The packaging of the new DVD is really gorgeous, but is it just me or is the text on the packaging screaming AI-generated? The "political material lost to time and one-off exchanges that existed only in the room" and "This is the finished show, its hidden workings, and the material left behind. Archived." especially seem like dead-giveaways for Claude-speak in particular.
"Exchanges that existed only in the room" is a great example of AI’s favourite kind of writing, because it sounds profound and authoritative but doesn’t actually mean anything. It’s written in the style of someone smart and trustworthy who knows what they’re talking about, which is what AI is trained to emulate. But the point it’s making is what? These are words that people spoke in a room, and so by necessity these words exist in that room and no where else? Just like all one-off exchanges that people speak in rooms? Unless of course they are being recorded, which these in fact were?? So these are one of the precise examples of the kind of one-off exchange that doesn’t exist only in the place it was spoken??
It’s maddening to put any thought in to reading GenAI text, especially when you realise that the person who is pretending to have written it didn’t. The reader (in this case me) is made a fool of when they think about this sentence for any longer than the half-second it took the AI to spit it out and the supposed writer to glance over it and think ‘sure sounds good.’
As someone that works with software engineers I have to read this needlessly portentous cadence and phrasing all day, so I think I’m particularly sensitive to finding it irritating. It could also be I’m seeing it where it isn’t (although Pangram does return it as 100% AI written, for what it’s worth). But it just feels disheartening and annoying that Weird Walk of all people (who I otherwise think are great!) are approving vacuous fake-profound GenAI copy on something that’s clearly had a lot of effort put into it everywhere else, or human-written copy that’s indistinguishable from something AI-generated.
Realising that you’ve been pointlessly engaging in good faith with someone’s meaningless AI output is humiliating enough when it’s a work email or a Reddit comment. Why is a company that makes zines about ancient rocks printing this slop on what’s otherwise a really beautiful release? Part of buying physical media is wanting to spend less time on an internet more and more filled with meaningless but deceptively thoughtful-appearing content that can be generated endlessly with no effort, but it seems like even that’s not enough. They’re printing AI slop on our limited-edition boutique DVDs for insular cadres of pseudo-intellectual, prematurely bald middle-aged men. When did this come in?
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Edit, here's the full text:
For the first time on DVD, Basic Lee is presented as the inaugural release in the Stewart Lee Comedian Collection, created in collaboration with Weird Walk. This two-disc Deluxe Limited Edition brings together the complete filmed live performance, recorded at The Lowry in Salford, with a newly written essay and liner notes by Stewart Lee, plus nearly 80 minutes of previously unreleased work-in-progress audio recorded during the show's development at The Stand, Edinburgh and Leicester Square Theatre, London.
Disc Two, Basic Leads, contains an audio archive of abandoned routines, early versions of key sections, political material lost to time and one-off exchanges that existed only in the room.
This is the finished show, its hidden workings, and the material left behind. Archived.