00:00Depending on your social media feed, you may have recently seen Charlie Kirk's face popping up on reaction GIFs and even old viral videos.
00:09It's a trend called Kirkifying, but behind the AI edits, there's a much bigger story to tell about technology and consent.
00:21A thread on Reddit asks, can y'all leave every Kirkified pic y'all have in the comments?
00:26While some users condemned the thread, outrage was outweighed by the dozens of images left in the past week.
00:34With how popular it's become, users have filled the thread with their favorites and even dropped other memes asking anyone with AI tools to Kirkify it.
00:43According to Know Your Meme, the first Kirkified meme appeared just 13 days after Kirk's assassination in September.
00:50It's a remake of a popular meme of streamer iShowSpeed trying not to laugh during one of his live streams.
00:58Speed, I'm watching the stream while you try not to laugh, bruh. That's disrespectful, bruh.
01:03The creator of that Kirkified Speed meme went private for a while, but now that the account is public again,
01:09that video sits at more than 3.2 million views and over 144,000 likes.
01:16From there, AI remixes of Kirk exploded.
01:20One user used Viggle AI to recreate a Michael Jordan meme after joking he had a meeting with HR about a Kirk comment he made.
01:28Tools like Viggle make these edits incredibly easy to create and share.
01:34And really, there's no grand reason for any of this, just another internet trend that runs wild.
01:40Shocking moments create meme fuel, and Kirk's assassination created a massive surge of online activity around his image.
01:49Even before the Kirkified meme started, people were already circulating reaction photos and GIFs in response to his death.
01:57Kirk is not the only one caught in the AI meme machine.
02:00When OpenAI released Sora 2, users began deepfaking deceased public figures because their likeness isn't always protected under copyright laws.
02:10While it's often meant as satire, sometimes it crosses a line, especially for families of those who have passed away.
02:18After a complaint from Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s estate, OpenAI announced it would no longer allow videos of him on its platform,
02:26saying it wants families and representatives to have more control over how their likeness is used.
02:32One really good example is about two years ago or so, deepfakes of Taylor Swift in porn were generated,
02:39and it created a great deal of outrage from not only her fans, but also from regulators.
02:45David Gunkel is a professor who specializes in AI and ethics.
02:50While this example is much more extreme, he says it comes from the same technological shift,
02:57how easy it has become to recreate someone's face with zero oversight.
03:01Because regulation around AI is still limited, it's difficult to even identify who's responsible if a deepfake causes real harm.
03:09You can bet that at some point there will be a lawsuit where they will try to identify who is the responsible party.
03:16Right now, there is no legal arrangement that tells us who's responsible.
03:23This, among many other examples, is why some people remain hesitant about AI.
03:28But Gunkel said avoiding the technology isn't the answer.
03:32I think we have to engage it and we have to see what it can and cannot do and together decide what is the best way forward that values what we value
03:41and gives us results that speak to the kinds of things that will encourage human flourishing
03:48as opposed to leaving us afraid or sort of hesitant to engage with these technologies.
03:56For more on this story and others, head over to san.com or download our mobile app.
Be the first to comment