AI vs. columnist: Can you spot the difference?

Plus: Justice for grandparents, China's economic woes and more. Bloomberg This is Bloomberg Opinion Today, a battery acid spaghetti smoothie of Bloomberg Opinion’s opinions. [Sign up here](. Today’s Agenda - AI is coming for your [creativity](. - [Grandparents]( are no child-care cure. - China’s [economic wounds]( are spreading. All the Boys [I’ve Loved Before]( Ate a Fish Normally, I generously sprinkle dozens of links — scores, even — through the first paragraph of this newsletter, to delight and surprise your parched digital palates. But not today, reader. Today I want you to click on one link and one link only: to [this 35-second video]( of Parmy Olson. AI Will Replace You: Parmy Olson Did you click it? Have you watched?? With the sound on?? If you did — and again, if you didn’t, [go right now!]( — you know that the video doesn’t actually feature Parmy. Instead, it shows her not-not-creepy avatar, which was developed over the course of two hours during a visit to Synthesia, a company that specializes in AI-generated videos. Visually, I can’t tell the difference between avatar Parmy and real-life Parmy, pictured here: Photographer: Chris Ratcliffe/Bloomberg But on an auditory level, there’s definitely something fishy going on. Her voice is a strange amalgamation of Siri and Parmy, who was asked to say the sentence “All the boys ate a fish” on camera because apparently it captures every movement of the mouth. (Zero judgment if you just whispered “All the boys ate a fish” like I did when reading [her column](.) She recorded a whole bunch of nonsensical sentences so that Synthesia could mimic her facial expressions, body movements and gestures — a process that 15,000 companies, from McDonald’s to Amazon, have signed up for. “Instead of hiring an actor to present a corporate training video and paying for their travel and time, a company can use an avatar for a fraction of the price,” Parmy writes. Say goodbye to office-safety videos that feature men in toupees carrying pagers on their belt loops — now companies can use AI to take their new-hire training videos out of the 20th century. Parmy says the imminent ubiquity of these avatars “hammers a virtual nail in the coffin of the creative process we know today, accelerating a transformation that is seeing humans outsource the work of their imagination and even their own likenesses.” As an arts-and-crafts child who went through a lot of Scotch tape, I want to do a [Phoebe Bridgers-style scream]( into the void at the prospect that generative AI may slowly “lead to soulless, increasingly derivative content.” And yet we can’t just ignore AI. It’s everywhere, as evidenced by the 271 tabs I have open on my computer right now. This technology and all the hype it brings [are changing the game]( for everyone — [lawyers](, [students](, [teens](, [actors](, [bosses](, [bankers](, [journalists](, [autistic people](, [Chinese companies](, [Minecraft fans]( and oh, I don’t know, potentially the [entire human race](. Maybe you think that sounds melodramatic. And sure, AI could never re-create [battery acid spaghetti smoothies]( or [the queen of the rodents](. But this is a sad moment in which everyone is keenly aware that their job is somewhat replaceable. “We all want to distinguish ourselves from AI systems that seem to be rapidly on course to surpass us,” Parmy writes. And when that time comes — when [the robots surgically insert devices into all of our brains]( and this newsletter no longer has the human touch of a freak like me — we’ll start to lose sight of what creativity actually is. Until then, you’re stuck with me and this random link [about why nobody wants to buy Joan Didion’s apartment](.[1](#footnote-1) Bonus AI Reading: - [AI bots]( are coming for the finance bros. — Matt Levine - The [biggest tech rally]( in two decades will still have some losers. — John Authers Team Gerri Here’s a fun fact about [J. Smith-Cameron]( — the actress who played “Gerri Kellman” on HBO’s (I refuse to call it [Max]() [Succession](: The role she was cast for was [originally intended]( to be a man. “At first, there was no Gerri. There was Gerry-with-a-Y, a male character who didn’t appear in the pilot.” According to [Bustle](, Smith-Cameron was not deterred by that fact, so she just went ahead and submitted a self-tape. The showrunners ended up loving her, and she went on to be a