived?

Have we?

We may not.

Future selves.

Are you alive?

Also make better life choices.

Yeah.

Move away.

Where?

Where's colder than this, Brie?

I don't know.

You guys want to move to Florida.

Yeah, but at least you're in Florida.

Like you have a pool and an ocean and Disney.

Here it's just hot and miserable.

The Michigan people are going to come for us.

Pure Michigan.

Pure Michigan.

Thanks, Tim Allen.

Yeah.

You really put us on the map there.

Also all of the lakes that we live in between.

I don't recall those.

Where are we?

But we are sitting in here.

This is how committed we are to you guys.

We're sitting in this room with no fans going.

We don't have air conditioning in the house.

We have those sad cooling towels that you get at Disney around our necks.

Don't throw us.

Don't out us.

I'm just saying, we're very committed to our craft.

We might as well be recording outside.

I mean really, except for the birds would kill the point of the no fans.

Because you got pooped on today.

I did, a bird pooped on me today.

And not like a gray poopon, like an actual poopon.

What?

I just recently watched that commercial.

They have a commercial?

Yeah, have you seen it?

They're like, I poop on my barbecue.

I poop on my chicken.

Isn't that one of the Super Bowl commercials?

It may have been.

I think it's old.

I feel like that's striking a memory.

Anyway.

I could sing another song related to the sound of music.

Oh god.

But I won't.

Good, because that's a terrible song.

It is terrible.

And I'm really hot.

Yeah.

It's raw.

In both ways.

So in this mini episode, this is our third mini episode, right?

Yes.

So we did one on Harrison Butkern's Stupid Speech.

Butkern.

You made that joke every time.

We had one come out a couple weeks ago on Bridgerton, which was a super fun one to record.

That was super fun.

Yeah.

We got some really good quotes out of that one.

We did.

And today we're going to be talking a little bit about AI and its impact on women.

AI!

AI is freaking everywhere.

It's in my workplace now.

We're using it for monitoring patients.

It's crazy.

And I'm in the marketing, editing sphere, and it's just everywhere.

You can't get away from it.

We use it to edit the stinking podcast.

Sometimes is it my voice or is it AI's voice?

You'll never know.

If it says something stupid, it's free!

So it's me all the time.

Yeah, it's pretty much always you.

I haven't been able to figure that feature out.

We use an editing software that has the option, if we talk over each other to fix it with

AI or if we mispronounce a word or whatever, although we've confused it a lot.

Caffele, you think it knows how to say that?

No, it's not biblical.

This is not a biblical editing software.

They'll come out with that eventually.

Maybe we will.

Maybe.

But we will not pronounce it.

We'll find somebody else.

Anyway, so we've seen that explode in, I mean, everywhere.

You can't get away from AI, I know.

And so we wanted to talk a little bit about that because Brie saw this crazy TikTok video

and sent it to me the other day.

I got swindled.

You did?

I just got swindled by AI.

There was, okay, I'm addicted to TikTok.

I will confess.

I spend many hours a day on the tics and the tocs.

And I saw this video come through that was Kim Kardashian and she was announcing that

she was transitioning.

She was going to be Mr. Kim Kardashian.

Yeah, transgender, right?

And I was like, holy cow.

And they had these images of her essentially in drag, which I don't know if that's the

appropriate term or not.

So I sent it to you.

But it wasn't true.

It was all AI.

They're able to AI people's faces, manipulate their voices, make it look like it's a

legit video.

It looked like an interview and it was based off of an interview that she did, but that

is not what she said.

Yeah, I think I looked into it and it was like an interview where she said she was transitioning

into acting.

What's yay for her?

I mean, no, the world does not need that.

But like, instead, they made it say that she was transitioning into a man.

And the only way that I caught on to it at all is I was reading through the comments

and people were like, I can't find this anywhere else.

Why can't I find this interview?

And then somebody did find the interview and posted what it actually said.

Leave it to people on the internet.

They are like little detectives out there.

Yeah, it's crazy to me.

And in this particular case, yes, you have people that can kind of seek it out and whatever,

because she's famous enough that if you fake something, there's enough of a record that

people can go back.

