The wave of AI-generated anthropomorphic fruit taking over social media seems to be subliminally pushing a distinct political agenda.
Summer is the time of the year when the weather gets warmer, drinks get cooler, skin gets darker, and hair gets lighter. Friends, fun, and my favourite part – fruit! The richness, ripeness, and freshness of summer fruits are like nothing else. Nothing could make me look at nature’s candy with disdain. Nothing, except turning it into an anthropomorphic abomination and inserting it into repetitive, erotic, soulless storylines.
Generative AI is becoming less of an option and more of a shadow – one that always lingers and hovers around, refusing to leave, latching onto you and suffocating you like a python squeezing the breath out of its prey. Every day, it seems like media algorithms try their best to push some kind of AI-generated, sloppy, brain-numbing absurdity. One such disgrace to the face of the planet and the name of fruit is the AI-generated videos following the lives of humanoid fruit. And this isn’t a localised phenomenon. Media algorithms all over the world are pushing this kind of content.
Why is the algorithm pushing content for which the word “trashy” seems too flattering? Why is it that this content is heavily fetishistic and erotic in nature? And why is such content being force-fed to us? The answers to these questions are intense and multifaceted.
Generative AI is digital vermin. It is an invasive species in the mediascape and does not really mutate or evolve much in terms of what it generates. Repetitive storylines of these AI-generated videos of fruit featuring infidelity, adultery, implications of sexual assault, and/or pregnancy serve as a testament to this. It is the same, redundant, fetishistic formula applied over and over again. It tends to dwell heavily on themes of female degradation and powerlessness, lack of bodily autonomy, and male domination. All these themes seem to be incredibly prevalent throughout this genre of brainless media.
From the usernames of the accounts (@aifood487 and @dumbal30_.ai, to name a couple) posting such content across multiple platforms including Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok to the storylines they follow, the uncreativity and unoriginality is unmatched. However, there is meaning that goes beyond the mere uncreativity of generative AI. Now, to be fair, fruit has often been used throughout literature as symbolism for sexuality and intimacy. However, in those contexts, themes of tenderness, passion, and self-discovery are emphasised rather than control, humiliation, and degradation.
According to a 2022 study by the Zien Journal of Social Sciences and Humanities, repetition in media serves distinct political purposes. Essentially, repetition convinces an audience that a particular idea is the truth or that a certain ideology is correct. There is a misconception that AI is ultimately neutral. According to computer scientist, Nisheeth Vishnoi, on speaking with the Yale School of Management, “Despite being governed by precise mathematical rules, algorithms can be very brittle, and human biases can creep in, and they’re not really as objective as people think.”
Thus, it is safe to conclude that these repeated themes we see in AI-slop media push a certain political agenda; one that is predominantly right-leaning. The algorithmic combinatorics involved in the generation and re-generation of the same story in different fonts, or in this case, fruit, can be accounted to algorithmic biases of users as well as tech oligarchs who ultimately control what is being propagated and pushed on the platforms they own. Hence, it is fathomable that their platforms push content that aligns with and furthers what tech capitalists find not just profitable, but also politically advantageous.
Stereotypical gender roles and the idea that reproductive autonomy lies completely with men are frequently seen in this kind of content. The pushing of an agenda that emphasises female submission and lack of reproductive autonomy gives a subliminal message: you can’t escape your reproductive responsibility. Beyond disturbing. This makes perfect sense when you also notice that there is a “rape-esque” aspect to generative AI being forced onto users with the whole narrative of “AI is coming whether you like it or not” and “just accept AI.”
But that is not where the unsettling nature of AI slop ends. Often, these videos use bright colours and incredibly cartoonish characters, making it seem like they are targeted at children. This means that the political agenda in question is being forced onto young, malleable minds. Female humiliation and degradation as concepts are being fed to innocent children who are yet to develop a complete worldview. In addition, it is important to notice the incredibly eroticised nature of the videos.
Fruit is personified, and somehow, hypersexualised. Borderline pornographic content is being pushed to children in a colourful, cartoonish costume. I wondered why billionaire techies who have all the power in the world to control the media and hence prevent such sexually explicit content from reaching children do not do anything about it. Then I remembered the relationship billionaires have with children.
Why is AI slop so soulless? More importantly, how are we accepting it? The simple answer is that brains are getting smoother. In other words, we are being so repeatedly subjected to media that is a full-on disgrace to the realm of art and literature that we no longer comprehend the complexity of soul and depth. The bar is deep in the fiery pits of hell when it comes to modern-day standards for art, music, and literature. Critics, including Dwight Macdonald and Neil Postman, repeatedly explain the “dumbing down” of media and culture.
Macdonald’s essay, A Theory of Mass Culture, beautifully elucidates this. He writes about the dichotomy of culture – how culture is divided into “high culture” or the “traditional” kind that is chronicled in textbooks, and “mass culture”, which is a mass-produced, impersonal commodity that, unlike high culture, requires no intellectual capabilities to consume and relish. This easy-to-produce, easy-to-consume media systematically reduces intellectual capacity and withers away the conscious ability to critique, turning consumers into mindless bots who are willing to enthusiastically accept anything and everything that is thrown at them.
Being fed media that actively disapparates neurons leaves the masses in a dazed state. A dazed, digitally intoxicated, intellectually desensitised population is easier to control. This intoxication also allows you to learn to love your oppressor, an idea that is explored in the dystopian novel Brave New World, by Aldous Huxley. The consumption of such slop trains you to simply accept whatever is pushed to you – ideology, policy, or agenda – without question or critique. The masses become hypnotised into a state of anti-intellectual euphoria that allows the oligarchy to function as they please.
Women’s bodies have always been objectified and used as a commodity. Sexually explicit AI fruit videos further this. Hundreds of thousands of viewers engage with this content while another network of individuals (and/or bots) is focused on pushing out more of this mass-produced commodity. Several Reddit forums and other online spaces exist where people teach each other how to create these mass-produced atrocities. In essence, people are learning to capitalise off of the fetishisation of fruit and the humiliation of women, as if the densely patriarchal society we live in hasn’t already sold women for parts for centuries.
Something as stupid, seemingly harmless, and supposedly as insignificant as sexually active fruit that one may deem as “not that deep” is indeed just that deep. It is crucial not to fall victim to any form of mind-numbing cognitive dissolution that may be pushed by the media; retain critical thinking, and hence be able to challenge monopolies. Question and ponder what you see, no matter how “brain-dead” the content itself may come off as. A population that can think for themselves and is not afraid to exercise their intellect will not fall victim to blissful oppression and brainwashing.
Read Also: Beyond the Binary of Pink and Blue
Image Source: The Aggie, EarlyGame, The New York Times
Souparnika.S.Rajkumar