Pitchfork is absorbed by GQ - is music for men? Bridget hates self-checkout; Google still isn’t deleting abortion data; AI deepfake legislation – NEWS ROUNDUP

your hour of TikTok a day. It used to be an hour of Instagram. I can tell you the last time I spent ten minutes on Instagram TikTok. That's where I need my timer. So I somebody who is very tuned into what's happening on TikTok, I'm going to take a stab at explaining popping TikTok discourse to Mike somebody who is barely on TikTok with me.

And here I am so. I saw this trend challenge whatever on TikTok where women who were married to men were making a small mess of ketchup on their kitchen tables, calling their husband or their boyfriend in and being like, hey, can you clean this ketchup? And first of all, all the men are like, why are you asking me to clean up a random pile of ketchup that you made seemingly with intention because it's a perfect circle, while also

filming me like what's going on? But the challenge is does your husband or boyfriend know how to clean up up a pile of ketchup effectively? And what would he do? So if asked? And I gotta say, y'all the bar is in hell. I was like, so if you're if your man doesn't know how to do it embarrassing all if you're a man doesn't and you're like, Wow, my husband really knows how to clean up a pile of ketchup?

If almost the man, I would be so insulted that you would think that, like that like that like like, hey, ladies, does your man clean up piles of ketchup on the table? That like that's the marker of like a good confident man.

come at it at a specific angle. A lot of these guys are going at it from the top, like they put a paper They put a single paper towel down on it, which is already like the wrong tool for the job, and then they sort of full hand palmet from the top and then move their hand around, so essentially they're smearing it around, is what they're doing. They're like or like finger painting with it at that point.

corners of TikTok. Men either cannot clean ketchup off of a table or they're getting lots of praise and like, oh, what a good husband for knowing how to and being willing to clean up ketchup from the table. We deserve better. Women deserve better. Frankly, men deserve better. Everybody deserves better. Nobody wins in this scenario. The bar is in hell.

saving data related to abortions. Google announced pretty soon after the Supreme Court ruled on ROW that they were going to be proactively deleting sensitive location data like when somebody visits an abortion clinic from their search history. I believe, like if I'm mistaken and someone is like, no, that's not right, please correct me. My remembering of this event is that Google did this proactively, that they were not

like pushed by a campaign. At the time, I was pretty plugged into like tech platform accountability campaigns at the intersection of you know, platform accountability and gender justice, and so as far as I know, Google came out of the gate and proactively announced this. That's that was my understanding, But thanks to the advocacy organization Accountable Tech, we know that Google said they would proactively be deleting people's search

history and location data when they visited abortion clinics. However, they just kind of didn't do that. So Accountable Tech did this really interesting test where they bought brand new Android phones, drove to abortion clinics, and found that Google

did retain that location information. So Google gave the usual song and dance, we care about user privacy, We're doing all we can, blah blah blah, and it said that the company planned to go along with changes to implement this change in location retention policies in early twenty twenty two, as promised. So what's the update here? While they really haven't done that here, it is twenty twenty four and they're still, like, I guess, still working on it, still

working at the kinks whatever. Accountable Tax just released another study this week that found that the company still was not deleting all location history in all cases as promised, though I will say Google's rate of retention has improved

a little bit. So the rate of retention of location information decreased from sixty percent of tested cases a measurement taken five months after Google's pledge to fifty percent of tested cases in the most recent experiment, fifty percent, Like it's a coin flip of whether or not it's they're actually gonna do it.

though the name of the clinic was scrubbed. But it wouldn't be like that hard if somebody was really trying to paint a portrait about where you were, it really wouldn't be that hard to be like, oh, it was

planned parenthood. Data on searches for abortion clinics was still retained in the web and activity history as in the researchers first test, so that has not changed like when they first did this test, they were still when you searched for abortion clinics, that information was still retained in your web activity. It's still it is still retained in

your web activity in twenty twenty four. So the director of Products of Google Maps, Marlow McGriff, disputed the findings of this study, saying, we are upholding our promise to delete particularly personal places from location history if these places are identified by our systems. Any claims that we're not doing so are patently false or misguided. So it's when I looked into this, it's like very clear to me

that Google is sort of nippicking here. Like in one of the cases they say that, oh, well, Google Location services did not detect that visit as a planned parenthood specifically so that it did not delete that location data, but like it was a planned parenthood. So whether or not your location services or map or whatever clocked it that way, I don't know. It seems a little weird to include that in a case where you wouldn't have to delete the location services.