But how can something like this where you can edit a voice, you can edit a picture,

you can edit a video affect someone who doesn't have the resources to prove that it's not

true?

Right.

Well, there's a term for it now.

It's called deep fakes.

We looked it up.

It's essentially what we're describing right now.

Using AI to manipulate videos, photos, voices to do or say whatever you want.

And it's super dangerous, not just to women, but we'll be talking about it relating to

women.

Because that's what we do.

I am a woman.

Hear me?

Sigh.

Well, that's going on TikTok.

Yeah, I've lost my train of thought now.

It's so hot.

Have you seen that video of Taylor Swift?

Like she was performing Brazil or somewhere like extremely hot.

And in between songs, she's just like gasping for breath and all of a sudden the music hits

and she just snaps back into it.

I don't know how she does that.

I don't know, because I would pass away.

I am not built for heat.

No.

When I go and buy makeup, I buy the lightest shade of foundation they make.

I was not built for the sun.

You are translucent.

I am.

I was born for the moon.

You're a citizen of the moon.

Now we've gone weird.

That's from Parks and Recreation.

Anyway, back on topic.

So the issue, honestly, when we were looking up what should we talk about for this podcast,

the reason that this topic came up was because I was thinking about AI, deal with AI every

day at work.

And I looked up, all I did was how does AI affect women?

And I was thinking not about this necessarily, but about like in the workspace, because you

see a lot of women in marketing, things like that, that it would kind of displace workers.

But to think that this is going to disproportionately affect women in being manipulated with pictures

and videos.

They say it's a new form of sexual harassment or assault against women or men too.

Absolutely.

Yeah, it can, I mean, for sure be used against men.

I think we just see it more likely as happening to women because pictures, videos, things

like that have already been so disproportionately used against women.

I was listening to a podcast before we started recording this that said that that happened

to Taylor Swift.

Actually, a bunch of AI generated nudes came out of her.

Yeah, like super explicit, like nasty stuff.

And if that's happening to Taylor Swift, think about what's happening to kids in school,

to minors, to like all kinds of stuff.

It's super disturbing.

Well, and I mean, you think what can that be used against?

All they have to get is a picture of your face.

And how many pictures of our faces are out there?

Well, you have to scan your face every time to open your phone.

And we post things on social media because you think, well, it's Facebook and I've got

it all locked down.

Yeah, it's private.

Right.

So you have your profile pictures up there, your cover photos up there.

Do you really know every friend that you have?

I have a lot in purgatory.

You do.

Several old men in purgatory, actually.

Yeah.

Well, think of why they've friended you.

Because I'm beautiful.

Yeah, that's it.

But it's just, it's one of those things that is so scary about the world today.

How do you even protect yourself from it?

You can't be totally not online at all.

That's not really an option in today's world.

Everything's online.

You have to have a Google account to walk into Myer.

Which is a store by us, by the way.

I know, that always throws me off that other people don't know what Myer is.

A grocery.

A grocery.

I wish that we had some big, like there was a big message here of like, here's how to

protect yourself from the use of AI.

I don't know that that's a thing yet.

I don't think it is.

I think AI is so like still experimental and people are still figuring it out.

But people need to be really wary of it, I would say.

And for the women out there, as sad as it is, and as much as this is always the advice,

you have to keep your guard up.

You have to be even more careful.

And that shouldn't be what it is.

No.

You shouldn't be worried that the kid next door to you is going to sneak a creepy picture

of you and throw it all over the internet.

Well one of the things I wanted to talk about too, of how pictures are generally used against

women.

So an example of this even before AI.

So again, this is even bigger of a problem with AI, but it's not a new problem because

of AI.

I'm not sure if you guys have heard this story, but there was a woman, her name was Micah Miller,

and she...

She unalived herself.

Yeah.

She unalived herself, unfortunately, recently.

A few months ago.

And her story goes that she was married to this pastor, and he was incredibly abusive.

She was very vocal about him being abusive as she was trying to leave.

Other people were aware of the situation, and she had told people close to her that

if she ever died, it was him.

