Why Trust Matters More Than Detection in the Age of AI with Jeremy Carrasco

Disclaimer: This transcript was generated using AI.

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Jeremy, welcome to the podcast. Yeah, we’re gonna be talking about something that everybody, I’m gonna I almost never say this. I would almost say, almost always say almost everybody, but I’m gonna go ahead and say everybody listening to this podcast is aware of, potentially concerned about, probably using. We’re gonna be talking about AI. and you have gone deep in the world of AI, deep in the world of AI content creation.

Jeremy Carrasco: Thanks for having me.

Bjork Ostrom: You understand it from all sorts of angles. But before we get into the weeds on some of the specifics of that world, I want to hear how you got into this world. it’s a relatively new world to be in, but what did it look like for you to start creating content around people who create AI content?

Jeremy Carrasco: Well, I mean, it’s only been about a year and a half, not even a year and a half since I thought I might want to do this. It’s been a little bit over a year now where I’ve been doing this more or less full time. And I got into it the same for the same reasons that people are curious about it. Like I was just curious. I knew something big was happening in the AI media space, but the timing worked out really well for me. I’ll admit that luck definitely plays into it. I started creating content on AI.

Bjork Ostrom: What real quick, what did that look like? So this is I’m I want to talk to about about a little bit as you as a creator, because I’m really curious. You’re you’re you are fascinated by it. My guess is you’re just like naturally curious about it, and an outflow of that is like you want to create content to document it. Was it just this decision of like, I feel like I want to talk to people about this. I’m gonna launch all these channels and now I’m gonna start creating video. Like, what were you doing before?

Jeremy Carrasco: So I was a live streaming and video producer before, so I was working for a production company that was for hire. Before that I had done my own YouTube videos. I was doing YouTube videos for the company I worked at, but I would do these big shows for clients. So I mean I was in social media and in the creation space in like a for hire capacity for most of my career up until that point. I quit my job yeah.

Bjork Ostrom: Got it. So you didn’t have to learn best practices for the platforms. You were off and running. Yeah.

Jeremy Carrasco: No, I mean and and even more so, I was a live streaming encoding engineer, which is a super niche thing where I would be quality control for live streams, which you get really hands-on with all these different things that can go wrong with videos. Like so I’d have I understood everything from the cameras and making those look good to the audio, making sure that sounded good, all the way down to like live video encoding, kind of like what Premiere Pro does, but in real time, to the point where

Bjork Ostrom: Mm-hmm.

Bjork Ostrom: Mm-hmm.

Jeremy Carrasco: I took a month off or so and I had been thinking about doing something with AI detection for about a year before then, but I thought I was gonna go right back into live streaming or whatever. I I launched my page. I used to also be a piano teacher on the side. Like I have a passion for teaching and and media literacy and and so it was just kind of, you know, the perfect match of the timing and my interests and the fact that

Bjork Ostrom: Love it. Yeah, amazing.

Jeremy Carrasco: There weren’t a lot of people talking about AI from a creator space who weren’t also selling AI. So like I’ve never taken a sponsorship from an AI company or really any sponsorships for that matter. So that that’s that’s how it happened.

Bjork Ostrom: Hm. Yeah. How do you how do you how do you make money as a creator?

Jeremy Carrasco: so I don’t make much money as a creator as the short term. I make more money in my other job, which is I run a company called Riddance, which is a media detection or AI media and media intelligence company. It’s depends who I’m explaining it to. But what we really do is we’re tracking AI content and how it moves across social media. So it is my job and my like it is partially my job in the way that it it all kind of melds together into one thing, which is

Bjork Ostrom: Sure. Yeah. It’s beneficial for you to be known as a expert, in the world of AI because of the brand. Yeah.

Jeremy Carrasco: Detecting AI content.

Jeremy Carrasco: Yeah, i exactly. But I didn’t start my business riddance until after I was already a creator and looking for ways to make money that wasn’t doing sponsorships. ‘Cause really the this the the sponsorship gigs for me would be taking money from AI companies, which I’m not comfortable doing.

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah. And then reporting on them as yeah. sure. Sure. Yeah, for sure. so tell me a little bit about early stages, kind of what were you what were you doing? Is it look pretty similar? You haven’t I mean it’s been a year, year and a half. What is for you as a creator, what is that what what is day-to-day look like for you? Are you consuming a lot of content? Are you trying to decipher, hey, is this AI created? Is it not?

