The camoflauge of the propagandists improves by another notch. From the comfort of your desk at the agency, you can push out to the world your message and have it appear to be delivered by the consumer's kind, then soon their kin. I wonder when you can speak to victims with their own voice and likeness.

No more a metaphorical devil and angel on their shoulder. Your corporate owner can command in the voice and likeness of whomever someone identifies with.

What could go wrong?
posted by anecdotal_grand_theory at 12:01 PM on March 18, 2023 [5 favorites]

Certainly avoiding paying an actual person or organization from an underrepresented or historically marginalized group for their time and/or expertise when looking to obtain a DEI training video for one’s workplace is a lost opportunity to walk the talk.
posted by eviemath at 1:32 PM on March 18, 2023 [9 favorites]

i told me to buy it, it must be good.
posted by kokaku at 1:32 PM on March 18, 2023 [5 favorites]

I don't know anything about the training video industry, but I seriously doubt that any company presently employs 120 actors speaking 120 languages to deliver the same bullshit corporate text. How diverse are the actors who actually work in that industry?

As a technical feat, it's impressive— they sound way better than previous computer-generated voices— but when the AI pronounces "preferred" as PREFF-ured in their own tech demo, that's not a good sign for how well it'll do with the other 119 languages.

I hope the next step in AI is to create an AI viewer who can watch these things all day so humans don't have to.
posted by zompist at 2:01 PM on March 18, 2023 [9 favorites]

Everywhere I look, I see me! Did we win?

Maybe we are all headed into living in a world like Being John Malkovitch when he went into his own brain?

Bring an ex-training person, I could understand making a replicant starring video in how to replace faucet washers, but dealing with people centered topics, and especially any with potential controversy in some circles, such as DEI, delivered in the same way is stupid. I would want to have real words from real people, looking you in the eyes.

As to having an AI viewer watch these things? They do! That’s how they are made!
posted by njohnson23 at 3:01 PM on March 18, 2023

Are your DEI efforts a success if you’ve gone out of your way not to employ a member of the group you’re “including”?
posted by adamrice at 5:39 PM on March 18, 2023 [3 favorites]

Also, as an aside, I really miss those wacky Xtranormal videos.
posted by adamrice at 5:41 PM on March 18, 2023 [1 favorite]

This is an amazing illustration of the hollowness of DEI as the dominant method of building a just society. It's not that DEI trainings are bad, it's that they don't address the underlying causes of racialized inequality, nor do they materially improve conditions for the majority of racialized people. Failing to employee any actual people of color to produce or perform these trainings is the natural next step in this journey to nowhere.
posted by latkes at 11:06 AM on March 19, 2023 [5 favorites]

I checked the different Latin American Spanish accents, and ... nope.
The Chilean one has them saying VIDeos, with the accent on the first syllable and pronouncing the final "s". The Cuban one sounds 100% Spanish. The Argentinian one sounds kind of right, only way too soft.
posted by signal at 2:14 PM on March 19, 2023 [1 favorite]

If you are like me and have no idea what "DEI" stands for because you are a freelancer who has not worked for a corporation in two decades, it seems to stand for "Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion".
posted by egypturnash at 5:20 PM on March 19, 2023 [2 favorites]