we're doing a sloppy job. One could say, we're not even really doing it at all. It's like, well, yeah, that's what we're saying. It's like it seems to be everybody is saying the same thing. It's not getting done.

it's not our fault. But like it's all Google, right, Like the whole thing that they said they were gonna do of scrubbing data showing people visiting abortion clinics like Soup to nuts, the whole process of identifying that data and then scrubbing it, it's all Google right. Like this is not a good excuse.

talking about something that really matters. And so I think, I think, like playing this weird blame game and you know, using all these excuses really doesn't cut it for me when we're talking about something so serious that they proactively

said that they could and would do so. According to Accountable Tech, it's about fifty to fifty whether or not this data is deleted or not by Google, they say, with the same odds as a coin flip an abortion seekers location data might still be retained and used to prosecute them. On top of that, as we've seen through the experiments, Google still retains location, search query data and likely other incriminating data as well from email to Google

search data. Yeah, it's not great, Like this is a pretty big deal that I think already has had pretty big implications for folks who need abortions. The company receives and responds to tens of thousands of law enforcement requests for data from its vast tropes of user data, and complies with eighty percent of those requests with some level

of information. This is according to Google's transparency report. And on top of that, law enforcement agencies and police have so or to make increasing use of this new category of search warrant called reverse search warrants. The Guardian says in that category are geofence location warrants, which police use to come up with a list of suspects by seeking out information on all users whose devices have been detected

in a certain place at a certain time. Many activists worry law enforcement would use these search warrants to collect data to find and prosecute or investigate those seeking abortions. So it's not all bad though. I do have some like good ish news from this update. Google has announced that it planned to change the way that it stores location history data for all users in a way that

could render responding to geofence warrants effectively impossible. The changes include storing location data on user's devices by default, encrypting any location data that's backed up to Google's cloud storage, and deleting location data after three months. So this is sort of good, Like, it's a sort of a good

way to get around that particularly invasive search warrant process. However, as Accountable Tech points out, we are talking about a company, Like the reason we're talking about Google today is because they have shown themselves to be kind of slippery about what they say they're going to do and what they actually do when it comes to our data. Right, so can we trust them to do this thing? That sounds kind of like a step in the right direction? Who knows?

Accountable Text says they are not holding their breath. They told the Guardian that yeah, this is a step in the right direction. However, the company's inability to follow through on previous commitments to protect location data shows that Google cannot be trusted to meet its public commitments on its timeline promises. We cannot take the company on its word.

Data Analytics and Artificial Intelligence. We're trying to answer the research question is Google getting worse? To answer this question, they examined almost eight thousand product review queries on Google

Being and Duck duc Go for a year. Researchers worked off reports that a torrent of low quality content, especially for product search, keeps drounding out any kind of useful information in Google search results, and what they found pretty much confirmed that a significant amount of the results found in response to product related queries were outright SEO product review spam. So just like garbage ads, like people who are taking advantage of SEO to like get their stuff

at the very top of Google Search. It is so annoying. So basically Google Search, especially for products, is all SEO spam.

own tail thing. And I feel like we already kind of have that with Google Search just returning in a lot of cases garbage results that are just optimized for SEO. Where uh like, we didn't even need generative AI to turn the Internet into a snake eating its own tail of low quality information, right like we we humans did it ourselves.

is that that big of a deal. Like they're almost like using like they're almost like confirming what people are saying. What people are saying is like, yeah, you can't use Google the search products anymore without getting a bunch of ads. And they're like, well that sure if you only count product search. It's like, well that's what they're saying. It seems like we agree.

I will throw them a bone. So the study did show that Google results did improve a little bit to some extent between the start of the researchers experiment and the end, but still they found an overall downward trend in text quality and all three search engines, and then when you add in things like AI generated spam, this is only going to get worse, Like this is going to be a problem that if they don't really take some action on, it's just going to result in Google

being garbage, Like whenever I'm searching for a product out the search like Ninja coffeemaker, Reddit to at least I used to do that, but I don't know. I don't know the state of Reddit these days, whether or not that's going to remain a viable strategy to actually get real information. But it should not be this hard to get real good information curated by a human on the Internet.

Like it's like wild to me that this is where we're at that you have to do so much just to get real honest information online.