Jeremy Carrasco: Yeah. Which a lot of people do, but I don’t think that they can do it well, so

Bjork Ostrom: What does that look like for you day to day to be creating content around AI content?

Jeremy Carrasco: Yeah. well, the short answer is that it’s it’s changed in that when I was creating last year, I was pretty much nonstop looking at things on Instagram and TikTok and YouTube, seeing them and creating videos about them and doing reactions all the time. And my reactions weren’t like, hey, look at this, but it was dissecting videos, you know, pixel by pixel sometimes to try to figure out what was going on. that was really

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah. Yeah. What do you can you t can you talk a little bit more about that? Why w why you feel like that?

Jeremy Carrasco: that it was just a really good way to introduce people to like media literacy as one of the skills that you need to be able to figure out what’s real or not. And those skills haven’t changed. Like figuring out if you trust a source is everything and it will be everything for a long time. And a lot of the tools that I’m most excited about to help us figure out what’s real or not talk about more about provenance and where did this come from more than is this AI or is this not? That was always my my mindset, but

Bjork Ostrom: Point flip.

Bjork Ostrom: It’s one of my favorite responses when somebody is sending a video in a group chat is I will comment and say, People will say it’s AI. And it’s like always like a video from them. Like they’re at their like aunt and uncle’s house and like in the in the mountains. And but it’s a little bit of this commentary on like when it’s a coin flip, I think then when something is real, you are also presented with this like question around not trusting it.

Jeremy Carrasco: Yeah.

Bjork Ostrom: Which is such an interesting observation for you to say, a year ago, we could kind of have some of these conversations and say, how do we look at this individual piece of content and make a decision around is this AI or not? this video, here’s some things, you know, okay, there’s this fox that’s drowning in the hole and somebody goes up to save it. Okay. But if you pause here, you can see like the fox has, you know, a a leg that’s sticking out here and then it goes away. Whatever it is. Like there’s probably more advanced ways to kind of tell on an individual piece of content.

Jeremy Carrasco: Mm-hmm.

Jeremy Carrasco: Yeah.

Bjork Ostrom: But what I hear you saying, I think this is really relevant for us as creators, is okay, let’s maybe you can look content to content, video to video, but probably a better conversation to have as things become harder to detect, is let’s go to the source and let’s look at who this is coming from to try and understand if this is AI or not. And I think people are doing that with us as creators. They are looking at

Jeremy Carrasco: Well, I mean, I’d like to go back to the example of your friend sending you something and you say it could be AI. And like the reason that you don’t think it’s AI is because you trust your friend not to send you AI. It’s from him. I do think that that can scale to some reasonable proportion on social media. Our s our current recommendation based algorithms don’t work like that because we don’t oftentimes know why we are seeing something. We don’t know if we can trust this source. And if this were

Bjork Ostrom: From hand. Yeah. Yeah.

Jeremy Carrasco: you know, ten years ago where things were more sequential or, you know, on YouTube it was more about who you were subscribing to, less about what the algorithm picked for you, maybe this would work a little bit differently. And I think that that’s something we can look forward to as creators is y if you’re building a relationship with your audience and you can know that they trust you, then you’re still in good hands. And I don’t think that’s going away. In fact I think that’s going to become more important as recommended or algorithmic feeds

Bjork Ostrom: Can you talk more about that?

Jeremy Carrasco: If you’re seeing something and you’re like, okay, do I trust this? You have to tap on their profile, then you have to tap on the three dots, then you have to click on account transparency. It’s three steps of interrupting your scroll. Most people are just gonna be like, I don’t they’re gonna swipe away, right? The the the UI is not built for us to figure out if something is real or not. And even the AI labels are very difficult to read. They are unreliable. It like I think that we we want some sort of tech solutions for this, but but

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah. Yeah.

Jeremy Carrasco: The end of the day, I think it’s going to be more about spending more time watching people that you know are legitimate versus letting an algorithm decide for you. And there are people who aren’t going to care. I think the other thing here is that social media, at least in like the ideal thing that we have in our brain where we like to deny that it’s all, you know, performative in some way, it it’s supposed to be a thing.

Bjork Ostrom: Mm-hmm.

Jeremy Carrasco: That connects you to real people. Maybe in the past you were watching, I can think of a YouTube channel that was called Rocket Jump from when I when I was getting into filmmaking and video making 10 years ago. And it was all about special effects. And they would have special effects all the time. But you knew it was a channel that did special effects. You didn’t think that was real. You knew to suspend disbelief when you were watching that channel. What’s happening now is these AI accounts that are mimicking real people.

