Aboriginal avatar Jarren, who hosts online videos about Australian wildlife under the name Bush Legend, is overstepping indigenous boundaries, according to Māori AI innovator Peter Lucas-Jones.
That’s because while he looks and sounds like a real person, Jarren was created not by an indigenous Australian, but by Hawke’s Bay-based content creator Keagan Mason.
“Authenticity is everything when it comes to language and culture. When people are pretending ... even if it is smattered with facts, the truth is it is not authentic,” Lucas-Jones, CEO of Māori media company Te Hiku Media told the Herald.
Videos featuring Jarren started to appear online in December last year.
More than 200,000 people follow him on the Bush Legends social pages – 92,000 on Facebook, 89,000 on Instagram and 25,000 on TikTok – with most appearing to believe Jarren is real.
But his accounts have been criticised in international media as “AI blackface” and “digital fiction”.
NZ Herald
Face of the Day
His accounts have been criticised in international media as ‘AI blackface’ and ‘digital fiction’.
Related
Face of the Day
This year, the winning entry came from Sritam Kumar Sethy, a student at Berhampur University in India, while Australian researchers and wildlife snagged awards in several categories.
Face of the Day
Beard was in hospice care when he died at his ranch in Richmond, Texas, with family members at his side, band representative Bob Merlis said.
Faces of the Day
The group are mostly elderly and retired and gather at an old sports building in Hastings to make coffins. “We are at a point where we don’t have the room to make any more,” Treasurer Cherie Hames says. “We are basically at capacity of what we can make on the premises. We have to find new premises.”
Faces of the Day
Peters, who is also the minister for rail, said he pitched an alternative plan, to immediately put the harbour crossing to tender, but was outvoted in cabinet. His comments seemed to surprise both Transport Minister Chris Bishop and Prime Minister Christopher Luxon.
Latest
The Long and the Hard of ‘SEXINT’
How turning an inadequate dictator into a fake pornstar backfired.
Good Oil General Debate
Please read our rules before you start commenting on The Good Oil to avoid a temporary or permanent ban.
The Good Oil Word of the Day
The word for today is… raffish (adjective) - 1: marked by or suggestive of flashy vulgarity or crudeness 2: marked by a careless unconventionality : rakish Source : Merriam-Webster Etymology : Raffish sounds like it should mean "resembling raff." But what is raff? Originally, "raff" was a word meaning