Google results. Now that's still a big piece of it, but people are also optimizing their sites to show up in social media platform results, so like searching Facebook, searching Twitter, searching uh TikTok. When I thought that was like a really interesting change from Google being basically the only game in town for search to that no longer being the case.

supposed to be like, yep. Now, this is a whole new category of harm that you have to absorb and there will be no accountability or recourse for it. Unacceptable and when it comes to AI, that is no different. So this week, a New Jersey high schooler named Francesca Manny, a teenage victim of non consensually sexually explicit deep fakes, joined Representative Joe Morrell from New York to share her story and advocate for a bipartisan bill that would criminalize

sharing deep fakes at a federal level. So, this bill, called the Preventing Deep Fakes of Intimate Images Act, was first referred to by the House Judiciary Committee back in December twenty twenty two, but since then no further action has been taken and this lawmaker morel is trying to

reintroduce it. So the bill would criminalize the non consensual sharing of sexually explicit deep fakes and create a rite of private action so that victims who are depicted in these images would be able to sue the creators and distributors of those deep fakes while also remaining anonymous. Under this proposed law, damages for sharing deep faked images without consent go as high as one hundred and fifty thousand

dollars an imprisonment of up to ten years. If sharing the images facilitates violence or impacts the proceedings of a government agency. That's really important, I think, because oftentimes with deep fakes I do sometimes they're used to terrorize individual people. Sometimes they're used to, you know, disrupt a political campaign or disrupt an election, and so I think it is important to have to have that bit in there. So

Francesca's story is truly heartbreaking. Boys in her school, like a group of boys created and traded AI generated deep fake nude images of her at about thirty other girls in her class back on October twentieth, And I think it's an important reminder that AI is threatening and harming women and girls right now. Like this is not some faraway conceptual threat down the line. It is happening. It is here. Women and girls are already paying a cost for that technology and for the fact that it's been

allowed to just run rampant unchecked. So according to the Dutch AI company sensity. Ninety six percent of deep fakes online are non consensual deep fake porn, surprise, surprise, the vast majority of which targets women. So this is a gender justice issue. It is a issue about sexual violence. It's an issue about consent. You know, I beat this drama lot that tech issues are gender issues, their race issues, their identity issues. And this is a story that I

think really makes that clear. It poses a very real threat to our democracy. It does not just threaten the women and girls that are depicted in these images. It threatens all of us and makes us all less safe and secure. Because if women can't run for office or participate in public and civic life without being depicted in sexualized AI generated content that depicts them, we will not

have a representative democracy, right. We will not have a society where everybody can make their voice heard, where everybody can can participate equally in public and civic life. We just won't have that. And so it's an issue that impacts us all, not just the women who are depicted.

One note about this is that we're talking specifically about AI generated deep things right now, because we're talking about this legislation However, this kind of thing is not new, right, bad actors have already been doing this for a very long time without AI, Like before AI was super ubiquitous.

A few years ago, there was an image circulating online of a woman topless in her bathtub vaping, and it's a picture of her feet, but in the picture you can see her faucet, and like, there's a blurry reflected image of this woman topless if you look close enough, because you know how creeps will zoom in on a photo if I think there's some chance of nudity in it, if you zoom in enough, you can see a topless naked woman in the reflection of the faucet in this picture.

And so this picture was making the rounds on social media, with people saying that it was AOC. However, in reality, I think it was actually Sidney Leathers. If you don't know who Sidney Leathers is, Sidney Leathers was the woman who was involved in Anthony Wiener's the first iteration of Anthony Wiener's text scandal. Do you remember that?

know what I'm saying, Yeah, that makes sense. So this is what's called a cheap fake, which is exactly what it sounds like, a cheaply manipulated piece of content. Maybe it's as simple as something as like mislabeling what that content is, so saying, oh, this is AOC, not Sydney Leathers. That is how like low budget and cheap cheap fakes can be. So it's not always AI, right, So AI is not the reason why people are creating this kind

of misleading content. However, AI makes it so easy and so fast and so cheap for anybody to do it right. It might have taken some effort to like make a believable cheap fake of a girl in your high school class who you want to sexually humiliate. But with AI, anybody can do it easily. Francesca Manny, the high school student who was targeted by these deep stakes, I really got to give it to her because, like she worked with this lawmaker and advocated and talked about her experience

to help raise awareness about this law. She says, the issue is pret black and white. No kid, teen or woman should ever have to experience what I went through. I felt sad and helpless. I'm here standing up and shouting for change, fighting for laws so no one else has to feel as lost and powerless as I did. On October twentieth. The glaring lack of laws speaks volumes, and when you have a high school student having to advocate to protect people in this way, something is really wrong.