Bjork Ostrom: Mm-hmm.

Jeremy Carrasco: And that’s where a lot of my role is, is figuring out those those unknowns for people when it’s either not labeled or people aren’t sure.

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah. One of the things I’ve been doing as an example as I try and navigate this, this is more in like a one-to-one level, but even within my emails, if I am I’m just thinking about like yesterday, I think, at a had a meeting, I had some notes, I wanted to summarize it and send it to somebody in terms of action items. I preface, hey, da-da-da-da-da. I’m typing this out, da-da-da-da-da. Here I am, da-da-da. Here’s a little recap that

Jeremy Carrasco: Mm-hmm.

Jeremy Carrasco: Mm-hmm, mm-hmm.

Bjork Ostrom: if we disclose when we are or aren’t using it. And you know, there’s a thousand different ways that you could use it. I’ve been using computer use now to like go and get information. It’s like that’s a different use of AI. It’s not AI in the creator space. But what would your advice be? You know, you have thousands of people who are creating content listening to this, food creators, and the temptation will be to like do two lines of a prompt and have it write an email on your behalf, in your voice.

Jeremy Carrasco: Yes.

Bjork Ostrom: And in your opinion, what how should creators be thinking about that?

Jeremy Carrasco: First thing is that people can tell. And I think that like you just have to understand that people can tell, and most people aren’t going to call you out for it. I use AI quite frequently, and I I did a whole video about where I use it. I use it quite frequently for writing code. And when I’m watching the AI explain the code to me and the changes it made, it reads like AI. The smarter AIs don’t sound less like AI, they just sound like a smarter AI.

Jeremy Carrasco: I think that that is right on that border of advanced auto correct that we just expect to be an evolution of writing emails.

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah. One of the things it is so good at, and and I’ve been thinking about this in all the different contexts of my life is auditing. Like finances. it’s like great at that. you know, advanced spell check, like you talk about. you know, double checking, looking at my calendar and being like, Hey, actually you’re like way overscheduled on this day. things like that. the thing that I find interesting, so

Jeremy Carrasco: Mm-hmm.

Jeremy Carrasco: Mm-hmm.

Jeremy Carrasco: Mm.

Bjork Ostrom: Are you doing that because of a moral consideration? Hey, I want to I you know, or even like ethical consideration. Or is it, and this is how I think of it, it’s almost a marketing position. Like as content becomes easier to create, it becomes more, there’s more of it. How do you stand out when there’s more of a thing? You have to be novel. What’s the best way to be novel? It’s to be different.

Jeremy Carrasco: Well, I mean, in short, I’m not really using it as a creator that much. I’m using it much more in my business life. so it’s a little bit easy for me, because I can pretty much just say I don’t use it. And that’s not because I it’s not it’s often not a moral stance. It’s it’s a practical stance for me. I don’t like the outputs of most of the AI systems. I’ve tested them. when I created my page, I created it, it was called Show Tools AI because I was optimistic of using AI tools for shows. Like that was that was my amalgamation of those words.

Bjork Ostrom: Huh. Yeah.

Jeremy Carrasco: I became less interested in that the more I used the tools and the less I saw utility in them. I used to create AI generated backgrounds. I’d usually pop up a green screen behind me. And you can see this in my first couple of videos on my YouTube page where I have AI generated backgrounds behind me. I was really into virtual sets and green screens. I used to do LED wall work. I thought that AI might be able to do that well.

Bjork Ostrom: Sure.

Jeremy Carrasco: I think it’s an incredibly practical thing for me to use as a person. And then when I need something that’s very high value, I’m still gonna hire a developer to do it. I don’t think that AI is oftentimes a good thing to outsource to. I don’t think it’s ever a good replacement of the human that it’s outsourcing. I think that it is useful if you are trying to do a low-value task.

Bjork Ostrom: Mm-hmm.

Jeremy Carrasco: It’s all cohesive to me. I also really value transparency. My my account is about transparency and about encouraging other people to be transparent about how they’re making things. So it’s very on brand for me, but it’s just like that’s that’s just kind of who I am. And sometimes to a fault, sometimes I overshare. Not about I’m I’m a pretty private person, but I’ll like go very in depth about how I did something in a way that might seem frenetic to people, but that’s just that’s just kinda the person I am. So I don’t really think about it that much.

