AI is making everything worse – and now we have proof.

The AI bubble appears to be bursting. Thank fuck for that.

He was a big talker, a large eater, a persuasive businessman, a flashy showman, a father figure to some – and a master manipulator to others.

The new Netflix documentary Dirty Pop proves Lou Pearlman, the talent-spotter-turned-music-mogul who created the boy bands Backstreet Boys and NSYNC in the 1990s, was many things – including a scammer and a convicted criminal, one who used borrowed money to sign attractive teen singers and push them up the charts.

If you tune into Dirty Pop – and you really should, it’s a revealing look at how conflicted everyone who encountered this charlatan still is – you’ll discover Pearlman is also something else: a victim of the scourge of Artificial Intelligence.

At the start of each episode, viewers are warned Pearlman’s voice and face have been recreated using AI. It looks like this:

Too Lippy: Lou Pearlman in Dirty Pop. (Image: Netflix)

At first, I thought it was an interesting move, that having Pearlman narrate a documentary about his own downfall could be an innovation that helps drive the show. I wanted to give producers the benefit of the doubt.

By the end, I’d changed my mind. Incorporating AI in this way is an unmitigated disaster, a weird, creepy addition that only distracts from what is otherwise an incredibly compelling story.

I’m not the only one who thinks this.

I finished watching Dirty Pop about a week ago, and it sent me into a spiral.

I thought about how Marvel used AI to create the opening credits for the TV show Secret Invasion, and they looked like utter shit.

I thought about how the NZ Herald used AI to write a terrible editorial and didn’t admit it was doing so to its readers.

And I thought about Anna Indiana, the full-creep, M3GAN-style cyborg “singer” who croons generic AI ballads and gives me chills in all the wrong ways.

I have, for the most part, viewed the recent upwards trajectory of AI with a permanently raised eyebrow.

Despite the hype, the investments, the proliferation of AI tools across apps and phones and products I use every day, I am yet to see any proof that it is able to create anything original, of interest, or of value, that improves what we already have.

Google is shitter.

Spotify is shitter.

The already shit Facebook is even shitter.

Journalism is shitter too.

And yep, AI’s tentacles have spread to music too. Here’s an entire episode of The Detail dedicated to the creation of AI music, and it all sounds terrible.

If anything, the rise of AI has given me even more appreciation for anything made by humans, whether that’s a book, a piece of journalism, a TV show, movie or a song.

So, when this bizarre human-dog video spread across social media over the past weekend, I thought: Yep, AI is still as shit as it has ever been.

Then Daniel Bedingfield decided to weigh in.

To jog your memory, Daniel Bedingfield is a British pop star who, while hosting The X Factor NZ, threw a tanty on K’ Road because someone stole his towel.

In a recent interview in The Guardian, Bedingfield – the man behind songs like ‘Gotta Get Thru This’ – had some big, bold words to say about AI.

In that interview, Bedingfield said this:

“It will be possible to continue without AI. But the question will be, why would you? Why fight it when you can have a whole gospel choir singing your chorus in two days’ time?”

And he also said this:

“There will be two paths: there’ll be the neo-luddite path, and then there’ll be everyone else, most of the planet, who thinks the music’s really good and enjoys it … We have to adapt or die.”

No we don’t.

We can take our time.

We can give AI space to grow, to improve, to become something that enhances our lives, that makes them better, not worse.

Instead, we’re now experiencing the full effects of rushing into something head-first without fully thinking things through.

A few days after Bedingfield gave that interview, stockmarkets began crumbling.

There were many reasons for this, but AI is in the mix.

Wall Street analysts have sounded the alarm.

Here’s what Jim Covello, Goldman Sachs’ most senior stock analyst, told the Washington Post:

“Despite its expensive price tag, the technology is nowhere near where it needs to be in order to be useful. Overbuilding things the world doesn’t have use for, or is not ready for, typically ends badly.”

If the money men are urging caution, you know trouble is afoot.

Look, I’m no luddite.

I have the latest iPhone, and it’s loaded with AI-led apps and tools, some of which I use as part of my job most days.

I can see AI’s use being accepted more widely in the future.

Given time, it might be able to recreate the lips of a dead music mogul in a Netflix show without giving viewers the creepy creeps.

It may be able to write a passable news story for the Herald to use in its algorithmically-driven clickbait machine.

Possibly, it could one day create decent opening credits for a Marvel show without provoking universal disgust and disapproval from everyone who watches them.

That day isn’t today.

And it probably isn’t tomorrow.

It’s worth reminding ourselves that there are things AI will never be able to do.

Like a musician responding to something that’s happening in their life by writing a song that then connects with anyone else who has ever felt that way.

We need humans to do that.

We will always need humans to do that.

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