Working on a website, even one as basic as TTAG, you rely on a lot of different technology to create and share information. One useful tool for many collaborators is a site called WeTransfer, which allows you, for free, to upload and transfer large files such as multiple images to a person rather than risking exceeding their inbox limits.
To help pay for providing the service for free, WeTransfer uses the screen where you are uploading or downloading your files as a virtual billboard. Most of the ads are quirky, but the other day, one stood out that caught my attention. It was promoting a website called The Shotline.
The Shotline is kind of a strange site that uses AI to recreate conversations of the dead—more specifically, those people tragically killed in some way by firearms—and tries to imagine what they would say if they could speak from the dead about their life being cut short and of course, why legislators need to pass more restrictive gun laws. It uses people killed in mass shootings, arguments, as well as some who died by their own hand holding a gun.
It has a line-art view of the person’s face, a short-written bio below their picture and a button on which you can press play to hear “their” message.
But the Shotline doesn’t just use AI to generate some from-the-grave emotional plea, it allows a person to send one of these AI messages to their local congressional member. The site uses all of the usual deceptive language and buzzwords (i.e., “common sense gun laws) anti-gun politicians use in sidestepping true solutions to violence and those who perpetrate it and instead simply work at leaving vulnerable American’s even more defenseless. (It’s interesting, but one of the personas even notes gun laws don’t do anything, but then pleas for people to pass more of the laws that don’t “do anything.”)
The stories are all tragic. There is no denying that and the pain of losing a loved one to violence or any senseless tragedy is unquestionably heart-wrenching. But using technology to create emotional illusions blur the real issues that need to be discussed…and more importantly solved.
In Uzi Garcia’s story, one of the victims of the Uvalde, Texas, school shooting, the AI recreation says nothing has changed since the shooting and asks, “What is it going to take for you to help make sure violence like this stops happening?”
Of course, the sole solution the site issues up is more gun laws…not enforcement of existing gun laws, not better mental health services, not a consideration of the violent movies and games people play and the possible effect they have on fractured psyches, not even a suggestion at looking at why so many in today’s society place such a minimal value on human life.
One thing is certain, like it or not, the gun rights/anti-gun argument is an emotional one, with passionate people on both sides of the issue most often wanting the same thing—to feel safe—but with very different views on how to ensure that safety. And while most of us on the pro-rights side of the issue apply logic and reason to our approach on the issue, the other side, focuses only on the emotion, and now they are trying to amplify that emotion as if the dead are speaking to us through AI, which is now helping to strategize and make their case for them.
Everyone wants to solve this issue, nobody more so than gun owners—who own and enjoy using firearms for many different reasons including target shooting, competition, hunting, collecting, investing and to provide their world with a sense of safety by giving them a means to secure that safety—and we have to make sure the legitimate voices on that side of the argument are heard as well.