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, that makes sense. It’s like you have the this core set of beliefs on how you want to operate. You’re sharing those. and my guess is that that resonates with a lot of people as you share that journey. because a lot of people are trying to also figure that out, not only from a creator standpoint, how do I approach this, but also from a consumer standpoint, like how do I become educated around this so I’m not oblivious to what’s happening.

Jeremy Carrasco: Mm.

Jeremy Carrasco: Yeah.

Bjork Ostrom: Whoever created that thing was able to do so in a way where they consumed it and they were like, hey, this is from a human. I’ve noticed in myself that happening more. I had this conversation with Lindsay. This was probably a month ago. She was looking at, it was like a fashion video and it was two women standing side by side. I think maybe you’ve seen or like reported on some of these where it’s like, yeah, it’s like,

Jeremy Carrasco: yeah.

Jeremy Carrasco: I’ve seen a ton of Ton of

Bjork Ostrom: And it grew like the account grew like a hundred thousand followers. I don’t know if it’s like artificial or what, but hey, here’s some like styling. If you’re gonna wear this, here’s how you do it. And and she was like it was she eventually realized after kind of looking at it, seeing the different accounts, seeing the different posts and seeing how similar they were, where it was like, wait a minute, but it wasn’t on the initial watch of it. And some similar things have happened to me where

Jeremy Carrasco: Mm-hmm.

Bjork Ostrom: I really have to sit with it for a little bit. If I moved on too quickly, I wouldn’t have been able to catch that it was an AI video. And the question in this is for us as creators, if one of the if one of the paths that some people are taking is being an AI creator, is the

Jeremy Carrasco: I think so. I will say that I absolutely hate creating AI generated content because I don’t like the process. So that’s one of the reasons I turned away from it. I don’t think that a lot of the people who are creating AI content were creators before AI. That has been my experience talking to them. They’re usually coming in from some other thing. AI content is much more transactional and attentional in nature rather than creative in nature. So I

Bjork Ostrom: You can create a system, you create a process, you have you have the flow. Yeah, you hook everything up.

Jeremy Carrasco: Exactly. It Yes, that’s that’s what a lot of those creators get off on is the the f the process. The process and the numbers and it’s it’s like a game. And I I think that you know over just a year of creating I’ve backed off from trying to like win the numbers game because I think it is in really unfulfilling and like my page grew incredibly fast and I’m very lucky. I you know, it’s like I always

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah, for sure.

Jeremy Carrasco: like, you know, looking out into the the near future here is I I think that we take a lot of things for granted that we can’t take for granted anymore. One thing is that people don’t care how things are made. I think that was true. I don’t think that’s true anymore. I think people care about how things are made now that there is this all creative system that can do anything based on taking a lot of other people’s work. And that’s how it was trained. And a lot of people do care about that.

Bjork Ostrom: Mm-hmm.

Jeremy Carrasco: The second thing is a lot of people took for granted that if you saw something, it was a trustworthy thing. And so all these things are changing beneath the surface in a way that makes me say, I need to really lean in to being very transparent and very proactive about it so that I can try to like get above those things that people took for granted before that they can’t take for granted now. Additionally, I don’t think that.

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah.

Jeremy Carrasco: This path is going to continue in the exact way it is. I like I I don’t see how these companies that have built themselves on personal connection and really rely on creators to to keep their their platforms fun to be on. you know, like I don’t think that they are actually going to be incentivized to have an an a flood of AI generated content on their platforms that they can’t control.

Bjork Ostrom: Mm-hmm.

Jeremy Carrasco: You’re not going to need to have the person to create the AI content for you. You’re just gonna have the algorithm creating the AI content for you. which is yeah, I mean it’s it like we’re a ways off from that because the cost models don’t work yet. Like it’s actually that’s actually a very expensive app to run. Sora was trying to be that for people. you know, it it costs about you know, three dollars to make a 10 second long video right now, right? So it’s like it is not

Bjork Ostrom: Which is wild when you think about it. Yeah.

Jeremy Carrasco: The cost is not ready for that reality yet. The the possibility that it’s going to be there is real though. And so I think that, you know, w we’re just in like a big transition period right now. And like leaning all into AI content, I think, is a relatively a mistake because you’re not gonna be able to like keep that, but you can keep yourself, you can control yourself, you can control

Bjork Ostrom: Mm-hmm.