He did it.

Now part of the abuse from him was that he had convinced her to send nude pictures, and

I don't know the nature of the nude pictures, but they were married.

There's nothing inherently wrong with that, except that he had forced her to send them.

It wasn't like she wanted to, and that was just part of their relationship.

He had forced that out of her, and then he used those pictures to blackmail her.

That's horrible.

Yeah.

Now the rest of the story, I would highly recommend looking it up.

It's very important.

It's a very important story, I think, because as Brie said, I don't know how to say that

without it being...

That's what they say on TikTok, because if you say anything, they take it down.

And it was ruled that that's what happened.

Now you can decide for yourself whether you think that's actually what happened or not.

A lot of people do not.

A lot of people think her husband was at fault, but either way, from the abuse...

I think regardless, he was at fault.

She was driven.

Even if he didn't do it, he drove her to it with a lot of manipulation, a lot of hatefulness.

And this man was a pastor.

It doesn't get more disgusting than that.

And to look at that situation and know that was without the use of AI.

That was just manipulation.

And that was a man who was married to this woman, supposed to love her, supposed to care

for her, and he pulled this crap.

So what happens now?

Now that the whole avenue is open?

One of the podcasts...

I don't know that this necessarily relates to what we're talking about, but one of the

podcasts was also saying that it's not just making images of people or exploiting them

in that way.

It's also historical.

So you can take voices of old presidents, you can take voices of people of importance,

you know, and make them say what you want them to say.

So there's a video going around of Nixon's voice essentially saying that the moon landing

never happened, but it was all AI generated.

But people don't know that.

And unless you do some serious digging, you think, well, I found my evidence.

But how much more can you do with anything else?

One of the podcasts that I was listening to was saying so many people are arguing that

like, well, it's not as offensive because these AI images of women that they're stealing

or creating aren't real.

But they are real in very real ways.

They are really going to affect someone.

And it's if you really want a picture of someone that's just not real, don't use someone's

face.

Why do you need her face in there?

If you're just computer generating something that doesn't affect her in any way.

And let's talk about the issue of consent, like she never consented to be in your pictures,

or at least get her consent to do that.

Right.

Exactly.

Yeah.

I mean, I struggle with a lot of this stuff.

But consent matters.

It absolutely matters and more than just the ways that you're thinking.

Even if you choose to keep these AI generated images or videos or whatever to yourself,

if she didn't consent, that is still assault.

That is still and the law will have to catch up to these things.

However, there are laws in place for essentially sexual manipulation.

I remember when we were younger in our area at one of the schools, students sent around

some pictures of another student and they were both minors.

She was minor, he was minor, and he sent it to one person who sent it to the next person

who sent it to the next person.

And eventually the whole school had access to this picture.

And a lot of people faulted her for having taken the picture in the first place.

That it was somehow something that she had done wrong.

Now that's insane because no matter what she's chosen to do, that boy had absolutely no right

ever to share it.

No.

Because again, consent.

But with the advent of AI, you now no longer even have that excuse.

Nope.

Because she never made the picture.

She never sent you the picture.

Maybe you pulled it offline.

Maybe you snuck a creepy picture while you were at work.

Whatever it is, she didn't send you a nude photo.

She didn't send you an inappropriate photo.

I feel like on some level we're making like, here's the scary world.

But I think what the purpose of this podcast, at least for me, is just awareness of the

situation.

For women to be aware that it could happen and to be cautious and to kind of steal up

for in case that happens to you, what would you do?

How would you handle it?

And I don't know what to tell you in that scenario.

It's horrific and I hope that you would be able to press charges.

But also for men, to make them aware that this is not okay.

No.

Not in any world is it okay.

I think it's easy to convince yourself that anything you do in the walls of your home

is your business and it's fine.

The devil is great at justifying terrible behavior.

And at the end of the day, just because you're doing something in private doesn't make it

okay.

I think about who else is this affecting?

It's not just you if you're stealing those pictures offline.

Even if, again, even if it's someone you don't know.

Celebrities, strangers, it's not okay.

