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🤖 Good Cop, Bad Cop, AI Slop - The good and the b-ai-d.

In this week's Baking it Down Podcast - Episode 244 - Good Cop, Bad Cop, AI Slop, we're takin' on the touchy subject of 👾 AI, aka artificial intelligence.

👮 Bakers are quick to police other bakers in the comment sections on posts that ask how bakers are incorporating AI. 

🤬 "It's cheating!" 

😠 "It's lazy!" 

😤  "It's the easy way out!" 

😡  "It's lying to your audience!"

🤬 "I'll NEVER use AI! It's hurting the environment!"

However, AI is creeping into more and more businesses as tools to help with copy, updating and post-processing photography, summarizing emails and increasing workflow, and creating websites and marketing materials - and for good reason.    AI is a cost-effective way to minimize production costs and labor while also being, at this time,💸 free to use. 

The topic of today’s podcast: ✅🚫 where is your personal line when it comes to AI integration into your bakery? 

And if your line mismatches that of another baker's, does that make you morally superior, or is it a case of mistaken identity of the use of different tools - 🖨️ ie, a baker who uses Eddie and one who only hand pipes. 

📏 Taking the example to the extreme - the baker who does “from scratch” and buys a box mix, the baker who makes the batter themselves, and the baker who raises the cow and churns her own butter. In all three cases, a baker was baking in the kitchen. Who is business savvy, and who is ethical - and who is allowed to play judge and jury?  

👮 AI impacts trust.

And we agree - ⭐️❌❌❌❌ using AI to dupe your clients into thinking your skillset is better than you can produce is a recipe for disaster, upset customers, and bad reviews. ✋ However, you gotta consider the invisible hand of the market - it always sorts things out. If someone takes advantage of their client base, give it time - the bad reviews will direct clients elsewhere.

But what about AI just sprucing up the background image? We see a lot of bakers "okay" with this level of AI use, and it does help sell more product since better photos = better sales. 

And then consider the even more blurry lines - when AI can recreate the style and skill of decorating you are at - is that a lie? Or is it using a tool to help you sell cookies you haven't baked yet that you can 100% reproduce?

👮 AI devalues the craft. 

Using AI can be a shortcut that's not fair for bakers who have suffered through learning the basics of even more than just royal icing. Just 5 years ago, research for starting a business required a dozen Google searches. Ten years before that, you were at the library doing your research. And that's not fair.

But is it really not fair? 📚 Consider that Google replaced the library and the need to go to the SBA office to get a business license. 3-D printers replaced a large majority of metal cutters. 💻 Websites replaced a large need to work a vendor market. Suffering is par for the course when it comes to running a business, but as technology evolves, 🏆 there's no reward for doing it the hard way.

👮 AI is killing the environment.

💦 I'm just going to link to someone smarter than me on this - Why is Everyone So Wrong About AI Water Use?? by Hank Green - but if you make the "environmental claim" - 💧 and trust me, AI data centers are in Northern Virginia and they are u-g-l-y amd loud, but it's important to be informed on both sides of the argument. 🫧 "The video concludes that while AI data centers will use a lot of water, their projected increase in water use is small compared to existing industrial and city uses." That's YouTube's AI summary, ironica