Jeremy Carrasco: if you’re creating authentic content that people are going to connect with. I d I think that like diving all into the AI race as an individual creator is a lot riskier than the companies who are selling you those products are making it out to be.

Bjork Ostrom: Mm-hmm.

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah.

Bjork Ostrom: That I’ve never heard that take before, but it makes so much sense, specifically around being an AI creator. Your point in it is if you get really good at this, you might be able to, over the next year, two years, maybe three years, become an expert in creating AI content and posting it to platforms. But eventually, you also will be replaced by the platform itself.

Jeremy Carrasco: Mm-hmm.

Bjork Ostrom: You know, the five hundred that we showed this, these people stayed a little bit longer. So then it switches it again. And then eventually what you find is like you’re scrolling through TikTok for three hours. All of that content previously was human made. But what does that look like in a world where not only is it able to tweak the algorithm, it’s also able to tweak the content because it can create the content to then test against, which is like, man. It’s like depressing to think of that. But

Jeremy Carrasco: Mm-hmm.

Jeremy Carrasco: Yeah. Well and there

Bjork Ostrom: That’s what I hear you saying specifically around being an AI content creator is that you are not you won’t be able to differentiate yourself because eventually that too will be able to that too will be replaced. And so the way you differentiate yourself is by being human.

Jeremy Carrasco: Yeah.

Jeremy Carrasco: Yeah.

Jeremy Carrasco: Well, I I think that if you’re finding a an audience that doesn’t care if con if content is human created or not, they definitionally don’t care. That’s that’s my point. So like it is possible that you will be able to distinguish yourself as an AI creator and have some super good taste that ascends you above the other algorithmically generated content. Totally possible. However, as someone who sees AI pages copying each other all the time.

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah, right.

Jeremy Carrasco: You don’t have any control over once you get popular, there are going to be copycats that can be procedurally generated themselves. They can just look at this AI page’s content and effectively duplicate it themselves over and over and over. And because the people who are watching it know it’s AI don’t care, it just doesn’t matter. And I think this is something like if you are controlling yourself and you are like a scarce one of one entity that is like yourself.

Bjork Ostrom: Mm-hmm.

Jeremy Carrasco: But I do think that audiences you like you want to curate an audience that cares about your content, not an audience that is just cool with whatever AI generated content is is like consumable to them at that very time. And as someone who has seen the the cutting edge of AI generated content and like every day see I seem to see something that makes me a little bit more scared, like I am spending way less time on social media than I was a year ago.

Bjork Ostrom: Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Jeremy Carrasco: I mean just way less because I’ve started to get disillusioned. I don’t know if that’s gonna I don’t think that’s gonna be the reaction everyone has, but like that is a serious risk we have is just losing faith in the content and just tuning out, which is I and I’m not doing that because I can’t tell. I’m doing that because I find it exhausting and I know that the area around me is real, so I just like try to spend more time there.

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah, it’s anecdotal, but like my mom said the same thing. Like I was talking to her about it and she’s like, I’ve just gotten tired of trying to figure it out. And so I just don’t use the platforms as much. obviously it’s like there’s a certain corner of people, it doesn’t apply to everybody, but I think it definitely does exist with a certain subset of people where it’s just like the effort involved is too much and becomes friction against using the platform. So you had talked about the importance of

Jeremy Carrasco: Yeah.

Jeremy Carrasco: Yeah.

Bjork Ostrom: For those who want to be content creators, a way to stand out. It’s like you are one of one. How do you lean into your one of oneness as a creator? You talked about live streaming before as a part of your history and a part of what you did. I’ve heard a lot of people talk about the the importance of things like live streaming, the importance of, you know, a podcast like this where we’re talking back and forth dynamically. You know, all of people aren’t.

Jeremy Carrasco: Yeah.

Jeremy Carrasco: Well, I mean I can speak for myself. Like that’s one of the reasons I like doing podcasts and I I like collaborating with others. I try to lean into collaborative posts a lot. I wish I did more of them, honestly. When I when I find a certain video, maybe real creators being called AI have as happened sometimes. Like I’ll try to do joint posts with them. I find that to be exciting. I think it’s just gonna be different for everyone, honestly. I mean, you know, I’d I

Bjork Ostrom: For sure.

Bjork Ostrom: Mm-hmm.