Well you think because I never have to interact with that person, they're never going to know

me that this makes it fine, but it doesn't.

It doesn't.

People think that celebrities, because they live their lives so out in the open and publicly,

they have some kind of right to them.

And you don't.

You never have rights to someone else's body.

Even if it's a picture.

I'm interested to see how this situation progresses.

Because at least from where I'm sitting, we at work have AI detectors.

So I'll have a writer send me in an article and I can run it through an AI detector to

tell me essentially did chat GPT write this article.

So it'll be interesting to see do those things pop up for videos or pictures and how that

functions.

The future has some great technology ahead of it.

For us we use it to track people's dental hygiene and how their teeth are tracking within

design.

It's a very cool system.

It tracks for like a hundred different, I don't know, it confuses me.

Like, it is cool.

And using it in that way where you can make someone's life better, awesome.

When you're using it maliciously.

Well, it can be such a tool that you can utilize.

Like for the podcast and our editing software, it saves me so much time.

Like the reason that we're able to do these mini episodes is because we use an editing

software that automatically filters out all the times we say it.

Which is a lot.

And I'm going to have to tell it not to filter that one out.

Leave that one alone.

And honestly, like, you guys don't hear it as much, but we say it a lot.

We say a lot of ums and we edit out a lot of crap for you guys.

You're welcome.

And that software allows me to do it quickly and simply without spending four years in

this un-air-conditioned room trying to deal with it.

To be honest, this may be the end for me.

It may pass away.

We have an hour long episode to record after this.

And now a song.

Don't trust a hole whenever trust a hole.

I think that's the opposite message that we want.

I think something that's important to bring up is like, if you see something, and this

is like the oldest, well maybe not the oldest phrase in the book, always be cautious of

what you see on the internet.

Don't assume that what you see is real.

Don't assume Kim Kardashian is going to be a man.

Yeah, because she'd be wrong.

I'd be wrong.

I'd be dead wrong.

And don't share it with people if you don't know that's true.

On the plus side, I think TikTok filters a lot of these things.

And they're trying to filter the use of AI in a big way.

We'll see how that works.

And if you see something or you see another person that you know using this in a bad way,

confront them.

It's okay to say that's not okay.

Right.

Well, I think, you know, in Christian circles, they say that P star RN.

Yeah, there you go.

P star RN is just massively prevalent.

It's just everywhere in Christian circles.

And I think it's because you, it's because of what I just said.

You think God doesn't care about what you do in private.

Or maybe not that he doesn't care, but that it's not as bad.

Right.

God cares.

God cares.

God cares how you treat people.

He cares about the woman that you are assaulting, that you don't think you're assaulting because

you've justified it in your head.

But this is all outlined for us in the Bible, where God says, love each other, love your

neighbor, love your brothers and sisters.

If you truly love someone, you don't treat them like this.

Would you want someone doing that to you?

Or your child?

Or anyone you love?

Or your friend?

Yeah.

If you respect yourself in any way or anybody you love, you wouldn't.

I think it's easy to lie to, like people will say, well, I wouldn't care.

I wouldn't care.

And that justifies it for them.

And I understand that that is probably going to be the justification for a lot of people.

Why wouldn't care if someone did this to me?

It doesn't really matter if you wouldn't care, would they care?

Did you ask them?

Yeah.

Did you ask them?

I'm going to guess you didn't.

I'm going to guess you didn't.

And if they found out what you were doing, would you feel ashamed of yourself?

Would you try to hide what you're doing?

Because if you're trying to hide it, you probably know that it's wrong.

My concern too is, we think about this as the gross people that are kind of at the bottom

of society and whatever.

It's not.

It's not.

It's not.

It's pastors.

It is.

It's your neighbor.

It's your boss.

I don't know.

Well, that's why I hate saying to women, be careful, watch yourself, be more cautious

around men.

We didn't do an episode on the bear analogy, but if you haven't heard it, it's essentially

asking women, would you rather run into a bear or a man if you were walking alone in

the forest?

And most women, I would say a huge percentage of women said that they would rather run into

the bear.

