Brett Farley was not particularly happy with his avatar, the one he used on social media, electronic resumes, and FaceTime. He had tinkered with it for months, adding and subtracting, redefining hairline and jawline, trying to keep the original resolution of his face - which was sold and substantial but which lacked intimacy - but he was having difficulty.
The AI program was so powerful and adept at following the most incidental instructions that sometimes it went overboard. Brett was happy at the results which made him look far more like Henry Cavill than himself, Hollywood ready when he was just a junior executive at New Brighton Bank & Trust; and so he readjusted the algorithm until it came out looking like himself, but with a certain je ne sais quoi.
The problem came when he went online dating services apps - too much off the mark could result in embarrassment at the first live meeting with a possible mate - but for all else, like building the media image he felt right for his website and for the virtual jobs he was looking for, this hyped version was just fine.
Dating was where AI failed - or rather the entire virtual system failed. Until there was complete, seamless symbiosis between mind and computer; that is when brick-and-mortar, flesh-and-blood ceased to matter and all relationships were virtually real, he had to stick to what God had given him.
He found however, that given the almost universal transformation of reality into this AI-mediated virtual world, the faux image influenced the actual one. That is, the more a prospective mate saw his mediated, cybernetically adjusted persona online, and the more she was influenced by such mediated images everywhere, the greater her suspension of disbelief. Whatever he 'really' looked like was subsumed within the more attractive AI-generated image. The real and the virtual merged.
President Donald Trump has made much of 'fake news', his term for reporting he doesn't like. There is nothing fake about the reporting of CNN, MSNBC, the BBC, and Politico. They just tilt the editorial cant in consonance with their political view. Real fake news is what is seen on Instagram. The images generated are indeed fake but so real that the casual observer has no idea whether the speaker is real or invented.
One notable site has a beautiful woman speaking Portuguese with a backdrop of Lisbon, Porto, and other well-known Portuguese cities. She is inviting, seductive, personable, and sensually appealing. Only when the viewers see 'her' speaking Spanish, German, or Russian in similarly appropriate cityscapes, do they realize it is one and the same 'person', AI-generated based on big data research which determines which woman is most appealing to most men in the cyber-audience.
Famous celebrities from Donald Trump, members of Congress, Hollywood stars, and industry magnates are all shown in crafted scenes which could possibly be true but which are not - real enough to convince the viewer of the truth, but so well manufactured to be nothing of the sort.
Some of the distortions are for satirical purposes - a good thing, expanding the universe of print cartoonists like Tom Toles and the historic Thomas Nast into a live, three-dimensional form, and making it even more ridiculous and hilarious. Yet when AI transforms the serious into the improbable, the trouble begins. When seeing Pope Francis speak of an inclusive ecumenism and open borders to heaven, the site goes viral.
It is just this welcoming message that many would like to believe; but anyone with even a casual acquaintance with Catholic doctrine would know that even this liberal-minded pope would never suggest such an easy ride to heaven's gate.
Brett was still very much a flesh-and-blood man - the complete transformation of the world into a virtual paradise would have to wait - and he ventured more and more into the electronic dating market. He was convinced enough of this unique AI-facilitated willing suspension of disbelief that he believed that his wholly created avatar would prevail in actual first meetings.
Janey Perkins was Brett's Doppelganger in that she shared his complete immersion into the virtual world, Her avatar, the electronic version of herself, was fundamentally sound - God's original architecture was in place - but all the rest had been tweaked and adjusted until it was an idealized but still believable representation of her true self.
Both Brett and Janey had worked not just on the static visual image of their avatar, but on posture, comportment, and affect. This was more difficult, for it involved acting - Stanislavsky method acting to be more precise - a skill which neither of them had. So when they met, although they recognized and accepted the avatar versions presented to them without hesitation, their acting was stilted and engineered. One could use AI with great success on facial recognition, but when it came to the even more important looks, gestures, and animation, it wasn't so good.
'Must work on that', said both Brett and Janey.
Brett's company was using AI more and more in their conferences and giant screen performances of AI-generated executives giving speeches to employees were created. Although Brett could give a pretty good, rousing speech to regional sales managers, his avatar could do it a hundred times better. It had been programmed not only with detailed information about him but with the features, personalities, and backgrounds of his listeners. In other words, the avatar was Brett times ten, and the audience was ten times more open and receptive to what he said.
No one said, 'Where's the real Brett?'
Simone, a Hollywood movie made twenty five years ago, long before AI and starring Al Pacino, was exactly about this phenomenon. The Pacino character created an electronic beauty named Simone and through deft manipulation of the media, high-tech resolution and canny programming, was able to convince millions of viewers that she was actually real. As 'Simone' grew more and more popular and the demand to see her in person become louder and more insistent, her creator was in a bind. All's well that ends well in Hollywood movie, but the prescience of the film was impressive.
In any case, both Brett's career and dating went along swimmingly, and thanks to AI he was propelled farther in matters of money and love than he ever would have been without it.
Rumor has it that after living together for some time under same roof and all avatar pretentions had necessarily been abandoned, neither one liked what they saw and divorce followed.
That was to be expected, of course. A completely virtual universe mediated by the individual with direct links from brain to computer and back was still a few decades off. In this virtual world Brett would be able to assemble his own personal harem; but for the time being nothing doing. Marge from Accounting was the best he would be able to do.
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