Like I give it up to Francesca. She sounds amazing. Francesca, if you're listening, come to the show anytime. We support you. But she should be like getting ready for her prom and hanging out with her friends and reading magazines and playing supports and like doing things that high schoolers are

supposed to be doing. It kind of breaks my heart that she has to be working, because this is work in this way to advocate for a system where kids like her aren't harmed like this, like this should not be on her, a child, To ask adults whose job it is to keep her people like her safe, who just done fuck all? It infuriates me, She says. Our voices are our secret weapon, and our words are like power ups in Fortnite. My mom and I are advocating

to create a world we're being safe. Isn't just a hope, it's a reality for everyone.

action on this bill is like puzzling and infuriating. Hopefully we'll see some action on it.

military adjacent purposes are now fair game. This change follows a newly announced collaboration between open ai and the US Department of Defense. So this policy change really continues this trend of Sam Altman and open Ai as they embrace this profit making potential of relaxing the company's sort of original lofty ideas. I think initially open ai was meant to be a nonprofit and they had this sort of like at least stated, kind of like altruistic sounding ish goal.

Now they're like, no, we're trying to make money. We're trying to get paid, y'all. Like that's what it is. Let's just call it what it is so. Just two months ago, we watched the internet pretty much melt down with a nonprofit board of open ai, which a Wired article from the summer describes as responsible for making sure that the drive for revenue and profits will not overwhelm open AI's original idea, fired Altman for allegedly not staying

true to its idealistic mission. The firing didn't take Within days, he was back and many of the other board members were out. We're really witnessing this evolution where we see open ai going from this organization that has this ethos of like free and open and non military to exclusive

enterprise licenses and yes military. It kind of reminds me of not to keep picking on Google in this episode, but like it's like every every story has been like you know what, fuck Google, But like, do you know how Google they used to have that motto don't be evil and then soon thereafter they were like, yeah, we make death tech. We make technology that is used to kill,

and what about it. I'm not saying Google's evil, but like to go from don't be evil to like, we literally make weapons that have and do kill people, it's a big jump.

I have a lot to say about that name, but we'll just move on, which the Israeli military has said allows them to identify enemy combatants and equipment while reducing civilian casualties. That's what they're saying. However, a fact that we just know to be true about AI is that it is super janky and gets things wrong consistently all

the time. And so if you're saying like, oh, no, no, we're actually doing a good thing by using this AI because it helps us reduce civilian casualties, and we know with certainty because of the AI technology that the people that we bomb are actually enemy combatants. Don't worry if what you're if the lynchpin of that is the AI technology being effective. We know it's not effective, so like that doesn't really work, and it really does sound like this whole system is likely kind of being used to

justify killing civilians because AI identified them as combatants. So this whole situation is yet another reminder that technology is not neutral and that the decisions made by people who make technology have huge implications. And with all war and conflict, it really is a gender justice issue. Okay, so we have to talk about this kind of funky AI racing ambassador thing. So this week the Formula E motorsports team Mahindra launched Ava Beyond Reality, an AI generated female presenting

AI ambassador for the team. So, as far as I can tell, Ava was an existing AI influencer and she was going to be used to publicize this racing team. The team's fans hated it, like clear loud, instant negative feedback. They hated it so much that the entire thing was basically scrubbed from the Internet in less than forty eight hours, according to Car and Driver magazine. So the racing company

did kind of release an apology on Instagram. They said, nurturing diversity, inclusion and innovation is at the heart of Mahindra Racing. Our AI influencer program was designed with this innovation in mind. Your comments hold tremendous value. We listened, understood, and decided to discontinue the project, like grand opening grand

closing for their AI lay the Ambassador. So I think one of the reasons why this got such negative feedback is that there are real, live human women in racing, but these women are often sidelined and marginalized in the sport. According to Car and Driver, fewer than five percent of elite level pilots identify as women, So it sort of seems like this team would rather create an AI generated fake woman than actually amplify a real, living and breathing

human woman who does exist in the sport. What's really interesting is that Car and Driver did a deep dive into this AI influencer social footprint and they found that

she posts about things like shoes and self care. So Car and Driver suspects that this AI ambassador was actually like a clunky marketing attempt to appeal to women, like sometimes when people are using AI, like the story that we talked about with the tech conference that was using a fake like fake AI ambassador for their tech conference It's clear to me that that was an attempt idea to appeal to men, right, Just a lot of the way that she presented was like, this is about men.

