Artificial Intelligence and Detailing Information "Plagiarism"

Lonnie

Active member
As an extension of Setec's thread about "Come On People" and trying to get present and past Autopians to post in this new forum format, I cannot help but wonder if Artificial Intelligence programs and software are now having or making a much bigger impact on and to this forum than I realize.
I have not used an AI program, like Google Gemini, or any of them to garner information about a wide variety of subjects or to use it to help write a paper or report or general correspondence with other.
What concerns me the most is that those AI programs will gather all the information from existing detailing forums, and then present it to the user who posted the question about a particular detailing task or product. It is a game-changer to be sure.
It is also obvious that no AI program has detailed a vehicle (Yet! AI detailing robots are coming), so the information gathered are from humans and their posted experiences and opinions on all the social media platforms.
And that is just the point, this information is from humans, not artificial intelligence programs and machines.
I am not sure about copyright laws and who actually "owns" the intellectual information you (and I) Autopians have posted over the years here in this forum, but you know that in the past there was a lot of Cut-and-Paste text that some unscrupulous individuals tried to pass off as their own on detailing topics within this forum and the "trouble" it caused. Now it may (or can, to be more precise) happen a grand scale because of AI.
Do I think it (AI information gathering and presentation publishing) needs to be regulated? Yes, with a caveat. It is too late to do so and I think to the end-user who wants this information, AI is a god-send. To detailing forums and the members who posted their detailing experiences and opinions over many years, it is afront to personal plagiarism and copyright infringement, myself included. Where this concern will end up is anyone's guess and it would be fool-hardy on my part to make any predictions about its regulated control or limits or even if there will be any in the near future.

What are your thoughts on Artificial Intelligence and detailing information? I am particularly interested in Autopians who are currently using AI for or in their job or schooling or just general interest and what your thoughts are about it.
 
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I notice that google searches now have an AI-generated summary at the top of the page, which is sometimes useless, and sometimes very helpful.

You do make a very interesting point, that sometimes we have people come on this forum full of piss and vinegar however have no idea what they are talking about, and I can see a situation where an AI scrapes that off and presents it as gospel as a search result.

PS I think the forum owner owns the content, after you post it, according to the forum fine print. I also believe back in the day, if you posted a picture to the gallery, it would get watermarked and also became the property of the forum owner. I know on MOL that would happen, not sure what happened on AGO, and the gallery here hadn't worked in so long I don't remember.
 
I notice that google searches now have an AI-generated summary at the top of the page, which is sometimes useless, and sometimes very helpful.
It is funny to see the wide variety in the quality of the results. The one thing I do like about it is the reference link to each data point in the AI response. It allows you to validate where the info came from and see, "the rest of the story" for the particular source in order to get better context.
You do make a very interesting point, that sometimes we have people come on this forum full of piss and vinegar however have no idea what they are talking about, and I can see a situation where an AI scrapes that off and presents it as gospel as a search result.
AI results are no different than your own internet searches. They are only as good as the query and the data being provided. AI just makes the results more organized, conversational, and faster.

I honestly don't treat AI query results different than any other research I do on any topic from other methods. Trust but verify. Unfortunately, people these days (regardless of age or background) will blindly trust whatever they see and not analyze the source for credibility or quality of data. AI is simply a tool. Like many other tools and machines, they are immensely helpful when used properly and horribly dangerous when operated by the careless.
 
I thought I did click on one of those reference links and it didn't really take me to the "source". I'll have to pay more attention next time.
 
I think it changes as Google makes improvements and also the type of question being asked.

Recently when I asked a fairly specific question, the little "link" symbol at the end of each paragraph a reference link to the place where information from that paragraph originated would kind of appear not far for your mouse. Today, I looked up a more general top where the AI was doing more summarization and clicking on the link led to several boxes appearing off to the side of the search result summary and included things from both web sites and YouTube videos. It reminded me of footnotes, only to the side of the text rather than being below.

All of this on Chrome running on a PC. It might work differently depending on platform and OS.
 
Desertnate:
Your last line in your post pretty well sums up AI as a new tool and it does, indeed, depend on who is using it and how it is being used.
I will not get into the "conspiracy theory" that it will use itself and set its own agenda. That said, the scene from the early 1970's sci-fi movie "2001 Space Odyssey" of "HAL, open the pod bay doors" -"Sorry Dave, I can't do that" are more reality today than when it made for an intriguing sci-fi movie of a far-flung futuristic, but plausible human-computer interaction.
 
There are lots of good examples of AI getting out of hand in the movies. HAL in "2001 Space Odyssey" (love that movie), the WOPR in War Games, Skynet in "Terminator", V.I.K.I in "I Robot"....the list goes on.

