Nadja Spiegelman (2:39)

Can you describe what that emotion was?

Tressie McMillan Cottom (2:42)

Well, one, I felt tricked, you know, so there's that sense of betrayal. And then there was also, if not shame, certainly a little chagrin you know, of all people, a person who studies and teaches and thinks about and writes about digital technologies and our authenticity crisis and affect and emotion and all of that stuff. The idea that I could have gotten. Gotten was a little, you know.

Emily Keegan (3:10)

Yeah, it's very humbling, isn't it? It is, yeah.

Tressie McMillan Cottom (3:13)

Yeah.

Nadja Spiegelman (3:14)

What about for you, Emily?

Tressie McMillan Cottom (3:15)

What?

Nadja Spiegelman (3:15)

Do you have a moment?

Emily Keegan (3:16)

Well, I think, honestly, I'm really sad to admit this, but I was fooled by the photographs from last weekend of the Nicolas Maduro capture in Venezuela. There were a few that went around that were horizontal and show him handcuffed outside of a plane. And the reason that I believed them to be real, and I believed them to be real for, like, 24 hours was because they had been shared on Instagram by someone who I trusted, and that person had created a reel about how they looked very similar to Saddam Hussein pictures from 2003. So I had just kind of gone with it. And when we see images on these platforms, we're seeing them very small, we're seeing them very quickly. And both of those things make it very hard to sit with an image and decode it and make sure that it's real. So I'm embarrassed to say I was tricked by that.

Nadja Spiegelman (4:17)

Well, so you're embarrassed, I think, is one of the feelings. How else did it make you feel?

Emily Keegan (4:23)

Yeah, I was embarrassed because I'm a photo editor.

Tressie McMillan Cottom (4:25)

You know.

Emily Keegan (4:28)

My job. I came up in news magazines. My job has been to check the truth of an image. That was my job, is my job. So I didn't do due diligence in this one. And we can't take candy from strangers anymore is the takeaway.

Nadja Spiegelman (4:44)

Yeah. And of course, the scariest element of all of this isn't just when things that are funny are too funny, but the manipulation of these hugely consequential world events and our ability to trust that what we're seeing in the news is actually news. Like those fake images of Maduro's capture in Venezuela. Like people using AI to try to identify the ICE agent who shot at a civilian in Minneapolis. I mean, Tressy, do you think people are getting more savvy, or are you worried about this breakdown in trust?

Tressie McMillan Cottom (5:14)

Oh, no. There's no way that we can become more savvy. I think one of the things that people, certainly in my world, who think about the digital space and the social world are pretty much in agreement about is that this is not a problem that developing the right skill set is going to solve. As Emily points out, everything about the affordances of Digital technology, meaning what the app or the tool allows you to do, how it sets up and controls and directs your attention, is designed to overcome pretty much anything that we would train a person to do. So Web 2.0, for example, or certainly Web 1.0, we would say to people, right? You check the person who is sharing it. In Emily's case, this is a person she trusts, who was probably tricked to, by the way. Or we would tell you to look at the web address, and you could trust institutions, especially a.org or a.edu or a.gov. hello. Today, I don't trust almost anything on a.gov website, but those are the literacies that we spent the last 10 or 15 years training people on so that they could be better consumers of information. The reality is, is that technology has outstripped our ability to teach ourselves a set of tools at the level of accuracy that I think we would need. The speed is so great, the sophistication of the tool is so good, and there's just so much of it. So you talk about the scale of it, and so it isn't that I am becoming worried. I think the time to become worried is behind us. And I also think that this is a consequence of trust already being broken. One of the reasons that I think the content generated by especially nefarious actors using AI really works on us is because we are already so distrustful of our social institutions. Right. So this is one of those cases where I'm not sure that the AI slop is creating the crisis. It is exacerbating it, but it is not creating it. This is a consequence of low social trust already.

Emily Keegan (7:20)

100%.

Tressie McMillan Cottom (7:21)

Well, when Emily agrees with me, I do feel pretty good.