This AI racing ambassador, according to Car and Driver, might have actually been an attempt to market to women. The piece reads the photographs, shoes, clothing, selfies seemed drawn from the same kind of influencer style sponsored content theme so common from accounts that advertise toward women, in this case, paired with your standard AI girlfriend imagery that's from Hazel Southwell, longtime Formula E correspondent, and yet the text that accompanies

them doesn't appeal to women at all. It feels very much like some type of outside marketing agency deal gone terribly wrong.

of women who kind of look alike. I honestly wouldn't even feel comfortable guessing what's going on there.

car and Driver piece really nails it. The entire Eva Rose debacle waves a big red flag at situations where inclusion and diversity are swept up by a marketing machine intent on piggybacking on the latest tech trends without consideration for the human dynamics that make up the sport. It's encouraging that the backlash was widespread enough to make Mahindra rethink Eva Rose. And we can only hope at the next company that thinks programming diversity is better than hiring

diverse employees takes note. And that to me is really the point. Like it's a silly story, yes, but that is like the nugget of saying that we should really be taking away is that when companies are like, oh, we want to do something that involves a woman or a person of color or somebody to highlight if you use AI, that is a gig that an actual marginalized human does not book and does not get paid for.

We did an episode about this a while back. But a lot of these AI influencers, even if they're women, Like there's there's one that's really famous, it's like a black woman model that is run by a white man, and so it's it's a lot of times these when you book an AI for to be an influencer or talent in some way, that is a gig, that is money that a human person from that background is not getting.

And so particularly in situations like this one, when human women already feel marginalized, to use a fake woman as an ambassad or rather than amplifying one of those real human women who feel sidelined sometimes in this sport doesn't sit right with me, right, Like, actual inclusion has to involve actual humans from the identity that you're trying to include. And it's one of my worries about AI more generally that it will just be used to further displace and

marginalize people who are already marginalized. Like you don't get credit for working with a woman in a male dominated space if that woman is not even real, if she's AI.

can continue to thrive within the company. That kind of makes it sound like Pitchfork must have not been successful. However, Claire Willett, Conde Nass audience analytics person, said that this was actually not the case, saying on Twitter, Pitchfork has the highest daily sight visitors of any of our titles. Their higher consuming segments generate more unique page views by

volume than any title. This despite scant resourcing, especially from corporate well placed in a post scale era, or at least was so I should be clear that I don't have insight into exactly what is going on here and why this decision was made. If I was a betting woman, I would say that it has something to do with the recent unionization effort by Pitchfork staff, and it was confirm that eight of the staff who were laid off

were union members. The United Musicians and Allied Workers Union released a statement saying the mass layoffs at Pitchfork are union busting. So I have my suspicions of what's going on here, but I don't have any special insights, so I can't really say.

that music is a men's interest? You know, Conde Nast has Vanity Fair, they have Wired why not fold it into one of those those are also Conde Nast publications. It feels pretty marginalizing to me.

would give artists. Do you remember when Halsey accidentally praised nine to eleven because they were trying to hate on Pitchfork.

like media and criticism more generally. It feels like like if you are not in media or like media adjacent, I cannot stress to you enough how how tenuous it feels right now, Like every day there is a new round of layoffs announced in media and also tech. So it also seems like it's one of those situations where a lot of the big bets on digital media that that like people with money made are just like not

coming to fruition because of their choices. Like it is not like it's not rank and file staffers or like writers or editorial who are causing this disruption. It is decisions being made at the executive suit level. And I think that's what is so infuriating, is like it is not those people who lose their jobs and who are laid off and have their careers disrupted. It is the

rank and file staffers who aren't making those decisions. And so, you know, I just think it really says something grim about the state of media that we're in right now. There's a really good piece in Defector by Israel Darmalo that put it really well Israel rights. Throughout the industry, features in reporting and music reviews have taken a backseat as companies push for more social media and video content.

What has filled the vacuum left behind by actual music criticism is a loose collection of YouTubers and influencers who feed slop to their younger audiences and fan communities that engage with music solely through their obsession with a particular pop act. This has all helped produce a mass of music fans who don't understand the value of criticism and outright to test being told that things they like might suck.