I think a bigger problem than an AI taking over is humans weaponizing AI. People are using AI tools for all sorts of things from generating images to written word and if you simply take things at face value and don't give it a critical eye, you can be fooled, it's that good. You can get a feel for an AI written article but it takes closely looking at how it is written and the "tone" of the wording. Images are a bit harder some times, but things like lighting not being quite right, some elements being oddly out of focus etc. I know my wife has been fooled several times by AI generated images in stuff she's seen.

Another problem is corruption of the data sets used by an AI. Any good AI agent requires a massive ammount of data in order to be able to perform tasks and provide the right answer. In a contained environment, it's easy to protect the data and ensure the quality of the content the AI will generate. The problem is with the larger ones who learn from the public domain. They can quickly go off the rails if the owners don't closely monitor where it ingests data.
 
There are lots of good examples of AI getting out of hand in the movies. HAL in "2001 Space Odyssey" (love that movie), the WOPR in War Games, Skynet in "Terminator", V.I.K.I in "I Robot"....the list goes on.

Hey, stay off my DVD shelf! I think you left out, perhaps on a smaller scale than the others you mention, AMEE from Red Planet (I'm sure there are a bazillion others in that vein). Since you brought up VIKI, one of my favorite movie lines: "Do you think we were all created for a purpose? I'd like to think so. Denser alloy...my father gave it to me...I think he wanted me to kill you!"
 
Desertnate:
Thanks for the comments. And yes, my biggest "fear" is when a human cannot differentiate between an AI written article , or photo, movie/video image and one that is human-create even with current-day technology. Right now it is the wild-wild West in AI with very little guidelines and "rules" in place due to the newness and infancy of this seemly useful technology.
Funny as an analogy, we detailers make the statement about dark colored vehicles and the amount of detailing effort it takes to make and kept them to an Autopian-standard and have the adage, "Do you own the car or does the car own you?"
Much the same could be said about AI; "Are you using and controlling AI or is AI using and controlling you?" and that statement is true of the smart-phone I hold in my grubby little hand as I SLOWLY one-finger type this response out. (Yeah the "slowly" was in caps to prove it was Captain Obvious typing this and NOT some AI program! Well, we could say Captain Obvious has AI with an emphasis on "artificial", but not so much "intelligence". Quit laughing so hard...)
 
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It's a little scary--since we're talking science fiction movies, and not being able to discern reality from AI/computer generated, we've gone from horrible special effects in the 50's, to a little better in the 60's (think the Enterprise on strings) to Star Wars in the 70's/80's ("that almost looks real")...let's fast forward to the 2010's (because I can't think of any other good examples in-between).

I'm not a huge fan of Tom Cruise, but he did a movie 10 or 12 years ago that I liked called Oblivion. This is a post-apocalyptic movie and there is a scene where he's riding a motorcycle between a beached oil tanker and a beached ballistic missile sub...and my mind says "where did they film that, where is there a beached missile sub???" And then I slapped myself upside the head and said "you idiot, there is no place like that, it's computer generated!"

So the scary part is the movie effects are so good now that your mind just accepts them as reality...which could be really dangerous as AI gets better.
 
You think that CGI from Oblivion was suprising, see if you can run down some video of the CGI and techniques Disney is using for some of their streaming shows like "Mandalorian" The "making of" shows on Disney+ are pretty incredible. In addition to an amazing sound stage set up they have the ability to combine live action filming with CGI modeled in a 3D space. The camera "knows" it's position relative to the virtual world and combine that with the what it really sees and blend the images together. It's hard to describe. The documentaries explain it much better. This is all done without really using AI. Combine the two and the results could be pretty incredible.
 
I saw a behind-the-scenes for I think one of the Maze Runner movies, where they are running between these flood gates, or something that looks like that, and how they filmed on a sound stage that was all green-screened with marks for them to run through, and of course the actual scene looks so real, again, my brain said "what kind of facility is that, what is it really for, that they filmed this in?" and of course, it didn't actually exist.

So forget the CGI part of it, a few years ago I was down some YouTube rabbit hole, maybe when I saw the BTS I refer to above, that was just showing the prevalence of green screen, they showed some back-lot NY street, and there was a huge like 20' tall green screen at the end of the block, and the finished product they put a NY skyline in, and presto, had a location shot of NY...from California. And they just showed one after another like that, what is that comedy movie where they are sailing an ark down the Potomac, and you know they are not really doing that, but I thought they were outside at least...nope, on the sound stage in front of a green screen, crew rocking the ship, crew throwing a bucket of water in the air to mimic spray/splash.
 
