A Bright New World 2

He sipped on the oversized Pryamsn energy drink as he looked over the latest revised copy of an ad read for a V-tuber marketing campaign.  Even before reading it he had known the process of reviewing and editing was futile.  His agency had worked with this same heterochronic-anime-cat-girl-ghost on a few previous campaigns.  She always strayed from script and went on some strange diatribe about a trip the grocery store where someone said something that confused her in a marginally comical manor. 

The turnover numbers of this V-tubers views to site visits were low and the number of affiliate based sales were even lower.  This was not uncommon for any online platform.  Despite the facts the client seemed to like working with her.  She had her fans and they seemed dedicated.  His biggest concern had not been the meandering nature of her 4 hour long streams but the fact she said a lot of sexually suggestive things.  In the review footage he had been sent and that was generally a 10-20 min snippet of one 4 hour long stream.  It probably helped with engagement and really won over the male 22-34 audience but it didn’t seem like a great look for potential advertisers.

The more he read over the script and tried to guess what product was being sold, the more sympathy he felt for the girl.  He couldn’t blame this cat girl, for taking a decent check and stumbling through the ad read. The scripts that made final approval and were sent to her were always a last-minute ordeal this one included. And the icing on the cake was they were just plain bad.

You can always tell its AI writing.  The AI loves to restate the same points over and over and it always has a very hollow feeling.  It could point out facts, or in this case touch on all the ‘marketing bibles’ bullet points but it never had the ability to hammer home a point.  That just didn’t work in marketing.  It lacked any real world experience.  It had a complete absence of love or hate.  There just wasn’t anything a consumer could relate to, so they never seemed to grab onto the ads.  It was just words explaining things, like a college kid new to the job… familiar with all the ad copy fed into them and brimming with trending buzz words from the latest East Coast sales and marketing seminar but lacking the down-to-earth knowledge of how the product is used on the front lines.  A salesman may have been the perfect analogy for AI, not just because they were using it as a sales pitch middle-man for the actual sales-girl.  God knows it still wasn’t good enough to actually close a sale to the average human.   Because no matter how you used it, the AI was always suspiciously good at offering solutions that entailed buying a new product or signing up for a new long term subscription service.  Surely that was just a happy coincidence of our consumer society and not a deeper ploy to sell more products to increasingly desperate people short on answers and desperate for a change they couldn’t quite quantify. Words on the tip of their tongues but drowned out by a howling wind that calmed but never subsided. 

Maybe it was easy for him to spot because he had been writing for a while.  Maybe is was easy to spot because he knew the marketing strategies.  Maybe it was easy to spot because he had read a pile of old paperback novels that dated to the days when people actually read.  Maybe it was easy to spot because the people who used AI to write just didn’t care about the quality of what they wrote.   Then again he had read Neuromancer and all the Harry Potter books and didn’t think either were very good. Ursula K. Le Guin, now there was a woman who could write.  Too bad most people were unaware of her works.

He looked back at the dead fish of a script.  [Shipped as swiftly as a schooner sailing the sea.]  Was this some ancient reference the East India Tea Trade in the 1700’s?  He wasn’t sure what the client sold but a sailing ship allegory was not going to work on a bunch of chronically online men in the 22-34-year-old age range.  He deleted that line and started to type “Shipped to your door, swift and silent.” It was a lame line but ninjas were big again because of that movie based on an old video game.  One of the characters said something like that in the trailer that had ben playing everywhere.  The line should resonate a lot more but it wouldn’t age well.  None of these efforts aged well. He stared at the screen that read [Shipped to your door swift, and silent] an Oxford coma.  The AI powered writing assistants loved to… no.  Lived solely for the purpose of inserting the old Oxford coma.  “I’m no 18^th century English boarding schoolboy” he muttered to himself as he tried to delete the redundant coma.  The auto correct flashed as soon as he entered his correction. [Shipped by clipper swiftly in austere silence.]  Damm tea trade.

The AI had problems to say the least. Then it made more problems.  This never seemed to worry the managers and tech guys, on the contrary they loved it.  Problems could be sold off to people who could then attempt to solve them.  Those efforts would be counted as new projects and expansions in leadership roles.  It was potential in its most raw and unrefined form.  More important it was something they could type out in a list and email off to an upper manager and cite as work, without doing any of the actual work. 

This process was as productive as making shoes for a man who had no legs.  No one bothered to mention he had no feet so how were the cobblers to know the man with no legs also lacked feet?  Could he not place the shoes on his hands and use his hands as feet and his arms a legs?  There really was little difference so long as he could move.  Then why would anyone complain that a new pair of shoes had indeed been made and delivered to the foot less man by a delivery man who was himself was in great need of a new pair of shoes.  Too bad for him he was an independent contractor.  Bad for him but good for our bottom line.  That was in essence how these productions played out, creating solutions for problems that did not exist.

His AI assistant blared again, he reached for it to turn off whatever alert it was an fumbled the phone on to the floor.  The thing kept blaring, louder by the second.  He furiously snatched it off the floor.  He slammed his fist on the desk, the energy drink tipped over and spilled onto his desk and notebook “GODDANM PIECE OF SHIT” he proclaimed loudly jumping to his feet.  Quickly he grabbed a nearby napkin and tossed It on the greenish puddle.  It did little good.  The green juice had covered a third of his desk and its sticky sloppiness had surely ruined his notebook.  He tilted the can up right to keep the last ounce from running out just as the puddle overflowed from the edge of his desk and started dripping on to the floor. 

He hears a gasp.  He looked around to find all 12 of his co-workers staring at him in an awkward still silence.  Sandra was looking at him, She wasn’t the boss but was the office manager.  Since Chase was off for the week she took it upon herself the run the place. She shuffled over quickly and silently. “Paul… Can I have a word with you over in the break room?”  she shuffled off even faster than she had approached.

Paul grabbed a hand full of paper napkins and sopped up some of the frink and threw the wad of goopy paper into the trash can. He shuffled to the break room. Sandra was standing there with her arms crossed trying to emit a sense of power and control.  “That outburst was VERY inappropriate AND you disturbed the entire office.”

“Yes your right and I’m sorry.  I just…”  He struggled to think of an excuse and he feared he was not at convincing with his half-assed apology.

Sandra Sighed. “I know whings have been stressful with the high employee turnover and the downsizing last year, but that doesn’t mean we can just go around making a scene over spilt milk.”

He shook his head trying to act apologetic.

“Listen you have a lot of sick leave and haven’t used you vacation days from last year.  Why don’t you take today ana tomorrow off.  Those days will be deducted from you vacation leave but it will expire in a few moths anyway.”

He was somewhat surprised at how generous she was being, with his schedule.  But some time off was probably a good thing for him.  “Yeah, some time off will probably do me some good.”

“Sandra smiled a bit, alright I’ll put in the time off forms and Kenny can cover for you, god knows he needs something to do.”  She stepped out silently still with her arms crossed, which seemed oddly insecure in comparison to her appearance just moments before.  As he sat at the break room table he saw the air fryer hidden by the plastic plant.  That air fryer was worth a few bucks, money he might soon be desperate for that money.  He swiftly grabbed it and slipped out the door.