And that's been very controversial because men have said, well, not all men are bad.

And that's, no one is saying that all men are bad.

I don't think anybody is saying that.

Maybe like two people.

But like, I don't think that's the prevalent message here.

The message is that we have to be careful of every single man.

Because even if it's one in a hundred, one in a thousand, if I'm not careful, I'm likely

to be the next victim.

And I'm not willing for that to happen.

So I have to be careful of all 100 men instead of just the one.

Because we've been conditioned to be that way too, because most women have run into

situations in their life where they've run into men and been treated inappropriately.

Whether that be like physically or verbally.

I think that's probably universal.

Like I don't think there's many women out there.

Well think back to like the Me Too movement.

People kind of, especially like the Christian circles kind of-

They villainized it.

They villainized it because they were like, well, I don't know what they were saying.

That should show you how big of a problem this is.

Right.

Well there's that song, is it Dua Lipa?

Boys Will Be Boys?

So one of the lines in that is, sick intuition that they taught us so we won't freak out.

And that is so- I listened to it today.

That is so impactful because you think back as a little girl.

We were taught if there's a man in the aisle at the grocery store, don't go in that aisle.

If you're walking in the parking lot, have your keys between your fingers.

If you're walking back from class, have your pepper spray out.

When you walk in your house after you get home from work, don't turn all the lights

on right away because you don't want people to know when you get home.

And I don't think either of us are saying that this can't impact men also.

It's just from our perspective, what women were taught.

And unfortunately, our mothers and our grandmothers had to teach this to us.

There's no fault there in them teaching it to us.

They had to, but why did they have to?

Because we haven't taught our boys to respect women from the jump.

Is that a bad way to say that?

From the beginning.

Exactly, that's exactly it.

And you can see that move through society.

And so it needs to be addressed.

It needs to be called out.

People need to say to men, we expect more of you.

So I guess maybe that's the purpose of this podcast, not to scare women, not to say like

you need to have an exit plan, whatever, but to tell men, I don't know how many men are

listening to our feminism podcast.

Hello, men.

Nathan's listening.

Hello, man.

Hey, maybe your boyfriend Curtis is listening.

Curtis, are you still in want of a wife?

Anyway, but for the men out there, if you hear this, if someone sends it to you, do

better.

Not just for you.

Maybe you're doing great.

I don't know.

Yeah, I'm assuming you are.

Do amazing things.

Tell your sons to do better.

Tell your friends to do better.

Check in on them and make sure they're not behaving this way.

Because it's like, remember the song from Warrior Kids, This Little Light of Mine?

I'm gonna let it shine.

Who's gonna sing now, Alyssa?

I'm not gonna sing.

You're gonna sing.

I just did.

You did.

But it's like if you have, if you as a man, because you have more influence in the circles

with the other men, if you decide that you're going to be a better person, that you're going

to be above this kind of behavior, that you're gonna fight for the rights of women, let that

light shine, and then maybe it affects just one other person.

And then they take that and it affects two other people.

It's like, what is that movie where the kid did one good act and then-

I know what you're talking about.

But all I can say is the giving tree.

Nope, that's not it.

It has fully escaped my brain.

But yeah.

The Perfect Gift?

No.

That's not it.

Anyway.

Eat, Pray, Love?

That is definitely not it.

So let your light shine.

That's the message.

I got all I need when I got you and I.

Flashlight.

Alright guys, we're gonna wind this down because I am going to die of a heat stroke at any

moment.

I've already gone.

Bree's talking from the grave.

The Beyond.

Ah.

We listened to the Haunted Mansion theme song today.

You have a problem.

I can't wait to go.

I know.

Very excited.

Sarah mentioned it to me today.

She goes, Bree!

It's coming up so soon!

Are you excited?

And I was like-

It's like, are you more excited than me?

Maybe.

Alright.

We'll see you guys next time- actually, we'll see you guys in about five minutes when we

record the next episode.

If you notice some consistency in like, oh, they sound like they're gonna die.

We recorded these two episodes at the same time.

Don't worry.

Back to back.

Alright.

We'll see you guys soon.

Bye!