Jeremy Carrasco: you know, laborious stop motion, right? But like for them to be going through it, I think is like even more so difficult because they’re not showing their face. So it’s like, how do you differentiate yourself? And I I do think that it’s going to become harder. And I like I’m I I’m under no illusion that this AI content age that we’re in is going to make it way harder to distinguish yourself as an individual. And I think it’s going to make it harder to make

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah.

Jeremy Carrasco: probably money doing it because it it might have a deflationary effect on on yeah exactly I mean yeah it’s just like it’s inflating the content amount but also you know it’s much easier to just like create cheap advertisements now. So I think that’ll have real real effects. so I’m I’m trying to not give a no a non answer. I mean for for me, I I am just like trying to create more

Bjork Ostrom: There’s more content that’s being monetized, less attention on your content.

Jeremy Carrasco: things more often and just like always be creating. And like it’s not to, it’s not to, I’m not going to be able to outcreate the AI systems. In fact, like I’ve kind of given up on that. because I just I mean it’s impossible. It’s like you can’t you can’t outproduce a computer if that’s like what they’re for. They can do it instantly or not instantly, but very quickly. and and so I think for me it’s just about

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah.

Bjork Ostrom: Mm-hmm.

Jeremy Carrasco: being very communicative and communicating often. Ironically, I don’t do many live streams, even though I used to be a live streaming producer, because I think the the short form video and and and also like longer form podcasts or longer form content like is where people spend most of their time. Unless you’re in the gaming space for sure, then a lot of it is live streaming. you know, but for me it’s just like I I learned that my look

Bjork Ostrom: Sure.

Jeremy Carrasco: is primarily like I shoot in front of a green screen, I have a nice camera, I have a teleprompter, I have like a nice studio. Like that’s just how I know how to create content. And I was really afraid that I’d get on TikTok and that wouldn’t land or like it would be too performative for like a younger audience. It turns out it’s not at all. Like I think that like it turned out that I was that was a differentiator for me that I think I was afraid of for a while, but I just didn’t know how to do it any other way. And

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah. One of the things that I think about as a differentiator is like facts versus stories. And I think that that as facts become easier to access, easier to talk about, easier to roll up into a video, like one of the differentiators is stories. and I think about like how do we as creators overlap our own stories? I think people will always be compelled by stories.

Jeremy Carrasco: Mm.

Bjork Ostrom: into the content that we’re creating. you know, you could create like a top three breakfast spots in Charleston, but like you could also probably tell a story around what it looked like when you went out for breakfast in Charleston. and I think

Jeremy Carrasco: Yeah.

Jeremy Carrasco: Yep. In in in my space, like AI is pretty good at figuring out if an account is real or fake, but it does an awful job communicating that in a way that people are actually engaged with. So like it can do the technical aspect, but it cannot do the communications aspect in in some sort of like engaging or entertaining way. And I think it’s it comes back to that story point you just made.

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah, yeah, right.

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah. Like it can tell if something is AI or not, but then to tell somebody about it being A or AI or not suddenly is not very good at it. Like factually it can communicate it, but not in a way where people want to like engage with it. I think the the the thing that’s hard for food creators right now is that there are certain categories of content, we Pinterest being one, certain platforms where they’ve become

Jeremy Carrasco: Yeah. Yeah.

Bjork Ostrom: flooded with AI content. There’s this image that at a conference I went to that I’m thinking of where they showed there’s like one real image and it was like a screenshot of the whole thing was filled with like Pinterest images and the rest were AI images.

Jeremy Carrasco: Mm-hmm.

Jeremy Carrasco: Mm.

Bjork Ostrom: For creators who are engaging on platforms where they’re like Pinterest as an example, do you think that there’s something around leaning into your humanity, being forward, front and center with like who you are? Or even one of the thoughts that I’ve had is like, how do you, if you have a trustworthy brand, if you have a known brand, you know, there’s a certain group of people who know Pinch of Yum is a food and recipe website.

Jeremy Carrasco: Mm-hmm.

Jeremy Carrasco: Yeah.

Bjork Ostrom: But to say to people, hey, transparently, here’s how we use AI and here’s how we don’t. And we want to let you know so when you engage with us, you’re aware of where we’re using AI. Are there other pieces of advice that you’d give to creators to help them be in a position where they can be a trusted source on the internet?

Jeremy Carrasco: Well, I think that a lot of creators are scared of showing their face. but I think that that is is oftentimes very helpful. I I know that might sound like a baseline to people who show their face, but a lot of people still don’t. I know it’s become a little bit more normal on TikTok and you know, just ’cause everything’s like front facing video, but y you know

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah, too bad. Yeah.

