Those who followed the media’s coverage of the first Trump Administration are painfully aware of former CNN personality Jim Acosta. Acosta had the dubious distinction of being the most flagrantly determined – among a manifestly biased and agenda-driven press corps – with trying to discredit and make Trump look “bad” rather than with actually reporting news. Jim Acosta as a White House “reporter” was so acerbic, confrontational, and disrespectful that he even had his press badge briefly revoked.
During the four years between Trump Administrations, Acosta faded from public notoriety, likely because he no longer had a President Trump as the foil for his antics. After Trump’s second inauguration, CNN removed Acosta from his normal program and reportedly offered him a late-night slot. Rather than accept what appeared to be a demotion, Acosta quit and began blogging on Substack to an even more narrow and self-selecting audience. Jim Acosta, it seemed, was headed for obscurity.
Until now.
Acosta recently regained the broader public’s attention, if not admiration, by posting an “interview” to his Substack that involved him having a “conversation” with a computer program.
The program was an Artificial Intelligence (AI)-generated simulation of Joaquin Oliver, one of the victims of the 2018 mass murders at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida. The program was created with the involvement of Joaquin’s parents.
Whatever else can be said of the wisdom or propriety of the endeavor, the execution was bizarre and amateurish. Acosta tried to play the occasion straight, asking question as if he were conducting a normal interview. It was clear, however, to anyone who has interacted with an AI program that what was powering the interviewee was not the spontaneous and organic thoughts of a real person. The production values did not help. The audio was monotone and mechanical at times, interspersed with odd and unnatural changes in pitch and inflection. The coloring around the simulation’s eyes and mouth was mismatched to the rest of its skin tone to allow for animated blinking and speaking. The editing was choppy and abrupt.
The most unsettling part of the “interview,” however, was the pretense that it represented anything other than a strange demonstration of AI technology.
The brief “exchange” between Acosta and the AI ranged from him asking the program about gun control—which it unsurprisingly supported, as the parents involved in creating it are gun control advocates—to a back and forth between the AI and Acosta about likes and dislikes regarding sports, athletes, and pop culture.
Acosta insisted on treating the simulation as a real person. He introduced the AI as his “first guest,” gushed that is “very inspiring,” and closed the interview by telling it, “God bless you.”
“Conversations” with AI have been going on for several years, but most understand they are not real interactions with a real person. Programs can be coded to present responses in a particular way, based on more or less limited sets of data, including an individual’s own writings, recordings, and social media posts. When well-executed and based on relevant data, interactions with AI can come across as conversational and lifelike, but they are really neither, and this one fell far short of maintaining even the usual interactive veneer.
Acosta’s attempt to present his recent blog post and political advocacy as an “interview” was described by various media outlets as “disturbing,” “grotesque,” and “outrageous.” Other outlets noted that Acosta was “blasted” or “slammed” over the stunt and that it “spark(ed) fury” or required the “journalist” to “defend his decision.”
AI can do a lot of useful and interesting things, but it cannot raise the dead or give expression to novel or contemporaneous thoughts of a person who is no longer alive. It is one thing for it to be used by bereaved parents to cope with their loss but another to be presented as the thinking of a person who can no longer speak for himself, contributing to a conversation of which he is not actually a part.
In the end, Acosta’s willingness to engage in this charade shows him to be more of a crass opportunist, performer, and political activist than a sober, reliable, and respectable journalist.
But then, that’s not news, either.
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