Emily Keegan (7:24)

I mean, I think what we're seeing over the last few days coming out of Minnesota, the ice shooting in Minnesota, what we're looking at are real video and real photographs. And we are having conversations about how to understand those images. And we're seeing a country divided on what they're seeing.

Nadja Spiegelman (7:47)

Yeah, I mean, I agree. If we can't even agree on how we interpret real images. And what's so interesting about this Minnesota case is that it also depends on which of these images you're looking at. They're all real footage, but you can see something very different depending on the angle from which it's filmed. And if we can't agree on how we're reading real images, how can we agree in a world where we can't even know if the images are real? From both of you, I'M curious, how do you think AI and all of this AI content is going to impact media organizations like the New York Times? And what can journalists and media organizations do to keep building trust?

Emily Keegan (8:26)

I mean, I think we have a real opportunity for legacy media to be the place where you go to find real trustworthy information. What these organizations have in place are teams of people dedicated to verifying images and facts. And when we are scrolling, having their icon next to an image or next to a piece of information is helpful in verifying it as real. But I think that one of the things that we should remember is that what we're really focusing on here are how images and text come across through tech platforms, namely social media, right? We're talking about what happens when we're looking at the news or entertainment through Instagram X threads, right? Those three tech platforms have been built around images and the trafficking of images, and they've done very little design work to help make sure that the person who is looking at that image can understand what they're seeing. And print media has spent a long time figuring out how to make sure that when they print an image, the person who's taking that image in can properly read it. An image is very slippery. And the way that we understand the world through photography is not actually usually what's inside the frame, but how it's contextualized with text and, and design around the frame. And none of those three platforms has done any legwork to make sure that those images are being held properly for the viewer to understand what they're looking at. And now AI is here and they have a lot of work to do.

Tressie McMillan Cottom (10:24)

I would be even more pointed and say there is no economic incentive for these platforms to do a better job of making consumers more informed and making them more media. In fact, the incentives are in the other direction. So when the tools become cheap enough and accessible enough, which is what we have seen with things like, you know, Grok or Sora, which is really popular with to manipulate video and photo images in particular, is that the ability to manipulate images has existed for a very long time. It is now, however, sort of democratized. It is available to so many more actors. We saw what happened though, when that came for text, right? So one of the reasons that Twitter became such a lightning rod in the popular discourse and in political discourse was because people had come to trust the text that was shared on Twitter. And then suddenly it felt like overnight, right, you were overwhelmed by, you know, what we might call pre AI slop or, you know, that moment, right? Before the AI slot, which is you were flooded with questionable text suddenly, and you see a decline trust, but you don't necessarily see a decline in people using it. So the takeaway if I'm a person running a social media platform is people will not change their user behavior based on whether or not they trust the platform. They will change their user behavior based on whether or not it's easy to use or it appeals to us emotionally. That means the incentives aren't there to be a trustworthy media platform. And that is actually not a job that the platform itself should be deciding. Right. The real question here is, where is the government? You know, where is legislation? Where is sort of popular outcry to say we deserve a better media environment than the one that we have? If we leave this to just pure economic incentives, the social media platforms are doing exactly what they should be doing. They are making us feel something. They are not necessarily informing us.

Nadja Spiegelman (12:25)

I think that's such a good point, and to that point that they don't have an economic incentive to regulate this, but they are driven by what people will look at. It doesn't seem people will look at AI images that. That trick them, but they don't like looking at AI images and videos. I think there's a survey that Sundays half of US adults would use social platforms less if there was more AI content on them. And I wonder how you think, like, can this be fixed by the fact that people simply don't like looking at this imagery?

Emily Keegan (12:55)

I mean, we can hope.

Tressie McMillan Cottom (12:58)

Yeah.

Emily Keegan (12:58)

I mean, crossing fingers, I know. I mean, it's called sloth because it sucks. I mean, it's slop because it's not good. And the reason it's not good is because AI is trying to be photography, and it is nothing like photography. The reason that photography is interesting to us is because of the way that it's created. It's because of how it's built, and it's because it's based in the real. And when you take that out, that image is boring. So what's happening is, AI is like, oh, we can be the new photography. Right. We can look so real, just like photography looks so real. But if it's not based in the real, those images hold very little interest to us.