Jeremy Carrasco: So that’s the first thing is I think that you have to create without some of that fear that comes with creating today. again, it’s hard for me to prescribe specific things for specific people, but I think that just be really weary about what you’re trying to outsource to AI and if that lessens like your creative abilities in some way or like diminishes them.

Bjork Ostrom: Mm-hmm.

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah.

Jeremy Carrasco: could be interesting in the near future, but that requires a lot of adoption for people to know what that means. there are going to be provenance tools like hopefully CTPA, which is like a technical provenance standard, becomes more widely adopted. I I think that like there are going to be some technical solutions that could help, but I I think that the next few years are going to to be really uncomfortable. Like I’m just gonna be really honest. Like I think they’re gonna be really, really difficult.

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah. In what way? When you in and you I you you kind of alluded to this as well, where you said you’ve been seeing some things that kinda scare you. What are those things? What do you think will be difficult?

Jeremy Carrasco: Yeah.

Jeremy Carrasco: Yeah. Well, just hyper realistic AI models. I mean, I I think that I don’t talk about you unfortunately a lot of the most realistic stuff actually comes in not safe for work content, which I don’t talk about. but that’s because that’s where a lot of money is made. And so a lot of it is in these like scams and and fraud and not safe for work content, which is starting to trickle into not in into safe for work.

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah.

Bjork Ostrom: Sure, sure.

Jeremy Carrasco: content as well. I don’t again, I don’t I don’t think that it’s it’s a real threat for people who have a real community and are trying to maintain that community and grow a community. I think that there will be a craving for that sort of content. Like I think that the good old content might just be like what we’re currently making right now. Right. And I I think that like we just have to keep doing it and trust that the system’s going to work out. But I think that the systems that have been

Bjork Ostrom: Keep doing it, yeah. Yeah.

Jeremy Carrasco: that we’ve been kind of relying on, such as algorithms are right now just they’re just getting played by AI. And I think it’s gonna get worse before it gets better. like that they’re just getting played. And in until there are some proactive steps taken by you’re you’re looking for a platform that takes proactive steps to try to help you. And and this is something I mean I don’t have a Patreon. I know like Patreon’s trying

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah. Yeah, yeah.

Jeremy Carrasco: Substack is trying, like they’re trying to do an AI detection thing. Pinterest has tried with AI detection, but like these are LinkedIn is trying, even though I think that might might be hopeless. Like everyone’s kind of trying. Where is it coming from? But the technical tooling is far behind. It might not get there. so

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah.

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah, LinkedIn. Yeah.

Bjork Ostrom: Mm-hmm.

Jeremy Carrasco: I’ll just be real. Like I I I don’t I’m not the most optimistic about this. I don’t have a magic bullet other than all I can do is control what I create and tell people about it and hope that people follow. And that’s what I’ve got. And it’s working well enough, but I wouldn’t just rely on some sort of technical solution to swoop in and save us because I think we’re pretty far off from that.

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah. Like the platform’s gonna figure it out. They’ll put together some badge system and that will then fix it. What you’re saying is like, maybe, but also let’s not let’s not assume that will happen. I’ve never thought of

Jeremy Carrasco: Yeah.

Jeremy Carrasco: Yeah. Maybe.

Jeremy Carrasco: Maybe, but I I think that algorithmic platforms are probably just not fitted fit for AI. Like I think it’s we’re gonna have to go back to more subscription based models in order to really solve it. And the the platforms are gonna have to come to terms with the fact that means less ad revenue. Like it’s it’s a huge, huge change for sure.

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah.

Bjork Ostrom: Yes.

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah, it’s I had never thought about this, but we talk a lot about the shift from platforms being social platforms to being content platforms or algorithmic platforms. You know, the most obvious example is Facebook used to be a feed, chronological feed, of people that you followed and their updates. And then they’re like

Jeremy Carrasco: Mm-hmm.

Bjork Ostrom: Wait a minute, let’s actually show the most interesting stuff from the people you follow at the top. It’s somebody’s birthday. There’s this dramatic interaction between these family members and all these comments coming in. Okay, let’s show that at the top because now we see more people stick around for that. From there, it’s like, well, what if we showed just like a random thing that was really engaging at the top? actually people stay around even longer, even if they don’t know who it is, if we show that at the top. And

Jeremy Carrasco: Anything. Yep.