In 1938, HG Wells used a new emerging technology back then called AM radio and on Halloween night broadcast a series of short news reports about an alien space invasion from his soon-to-be-released fictional book "War of the World's" kind of as a promotional idea. Unfortunately some individuals listening on radios thought it was a real event, it was done that well, and committed suicide. Mr. Wells had to announce later during this promotional program that it was, indeed, a fictional newscast and not real.
History repeats itself.

Speaking of CGI, I am seeing a lot of new car designs and concepts from third parties that look SO realistic like an actual photo was taken of the vehicles, the Ford Torino being one of them. Ford says it is NOT on their agenda for such a design concept, but it does look cool and retro-modern for those who remember the 70's Torino.
 
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I trust AI more than I do a human response.
AI has no emotion, it just states the facts. For the most part, I find it amazingly accurate
You better get used to it. It's not going away.
 
Well, we've kinda gotten off base a little "going to the movies" with Artificial Intelligence and Computer-Generated Images, but I am still interested in hearing how some of you Autopians are using AI in your job, school studies, or personal interest, such as research.
I do see that Google Gemini is "responding" to Google Searches.

As bad penny said above, it is not going away. As I stated above, my biggest fear and paranoia is my own ignorance about it and if I control it or does it control me.
I also know some of you are wondering, "What does AI have to do with detailing?" Like I said, its the information it gathers and presents as its own in a form of "AI plagiarism". It would be different if AI did detailing and then wrote/videoed about its detailing experiences, but presently it does not; at least as far as I know there are no AI-controlled detailing robots (no, human "robots" do not count, even if you feel (and perform) like one in a dealership detailing department)

Nor am I sure if I trust a technology with "no emotion" of a computer entity that I use that could (and does) program itself without human intervention or oversight (IE control). Ethics and morality come to mind with emotions, but that is a WHOLE other discussion and while related to AI, is not in the scope of thread topic .
(Hey, YOU brought it up Captain Obvious! And I digress and go back to the movie "I, Robot" where the robot saved Will Smith's character when he is drowning instead of the child with him in the submerged car because of its algorithm that determined Will Smith had the best odds of survival, and the ensuing discussion that followed with the lady who developed the robot. 'Nough said.... )
 
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I think we're all starting to see AI agents at work and may not even know it. Ever call a customer service number and get the voice that asks you to say what you are trying to do, or you get an automated chat when you log into some corporate web site? Those are all AI agents, though from my experience they are pretty aweful and not very helpful. This is likely because the data sets they are using are really small and limited to the company who put them into operation. I know the AI chat agent for AT&T is useless as is the one used by USAA.

Here's an example from a little closer to home. My wife is an instructor at the College and Jr. College level. She has to make up assignments that test reading comprehension, vocabulary, or the ability to translate a short piece of text. Instead of having to dream up each part of the assignment she lets ChatGPT do it for her in a fraction of the time. She'll just ask it to "create a short story XXX words long and incorporate the following words", or "create a sentence using the word Y". This is pretty low on the sophistication scale, but it's a huge time saver for her.

Today I just read this artical: US Navy Destroyer Uses AI The Navy is using AI to help with predictive maintenance. I believe the F-35 does as well.

In these cases, if the AI agent has access to massive amounts of data showing what correct behavior/performance should look like, the agent is able to tell when things are starting to get beyond tolerances and predict replacement.
 
I think we're all starting to see AI agents at work and may not even know it. Ever call a customer service number and get the voice that asks you to say what you are trying to do, or you get an automated chat when you log into some corporate web site? Those are all AI agents, though from my experience they are pretty aweful and not very helpful. This is likely because the data sets they are using are really small and limited to the company who put them into operation. I know the AI chat agent for AT&T is useless as is the one used by USAA.

Here's an example from a little closer to home. My wife is an instructor at the College and Jr. College level. She has to make up assignments that test reading comprehension, vocabulary, or the ability to translate a short piece of text. Instead of having to dream up each part of the assignment she lets ChatGPT do it for her in a fraction of the time. She'll just ask it to "create a short story XXX words long and incorporate the following words", or "create a sentence using the word Y". This is pretty low on the sophistication scale, but it's a huge time saver for her.

Today I just read this artical: US Navy Destroyer Uses AI The Navy is using AI to help with predictive maintenance. I believe the F-35 does as well.

In these cases, if the AI agent has access to massive amounts of data showing what correct behavior/performance should look like, the agent is able to tell when things are starting to get beyond tolerances and predict replacement.

I'll bet that her students are using AI to do their homework.
 
I'll bet that her students are using AI to do their homework.

Fortunately for her they can't! While they may use an AI agent to help them get ideas on how to work the assignments, they have to answer them in person or via video using American Sign Language. No way for an AI agent to do that for them...yet.
 
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