Tressie McMillan Cottom (13:45)

Yeah, I strongly agree. I think the feeling that we are having when we see an AI image or an AI video is very similar to the feeling we have when we read text written by AI, which is the words can be in the right order, right? Yeah. You can recognize the form of it as being a sentence, a paragraph, a story, or a book, but you do not have the appropriate, appropriate emotional response to it. Now, we can get mystical and say that there's something about the human spirit, right, that we infuse into our art. And I am not disinclined to believe that, but I think that whatever that process is, AI can look like reality, but it cannot communicate emotionally to us in a way that, that resonates as being authentic. So I actually think using the word authentic to only speak about the aesthetics of AI is not exactly right. Something can be very beautiful and still leave you cold. And what I think people are experiencing is, hey, that was a really cute thing of a cute puppy jumping up and down on a trampoline. I should like that. And instead I don't really feel anything. Right? Having said that, we have spent the last 30 years developing a pretty nasty habit of scrolling. And I think it is going to take a lot more than a couple of, you know, feelings of betrayal to interrupt that loop. I've got to tell you, I'm in a group chat with a group of elderly people who I love and respect a lot. That's why I'm in the group chat. It's my mother and some of her friends and I think technologically savvy, right, Are used to using it in their work lives and in their personal lives. And they're crazy for AI images. They are crazy about them. They are making them, posting them, sharing them constantly. And you can point out to them, I will say, hey, Auntie, you know that is AI. Oh yeah, I know, hahaha. They are not actually then looking for or responding to authenticity. They're sort of responding to this. The way I think about the, like the, the art they sell in the mall, right? Like nobody is going up to look at that art so that they can have an emotional experience with it there. On a slightly different level, I think the conflation of those levels though, do create a social problem for us. But I say all that to say I'm not sure that leaving us emotionally cold is going to be enough to break the habit of using these tools.

Nadja Spiegelman (16:10)

Yeah, I think you're creating such a good distinction. There's can AI create art? And art is something that we think of as a way of communing with another soul. And if AI does not have a soul, then it cannot create art. And then there's what are we doing when we are scrolling on our phones, when we are addicted to social media? We're not looking for the same experience that Looking at a painting in a museum gives us. We're actually looking for a much sort of cheaper, faster emotional rush. And perhaps AI can do that. And if it can do that, we will continue consuming it. Emily, I'd love to know your thoughts.

Emily Keegan (16:43)

I mean, I think AI can create art, though. I mean, wait, hold on.

Tressie McMillan Cottom (16:46)

Don't you. Emily, I'm surprised you do.

Emily Keegan (16:50)

You can't be a person working in photography and say that something else and say that a new form of, of, of technology. Technology is not art. And I've seen, I mean, there's, There are photographers who have been working with AI recently who are making incredible things. When AI works as an art practice, it is hyper conscious of itself as a. It's. It's speaking to AI and talking about the medium in, in the process.

Tressie McMillan Cottom (17:18)

You know, what I hear is that you're saying one that is honest. I actually, I also just saw a really beautiful art piece that a local artist did recently where he superimposed using an AI prompt to try to recreate a memory that he had of a house from when he was a child. And then he takes the AI image and he sort of paints through that. And so you see both the AI impression of what they thought he was describing juxtaposed against his painting of his memory. Right. Again, super self aware. Right. Very referential. I absolutely would call that art. I do question, however, the difference between experts using it or artists. I should even just say using the tool to bring to life the conversation they want to have with the culture. And a AI prompt that someone comes up with off the cuff to send each other, you know, a funny video of them dancing in a Santa costume. I don't think that there are that many incentives for us to make that distinction online as part of the problem. And I'm not sure that we have the shared sensibilities to care that there's just so much more of the AI slop than there is the sort of, you know, artistic interpretation of AI.

Emily Keegan (18:40)

Yeah, I guess I would say that if it's, if it's, if I'm taking a funny video of myself via AI and I turn myself into a cat and I send it to you, that's not slop.

Nadja Spiegelman (18:50)

I want that. I would love that.

