Los Angeles Sparks guard, two-time WNBA Champion, Olympic Gold medalist, and former wife of NFL tight end, Darren Waller, Kelsey Plum has launched a service where fans can chat with her AI twin. Seriously.
During Plum's conversation with her AI twin, she talked about her ponytail, what she should drink for a "pick me up," and more. It felt very dystopian and strange. A soulless AI Kelsey Plum responding to the real Kelsey Plum made me feel uneasy, as if I was watching Ryan Gosling in "Blade Runner 2049" fall in love with an AI robot.
"According to Talk2Me, Plum’s digital twin is designed for private, one-to-one conversations. The company says it was built using authorized recordings and data, and that it’s meant to mirror Plum’s tone, perspective and leadership style rather than function like a generic chatbot," Yahoo Sports reported.
"Not sure what to say here. You’re an amazing player and athlete. You don’t need a twin. The fans like you for who YOU are and what you do. AI ain’t it. Saying things like "you either get with it or get lost" is terrible and not truthful in any way. You’re amazing please do better," one fan said onPlum's Instagram post.
Just scroll through the comment section on her post, and you'll see it's full of disapproval.Some fans aired their disapproval due to the environmental impacts of artifical intelligence, which has been reported to use massive amounts of water to cool servers at data centers. But I doubt a Kelsey Plum digital twin would cause any servers to overheat due to demand. No offense.
Now, if there was a Caitlin Clark AI twin, I'm sure there would be plenty of demand and the environment would be in big trouble.
With all the talk about the new CBA (Collective Bargaining Agreement) that has been verbally agreed upon after almost two weeks of negotiation between the league and the WNBA Player's Association, I figured I'd chat with Plum's tech twin about it.
Before I could really get into the weeds of the conversation, the chat shut down. I'm not sure if that was a technological glitch, or if the system was set up to shut down when AI Plum was pressed on how in the world all these "Pay Us What You Owe US" discussions are supposed to make sense economically. But the chat was enlightening, to say the least.
This is what I'm sure the negotiation talks were like in New York City, at the league office. A lot of back and forth, emotionally-based argumentation from the player's side.
Overall, I'm not a fan of AI chatbots. It gives you a false sense of connection, while advertised as an authentic interaction. It's a cheap bill of goods.I'd rather see Kelsey Plum charge for a real interaction with her fans, instead of this. But hey, when your WNBA check isn't that much, relative to other pro athletes, I'm sure it's hard to pass on the check from an AI company.If this was truly about the fans, Plum, the ACTUAL Kelsey Plum, would interact with them. Not this soulless knockoff.
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