crucial character in the show, [ad-libbing]( her way to becoming a fan favorite. The 65-year-old actress falls into an age bracket that is traditionally underrepresented in Hollywood: Women over the age of 50 make up 20% of the population and get [less than 8%]( of the screentime. There are myriad reasons for this (Hollywood shares many of the same ailments as Succession’s [primarily male boardroom]() but one stands out in particular: Many older women — including Smith-Cameron, who had to take time off from her career to care for her dying mother — are drowning in unpaid labor. Grandmas, for instance, are “the invisible glue holding our [creaking child-care infrastructure]( together,” Sarah Green Carmichael writes, pointing out that “some 42% of parents rely on their own parents to help care for children, a figure that is eerily close to the 40% of families that say they don’t have the child care they need.” Now, it may have been fine to call Nana in the 1990s when [people retired earlier]( and lived right down the street. But today, “Grandma has a laptop and a job.” Madonna Harrington Meyer, a sociologist at Syracuse University, told Sarah. A lot of modern-day grandparents are still [girl-bossing it]( just as hard as Smith-Cameron and her hypercompetent fictional character Gerri. Having them be on-call for [summer camp]( pickup duty is only going to set them — and society — back. Read [the whole thing](. Telltale China Charts It’s pretty unusual for a player on the losing side to be named a game’s MVP. Sure, there’s football great [Chuck Howley](, who managed to snag the honor during Super Bowl V in 1971, or [Jerry West](, who received the first-ever NBA Finals MVP award in 1969. Yet such examples are rare, and for good reason — the Most Valuable Player should be able to clinch a victory, right? Right. Even in non-sports contexts, the logic holds: China has long been the MVP of Asia, propelling the continent to economic heavyweight status. The trouble is, China’s regional teammates — South Korea, Japan and Singapore — are losing. That’s why it’s getting harder to believe the suss narrative that Asia’s MVP is still going strong while all of its peers are struggling to stay afloat. “Not benefiting Asia much is one thing, [is China is now hurting the region](?” Dan Moss rightly asks. Sadly, the spillover of China’s blergh economic vibes don’t end in Asia. Europe, too, is feeling the gloom. Luxury stocks have been on a wild ride this year, with the [LVMH lollapalooza]( subsiding faster than you can say “[Gorpcore](.” Elon Musk — who, ironically, just wrapped up [a trip to China]( — recently snatched the [world’s richest person crown]( from Bernard Arnault’s head. “The C-shaped recovery — the wave of demand from China since its post-pandemic reopening — [is starting to deflate](,” Andrea Felsted writes, and nobody knows that more than Big Bling. Further Reading Fears of FBI overreach are exaggerated, but threats to [derail the NSA]( are not. — Bloomberg’s editorial board Democrats must be done dancing with [the debt-ceiling devil](. — Jonathan Bernstein Ruminating about [war in Taiwan]( has become a misguided parlor game in Washington. — Minxin Pei Ukraine’s [drone attack on Russia]( is part of a calculated gamble. — Leonid Bershidsky The Fed needs to pull [a Jackie Wilson]( and [push interest rates]( higher and higherrr. — Bill Dudley The [SCOTUS ruling on water]( comes down to two words: “adjacent” and “adjoining.” — Stephen L. Carter ICYMI Meta unveiled its [new headset](. Adidas is donating [Yeezy profits](. [Stripe]( is getting into credit cards. Biden took [a tumble](. Kickers An Indian official took his [phone retrieval]( to a new extreme. (h/t Bobby Ghosh) America’s big knitting event has [ghosted]( its knitters. There’s a jerky-themed [“meat retreat.”]( Notes: Please send beef jerky and feedback to Jessica Karl at jkarl9@bloomberg.net. [Sign up here]( and follow us on [Instagram](, [TikTok](, [Twitter]( and [Facebook](. [1] An AI would never dare to end a paragraph like that, but I did! And so did [this guy](, kinda. Follow Us You received this message because you are subscribed to Bloomberg's Bloomberg Opinion Today newsletter. If a friend forwarded you this message, [sign up here]( to get it in your inbox. [Unsubscribe]( [Bloomberg.com]( [Contact Us]( Bloomberg L.P. 731 Lexington Avenue, New York, NY 10022 [Ads Powered By Liveintent]( [Ad Choices](