Emily Keegan (18:52)

Don't you want it?

Nadja Spiegelman (18:52)

Yeah.

Emily Keegan (18:53)

You want that? You would enjoy that. No.

Tressie McMillan Cottom (18:55)

Well, cats are the reason for the Internet, arguably. I get that. But you would enjoy this.

Emily Keegan (19:00)

I mean, it's like there's not a big jump between the filters that we have on our phones already and putting it through the tool of AI I think when we talk about slop, what we're talking about is that it's not well done.

Nadja Spiegelman (19:16)

I mean, I'm so interested in this question of can AI create good art? But I think part of that question gets to how do we define. My dad is an artist, and when I was like 7 years old and he was about to go into the dentist's chair, I asked him what art is, and he always asks for laughing gas at the dentist and says that this is a really good time for him to think. So he was like, hold that thought. And then got a lot of laughing gas and then came out and was like, I know the answer to this question. And the answer he gave me then, and it's been really useful for me my whole life, is that art is the means through which we gave shape to our thoughts and feelings. And it's very much a definition that comes from a perspective of the artist. But I think for even as a consumer of art, part of the joy of it is feeling like we have connected with someone else's experience of the world or we have connected with someone else's emotions. And I think that AI just can't do that. Emily, I'm so curious about your thoughts on this, because I love that you want to defend that AI can create art. I think it's so interesting.

Emily Keegan (20:19)

Well, AI isn't creating art. The person who's prompting AI is creating the art. They are making a choice to turn on their computer and type in some words, and those words produce something. It's the same process for the reason you pick up a pencil and draw or the reason you decide to click the shutter. I mean, the person making the prompt is the artist in that conversation. They're making the choice to start that art process. It's a tool.

Tressie McMillan Cottom (20:48)

I hear that, but that is not actually why we have so much AI slop. It isn't that there are billions of people programming and going and putting in one prompt at a time. It is that you can create an AI that will create a prompt based on generative AI text. The steps of human removal from the process isn't just human to prompt. Right. And if it was, then maybe, I don't know. Yeah, maybe we'd just be talking about the new era, you know, of pop Art. It is that there is a point at which the human is. Can absolutely be removed from the loop entirely. And I think that that is one why it is so valuable to social media platforms who have figured out an equation where it is just about generating something new for people to respond to, whether they are actually having a strong emotional response or not. That's what, you know, that it'll just keep people sort of Eng and doom scrolling and it needs to be cheap enough to do that. So I think one of the reasons that, again, we feel so cold is that a lot of this actually isn't a human being sitting down and writing a prompt. Right. I think the technology could improve and it could be harder to discern, and we would still be left emotionally cold when we engage with it.

Nadja Spiegelman (22:03)

Can we also talk about just the aesthetics of what it is that AI creates? Because I think that that is changing rapidly as it gets better and better at making things that look exactly like the kind of art we create. But in the past year, we call AI slop. But what we think of when we think of AI generated imagery is actually something that's like really slick and perfect and is sort of also akin to Trump's tackiness. I think there's a reason why he loves sharing this kind of video. I'm curious if either of you think that AI itself has its own aesthetic, how you would describe it and where that aesthetic comes from.

Emily Keegan (22:40)

Well, I think it's changing the aesthetic that you just described. A very slick kind of plastic feeling to skin that we get. I feel like recently what I've been seeing with AI is trying even harder to look like old photography with lots of grain, lots of pixelization. You saw that with the J. Crew vans commercials or advertisements from earlier 2025. So I think it might be changing a little bit.

Tressie McMillan Cottom (23:11)

Yeah, the aesthetics. I think if we over rely on aesthetics to tell us when AI has created an image or a video, then we have already fallen for the trick of AI which is to think that we individually alone can discern when it is enacted and when it isn't. I'm struck by how much of AI Slope is just sort of nihilistic in its position on society, that there's no choice about any of it. There's no political statement, there's no cultural statement, there's no artistic statement. Except I made you respond. I captured your energy for about 8 seconds. 8 seconds it took you to hit repost. And so I think the aesthetics will get better, but that doesn't necessarily mean it's going to have an aesthetic position. But it does get scarier about how much better aesthetics will make it easier for us to be fooled by AI.