Bjork Ostrom: Suddenly, what s quote unquote social media has become is an algorithm that shows you topical or sometimes not even topical content to try and get you to stick around and engage with it. And what’s interesting now that I’d never thought of until this point is that it is algorithmic, but now you also have the ability to algorithmically create content. And so now you just have these two algorithms,

Jeremy Carrasco: Mm-hmm.

Jeremy Carrasco: Mm-hmm.

Bjork Ostrom: like self reinforcing their own content. And it’s like there’s individuals who are creating their own little algorithm to say, hey, what’s working, what’s not working, okay, I figured something out. I’m gonna ramp that up. I’m gonna create two hundred pieces of content, put it onto Instagram because a lot of people watch a fashion video when there’s two women standing by each other and talking about like the difference between a pencil skirt and like a a nightgown. Like, okay, that’s

Jeremy Carrasco: I unfortunately, yes, because I think the dominant social media platforms are I think taking for granted a lot of things that are keeping their platform around, such as advertisers are just gonna be okay with this indefinitely, or people are going to stick around indefinitely as the platforms become less and less real. Like we don’t know the answers to these yet. If I were if I were meta, for example, I would be

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah. That it could become the vast majority of content that is consumed and yeah.

Bjork Ostrom: And even six months ago weren’t as compelling as they are today. A year from now it’s gonna be it’s a little bit like we’ve crossed the chasm.

Jeremy Carrasco: It’s

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah. Sure. But you could create like a Yeah, yeah, yeah. You could create a twelve second video that maybe is compelling and could do well on a short form video platform, but you probably won’t create a twenty minute video strictly AI that somebody would sit down and watch like an interview or something like that.

Jeremy Carrasco: I mean, I see it all the time in like history or like politics or something like that. Unfortunately there’s a lot of AI generated stuff in that space or like, you know, top ten lists or whatever, but it it’s it’s again, it’s different.

Bjork Ostrom: Sure.

Bjork Ostrom: Yep. Yep. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Jeremy Carrasco: Mm-hmm.

Jeremy Carrasco: Yeah.

Jeremy Carrasco: Yeah. Yeah. So Jeremy Finds AI is my AI literacy page, and that’s how most people know me. Riddance, we’re we’re really doing research around AI generated content and working with people who want to stay on top of that, whether it’s a platform, or for example, we’ll be releasing a report on AI generated wellness influencers and this AI generated health content that’s coming out where we are working with journals and

Bjork Ostrom: Mm-hmm, mm.

Jeremy Carrasco: newspapers, well not newspapers anymore, but publications to figure out what’s going on in that space. So look it’s it’s also new for us. I mean figuring out a business around AI generated content. That’s a that’s another thing, right? I think that there are so many things that are just changing in real time. and for for us that looks like just keeping an eye on AI generated content and figuring out what what to do with that intelligence. So it has been

Bjork Ostrom: Sure.

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah.

Jeremy Carrasco: A relatively new thing. and yeah, if people are interested in in learning more about the AI generated content in their space, that’s something we can track at a pretty large scale. So feel free to reach out to Riddins. That’s that’s what we’re all about.

Bjork Ostrom: Awesome. Jeremy, super fun to talk to you. We’re gonna have to have you on. I feel like it could be every week. That’s how quickly this industry moves. we won’t have you on every week.

Jeremy Carrasco: Yeah, you didn’t even ask me about a specific AI video or anything. So that’s usually people are usually trying to grill me. Yeah.

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah. Tell us one. Tell us one. Like tell us one specific one that that people should check out that’s interesting. Like what is there one video that you would point to that we can link to in the show notes that would do a good job of being like, This is interesting, fascinating, compelling.

Jeremy Carrasco: it’s it’s so hard. I mean, I just did one on I mean, for me it’s always the most recent one I did. The one I just did was on AI generated political influencers that are doing like these AI generated podcasts about specific political issues, which I find to be kinda troubling because we’re seeing a lot of these like AI generated policy

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah.

Jeremy Carrasco: podcasters which is just like quite problematic because they’re not real people and they shouldn’t get a say in what our elections are like, you know. So things things like that.

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah. I mean when you combined AI and politics and you start to think about like AI’s role in politics, it gets that’s a wild corner of AI.

Jeremy Carrasco: Yeah.

Bjork Ostrom: Cool. That’s great. Jeremy, thanks for coming on. Really appreciate it.

Jeremy Carrasco: Thank you.