I know we’ve talked a lot about AI here on the Autopian before, and I’m sure you’ve heard our commitment to not use any AI to replace actual writing or art or anything like that. We have many reasons for this – AI is not sentient, has no idea what it’s like to drive, to own a car, to care about a car, to get its fingers mangled when trying to release one of those awful springy hose clamps with needlenose pliers – but mostly it’s a choice, and a pushback against the increasing amount of AI slop. For the most part, I’ve been seeing AI slop content as a sort of annoyance, or perhaps as a reminder that if we’re not careful, things will get worse and worse in the pursuit of maximizing profit by companies that really just don’t care about what they produce. But now I’m actually more alarmed.
I’m alarmed because I just encountered something that, at first, seemed familiar, and then not, which is worse than something just seeming off from the start, because a bait-and-switch is worse. It’s something that involves the use of AI, but I don’t understand why, and that’s at the crux of why I’m so unsettled.
Here, it was this, a post on Instagram (or, you know Instagzam with the new logo) that featured a 1971 Volkswagen ad:
View this post on Instagram
I know this ad; I’ve seen it before in various collections of old VW ads, and this one has some significance because it essentially incorporates a lot of the content from the famous (well, in geeky air-cooled VW communities) What Year Is It? brochure that helps people, surprisingly, know what year various Beetles are. Let’s take a closer look at this ad, though:
It all seems pretty normal, right? It’s got that Doyle Dane Bernbach trademark look, the clean layout, that distinctive san-serif font, the clear black-and-white photography. But once you start looking, and reading, closer, some things start to seem…off.
Oh yeah, they really fixed the brake brames in 1958 for some laster and suter stops, I remember that. And what about the seat beaks? Didn’t they conviate those in 1960? And I love how in ’64 they made the eliding steol senrool finally crane operated, like it always should have been. Later the howzep hark was increased, too, and if you want to talk grove improvement, then, buddy, gett doss, am I right?
As I’m sure you’ve figured out, that ad is heavily AI-modified, or maybe even AI-generated. Here’s what the real ad actually looks and reads like:
And the fact that there is a real ad is why I’m so alarmed here. Sure, people use AI to make up all kinds of crap, things that never existed, fanciful things, and so on. And that use of AI I can understand, a bit – it’s a quick way to bring an idea to life. Fine. There’s a place for that; it’s not that different than when I sketch out some stupid idea.
But this? This was an existing ad! There was no need to generate an AI version of this thing that added nothing new except for an absurd amount of inaccuracies. What was the point of re-making this already existing ad in AI?
That’s what scares me. There’s no obvious reason to AI-remake this already-existing thing, and yet it was done anyway. And this is by no means the only example of this. Now that AI is actively re-creating pieces of automotive literature, ads, diagrams, information, etc, we really can’t trust anything you see online anymore, and that’s terrifying. There are people out there who desperately want to learn more about cars – I was and still am one of those people, but I had the advantage of growing up and doing most of my primary learning and exploring in an era when I could at least be sure that the information I found – in books and magazines at first, and then later online – was all accurate and true. That’s no longer the case.
So, what can we do about this? I guess the good news is that if anyone can do anything, it’s us. As in all of us, all of us Autopians and car geeks. Now is the time to be insufferable online. The stakes of being wrong on the internet have changed – where once it was just about being a dickhead who couldn’t stand to be wrong, things have changed. If you see some AI-generated crap about cars online that is just plain wrong, it’s up to us to comment, report, deface, whatever. If we just let this kind of shit slide without correction or comment, it’ll keep spreading, and people who are just starting to learn things about cars will be inundated with inaccurate slop.
I don’t think we’ll be able to actually stem the tide of all of this AI slop. I think it’s too massive a torrent at this point to really impede, but I think we still need to try. And, of course, there will always be the Autopian, and we will always value what’s actually real when it comes to cars.
Right now, though, I want to think of the plight of all those kids, car-obsessed kids, like I was – desperately looking to learn more about cars. If they’re being served AI-encrapified content that is a recreation of actual old ads or brochures or articles, what chance do they have? I’m disturbed, but determined. We need to put more and more automotive truth out there online, and we sure as hell will do it.
These are weird times.
My guess is, they had a low-quality copy and used AI to “upscale” it. It did fine cleaning up the big stuff, but the small letters were blurry/patchy and so it invented garbage to fill in what it couldn’t “see” clearly.
Who knew that an old Encyclopedia Brittanica may someday be worth more than gold. I still have hard copies of my old engineering school texts. I may be rich!
Screams open AI, but I bet it was the meta ai that is even more hot garbage. Feedi seat backs seems like a much more modern opinion then 56.
This story gives me ideas as to how the current administration submitted a map where they got every single country wrong in Africa
Did it also connect the muffler bearing to the rezuberator?
Don’t forget to top off the turn signal fluid.
Even though it’s listed for 1969, my ’74 and ’77 still didn’t have a day/ night reainixe rooror so I have to assume some of these changes were rolled out at different times for different markets.
encherining
No, they were both regular sedans.
My best guess is someone ran it through AI to increase the contrast. The original one looks dull and faded in comparison. However the original poster is also still eminently readable, so yes, this was completely unnecessary.
A lot of people I know sort of assume that AI will just inherently make things better, so they run a lot of unnecessary stuff through AI – pictures they take, literally everything they write/post, etc., and don’t bother to double-check any of it before posting it.
This is likely. I’ve only used AI once to create an image for a birthday card for a friend. What disturbed me is AI chose to make modifications to the image that I did ask for nor want. I’ve never returned to using AI for imaging. I try not to use it at all, but it is difficult to avoid entirely.