Nadja Spiegelman (24:04)

Yeah, I think it's really. It's true that it is cycling through different Trends the way art always has, that it's moved from slick to looking more analog, and that it can only have a true aesthetic if it's guided by a human's sense of aesthetic and position and meaning. I'm seeing a lot of people say, just talking, thinking about the return to sort of like a graininess and analog, that you're both Talking about that 2026 in reaction to the creation of AI imagery is going to be the year of anal. It'll be a moment when people want to craft in person, that they want to meet in real life, that they want to step out from behind the screen. Do you think that has any teeth or is everything too digital now for that to happen?

Emily Keegan (24:45)

I mean, I think we're definitely seeing the trend as an aesthetic trend. Return to film has been an aesthetic trend for the last few years. It's only building. What is funny is that then, you know, AI then looks like film. It follows you wherever you go and it will shape shift and to whatever you create.

Tressie McMillan Cottom (25:06)

Yeah, I mean, I like to think that we are, you know, entertaining the return to, like, material craft and all that, but we've had eras where we said that before. And it's not that it isn't true that there isn't some trend. And like, groups don't start and people don't, you know, people go through cycles of making zines, for instance, or whatever. It's not that those things aren't true. I'm just not sure that they are true enough to say that it is an antidote to whatever it is about AI slot that scares us. Because that's fundamentally what we're talking about. There's just some great unknown there. It scares us. It's a little intimidating. And I'm not sure that getting back to crafting culture, as much as I love it, I've been working on a zine with my stepdaughter, right. Trying to expose her to that whole world. And so I love it, but I'm not sure that that is the antidote to. Why does this scare us so much?

Emily Keegan (26:01)

I mean, we're seeing corporations, though, really take this to heart, I think, in how they are now showing us how their advertisements were made to prove that humans were behind it. Apple has done this, did this beginning the middle of last year. A lot of the ads that they were creating, they then did behind the scenes video to make sure that we all knew that. That there were people involved, that the puppets that were on display were handmade and had real puppeteers attached to them. Even though we all saw the same. We saw it small scrolling on our phones. Right. Ultimately, that we weren't sitting in a theater watching puppets. We were watching an image that could have honestly been done digitally. Right. But they wanted to prove that they're human. And. And I feel like we're trapped in, like, a terrible episode of Is It Cake? Or something? You know, and it's like, we all have to prove that. What's. We have to. We're just stuck there. And I'm not convinced that it's a bad thing, honestly, like, I'm not convinced that we. We will get out of this in a worse place. Like, this might actually be a great exercise in reminding ourselves what we care about and how we are human beings that want to be around other human beings and are excited about real things. I don't think it's a bad thing.

Tressie McMillan Cottom (27:34)

I will say. I will agree with Emily on that one. I think there are some dark days ahead, don't get me wrong, where it's gonna be like, I cannot consume another AI movie or another AI script. By the way, I'm now obsessed with movies. I watch it, I go, I am positive that it was written by AI. Oh, my God, I am so positive.

Emily Keegan (27:52)

Totally.

Tressie McMillan Cottom (27:53)

Thank you. I grade essays all the time for living people. I think I know when it's a human voice and when it isn't. And I am watching so much these days and where I am so sure it was written by AI. But all that does is make me then want to read a real book. Right. I kind of want to cleanse myself of that after I've experienced so much of it. I tell my fellow writers, younger writers, for example, who are all wrestling with these questions about AI and what it might do to publishing and the written word. It's like, yeah, there will be this, you know, this era of fascination. But in the end, I think it only creates more desire for real writing, for a real conversation, for a real engagement. I do think in the long run, the human experience and our desire for it wins. It's just that in the interim, there's going to be a lot of really bad stuff to wade through and sort through to reconnect with human nature.

