I don’t want to sound dramatic but, a few weeks ago, something happened that has completely changed how I view online material. I fell for AI-generated content. For someone who is constantly squabbling with older relatives about how little they question what they see online, this was a profoundly unsettling and humbling experience. And it made me think about how, during this holiday period, we could all use this as an opportunity to approach those conversations with the “WhatsApp aunties” more sensitively.
From ‘WhatsApp Aunties’ to ‘AI Aunties’
I think I have the perfect sample of WhatsApp aunties. Sadly displaced from Sudan due to war, a permanently online group of women, some direct aunts, some not, but all aunties nonetheless, sit in a control room of sorts in their different cities and send out daily broadcasts that simulate as much as possible the interactions and updates they would have shared had they still been living in the same place. They even have office hours. One can divine the start of the day in their respective locations as they clock in and the forwards begin: First, it is morning greetings, maybe an embellished picture of Quranic verses or a graphic of flowers, wishing you a good day.
Then, the hardcore stuff. Snippets of videos from war zones back home, clipped debates between political antagonists, and sometimes entire YouTube episodes of interviews. After this news shift comes the lighter one (secretly my favourite): TikTok and Instagram reels of Arab celebrities with too much plastic surgery accompanied by scream emojis, footage from family and friend weddings across the world, captioned with love heart eyes. The stream is interspersed with the longest voice memos you will ever receive, asking how you are and telling you how they are with an introductory and concluding prayer session. It is sweet and relentless.
AI Aunties
All of this is dumped with an abandon that suggests no understanding of or respect for phone memory limitations. Whenever my mother casually mentions that her phone is acting up and mutters something about no space, my heart sinks. I know that hours and hours of deletions of grainy videos are upon me. But most galling is how much fake content it includes. The WhatsApp aunties have become AI aunties. This was frankly a problem even before AI became so sophisticated, but it is now much, much worse. There is the harmless stuff; cats hugging babies or penguins feeding themselves with cutlery. I try not to get too agitated by this or point out that it’s fake. But when it’s videos of Taylor Swift endorsing the pro-Palestine movement, it’s impossible to let it slide.
The result is a series of exchanges that are both saddening and enraging. Aunties will either take it personally, like I am disrespecting them by implying they can’t tell what’s real or not, and double down. Or they will express genuinely innocent beliefs in the veracity of online content, imbuing the internet with the same standards of TV or radio they grew up with.
Telling the aunties that something is entirely fake is like asking them to imagine a TV news broadcast is not real. Also, they are actually receiving news broadcast clips on their phones that are not real. You end up sounding like the crazy one, trying to explain that a living, breathing, walking, talking person is just pixels generated from prompts.
To argue or not to argue
In a recent episode of Subway Takes, comedian Ola Labib said we shouldn’t try to convince elders that AI content isn’t real. Her argument: Let them have their little comforts. I kind of get that, what harm is it doing really? But there is an emotional element to it as well. Policing elders’ content feels to me like a manifestation of a deep-seated fear that they’re losing it, that their faculties are waning, as they succumb to old age and the bewildering assaults of new tech and device addiction. I think it is truly distressing for people to see parents and relatives increasingly become addicted to their phones and become slightly addled, a window into a sort of premature senility.
But there are social and political reasons too, for pushing back. Aunties (and, to a lesser degree, uncles) have a huge amount of disseminative power and a lot of free time. They wield a formidable authority, particularly in diaspora communities, both as enforcers of values, as organisers and sponsors of social events, and generally as gatekeepers of community interactions and upholders of norms. Collectively and individually, they are forces to be reckoned with, which makes disagreements even more challenging and fraught with risks of falling foul of powerful elders. But they are force multipliers in terms of spreading fake content that is politically inflammatory or conspiratorial, and when unchallenged, they contribute to the general degradation of the information ecosystem and its associated political fallout.
How to help them
So, I would say talk to them, keep talking to them, but do it kindly, with time and explanation, rather than frustration and bewilderment. Maybe just acknowledge the content first before pointing out its fakery – a “really cool!” followed a little while later with a “actually, do you think that’s real? I’m not sure”. Also, furnish them with the “tells”: video glitches, lack of shadows, weird blinking. Bear in mind what the world looks like to them. It is a place that is changing too rapidly to assimilate how it is happening. Our elders are also, simply, getting older. With that comes all sorts of uncertainties and unsettlement; loneliness, loss of identity as work is retired from, and children age out of parenting. Exacerbating that are the vast distances that now often separate elders from their kin and peers. Online content and its constant exchange are about so much more than sharing information; it is a new language, almost phatic, for trying to connect.
Remember that the tech is evolving so quickly that even the most savvy have to be vigilant. I now have to be on alert after admiring a song with album cover art, a music video, a richly talented singer and fantastic accompanying chorus. After days of trying to hunt down the artist, I was thunderstruck to find out it was all AI. It will happen to all of us. Welcome me to the aunties brigade. Please be kind. Break it to me gently.