Emily Keegan (28:51)

Yeah. If we just look at the history of photography and what it did for painting and how painting still sells at a much higher price point than any photograph ever taken. And it's because of the human hand attached to the act of painting and not about how much time it takes for a photograph to be made by a professional photographer. Because we know that a professional photographer could take years to create a piece of art and it'll still sell for less. And we have to ask ourselves why? Because it's not just about the amount of time put in, but about how we understand the, the role of machine in creating a piece of art and whether or not we value machine made objects and art as much as we value art and objects that are made with the human hand.

Nadja Spiegelman (29:50)

Yeah. And I also think that that feeling that you're describing, Tressy, of like I need to cleanse myself by reaching out for connection or that you're talking about Emily of I want to feel the human hand behind this piece that makes us still value painting even in an era when an ident image could be created by a machine in seconds. That, that creates these existential questions that are actually hopeful and useful for us of what is it that we want from the world and what does it mean to be human? But as you said, there's dark days ahead. We're not there yet. And I wonder for during those dark days, as we're being inundated by more and more of these images, I personally would love tips on how to spot AI content. I know you've said throughout this conversation that it's getting hard and harder to spot, but as journalists and consumers of culture, how do you still try and differentiate things?

Emily Keegan (30:49)

Okay, I'm going to answer your question, but I keep thinking about, you know, how whenever there's a flood, there's a photograph that shows up of a shark in floodwaters that's like years old. And every time I'm like, oh, oh, wait, no, that's fake.

Tressie McMillan Cottom (31:08)

You forget every time.

Emily Keegan (31:09)

I forget every time. So I don't think there's a way, honestly, I think that the reason, you know, that there's not sharks swimming in the flood outside your door is because it's not in the papers of the New York Times. I think that at this point, the only way to know if an image is quote, unquote real is if the person who's trafficking it is a place or person that you trust and is verified.

Tressie McMillan Cottom (31:40)

Yeah. So listen, you are on TikTok at 2am and you think that the cute baby saying the, you know, the funny thing, you know, if it's funny, no harm, no foul, Right. I think the question becomes when do we allow the image to move us to act? Whether that means we share it, whether that means we get very angry or anxious about, you know, this is some, you know, major news development. Right. Then the question becomes Wait, is this real? That question becomes all the more important. So I think the first question is, does this make me want to do something? Am I enjoying it too much? Is one of the questions I ask myself, do I agree with it too much? If so, that may be less about the artifact and more about how it confirms my biases or my beliefs or makes me feel right or makes me feel superior. So one of the easiest things we can do is, do I like this too much? If you like it too much, interrogate it. That's all. And if you can't easily interrogate it, maybe we don't share it. Maybe we just had a little blip of enjoyment online for eight seconds and it's okay to let that just wash over us because ultimately that's all AI Slop is designed to do. It's just supposed to wash over us.

Nadja Spiegelman (33:05)

That is perfectly said, trustee. Thank you. Absolutely. Although I really, I hope that we can also all go outside and touch something real.

Tressie McMillan Cottom (33:14)

Yes, please go outside. I cannot encourage people to do that enough. Go outside and remember what the sky looks like, everybody.

Nadja Spiegelman (33:23)

And on that note, Emily Tressy, thank you so much for being here. I hope that you find genuine moments of feeling connection in your day amongst the AI generated imagery.

Emily Keegan (33:34)

Listen, if you are dress yourself up as a cat dancing, just send it to me.

Tressie McMillan Cottom (33:38)

I just want to say the audience for People as Cats is what I'm taking away from this conversation.

Emily Keegan (33:46)

Thanks for having me.

Tressie McMillan Cottom (33:48)

Thanks for having me.

Podcast Announcer (34:04)

If you like this show, follow it on Spotify, Apple or wherever you get your podcasts. The opinions is produced by Derek Arthur Bishaka Darba, Christina Samulewski and Gillian Weinberger. It's edited by Kari Pitkin and Allison Bruzick. Engineering, mixing and original music by Isaac Jones, sonia Herrero, Pat McCusker, Carol Sabaro and Afim Shapiro. Additional music by Amin Sahota. The Fact Check team is Kate Sinclair, Mary Marge Locker and Michelle Harris. Audience strategy by Shannon Busta and Christina Samulewski. The director of Times Opinion Audio is Annie Rose Strasser.