Even worse, it has helped destroy what scant opportunities remain for obscure or up and coming musicians to find an audience. It's harder than ever to make it big without a co sign from Drake or Kayler. Swift and Stuffing one of the few music publications left that swam against all these currents into GQ stuffy environs, isn't going to help things. So I agree with that so much, and I would actually take this a step further more and more. I

think that this is the way of meeting. Yeah, Like, this is the future of media, and it is making everything worse. It is making us all less informed, It is making us all less able to be savvy critics of the media that we consume. Like right now, there are literally people celebrating the demise of Pitchwork because Pitchwork gave their favorite artist a bad rating like five years ago or whatever. Right Like, when media criticism just becomes a vehicle for stands to stay in their faves, we

lose something. We lose something valuable like, I know this might sound super hoity toity when you compare it to everything else going on in the world, but I do think that it is connected. I think this is a symptom of a larger rot happening in our society right now. When it comes to technology and media, media criticism is and has been the staple of a robust, healthy society, and it has been that way since our earliest days.

If that is replaced by like thinly veiled ad copied just another way to sell us crap, or like AI generated listicles, or just like fan content, then we really do lose something. Like I don't think this is a I understand that this seems like a small story and maybe it isn't a scale of things, but I think that this is a symptom of a larger rot happening in our society.

for better wages, better conditions or something. And I'm sure that the people creating those YouTube videos, you know, the stands, the whoever, uh, they're probably doing it for a lot less compensation than those professional writers, if any compensation.

who make the thing. They're like, oh, we can outsource that with AI. That's not that's not you know, I don't know this to be specifically true for Pitchfork, but I think that that is the larger trend I'm seeing. I'm seeing media go toward that the people who actually make the thing that bring an audience. What they do is replaceable. What they do can be replaced by AI or somebody who's not making any money, or just some teen on YouTube or whatever. And what's actually important, what

actually makes money, is the brand. And I don't think that is going to work out. I don't think. I think what actually puts butts in seats and eyeballs on pages is good writing, is good content, is thoughtful writing. And I think that And honestly, like I was, I was like kind of gone a deep dive with this. Claire Willet, the audience analytics person from Conde Nast, When someone when Claire was like, oh, Pitchfork actually was driving lots of engagement. They're doing fine, someone was like, so

then why do this? She basically was like, because rich people don't read. Because rich people buy things, they kind of hate the things that they acquire. They don't understand the things that they acquire, and they don't the only way that they have to engage with the the things that they get ownership over is to crush them, because they don't understand them, and they like have a weird

kind of disdain for these things that they buy. And we've seen that time and time again here in the DMV area where I live, a wealthy person just acquired the newspaper, the Baltimore Sun, and first day in the office, people are meeting the new owner for the first time, and what does he do stand in front of her room and denigrate the people who now work for him, being like, all of you don't know what you're doing, You don't know how to write. We should be doing

more social media, more listicals, more engage in content. What you're doing is worthless and valueless to me. This company that I just bought, and so I think that she's onto something that there is a deep, deep disdain when wealthy people acquire things that people like I was like, like, I don't respect it, and I almost kind of like weirdly hate this thing I just acquired.

like so threatening. And you know, we've definitely seen executives willing to like take huge losses just so that they don't have to negotiate with the union about anything, right, like just wanting absolute control.

So I'm curious for folcused thoughts. I was also had to do a story about how our grand experiment with those electronic self kiosks and stores could be coming to an end, and Mike You and I were talking about it and I was like, oh my god, I hate those self checkout kiosks at Target, and you were like, oh, those, I love those.

be on my side too. According to Gizmoto and a report from BBC, stores across the country are reversing course on these machines, and the consensus is growing among analysts and insider that self checkout has been a disaster for consumers and retailers alike. I totally agree, one hundred percent.

Get them out of there. So the machines are probably like not going away anytime soon, but they might be less a part of like the retail shopping experience, Like at certain Target stores, they might start limiting the amount of items that you can check out at a self checkout. I think it's like ten of them or less. Dollar General really bet big on self checkout, but at their earning call last month, their CEO said the store is planning to increase the number of employees and stores, particularly

in the checkout area. So like a big reversal of relying on self checkout. So there are so many reasons to hate self checkout. I don't know how somebody who likes it contends with these like very clear reasons why they don't work and why they're awful. Like, I don't see how a reasonable person could disagree with this evidence, So like you'll have to let me know.

know it, this is this is you are. I feel like you're being disingenuous to support your your love of these robot kiosks.

to them. And also another thing that I feel about these kiosks is that when you have a in my in my grocery store, the giant that I go to, they're kiosks routinely mess up and I feel like, when I have a mess up, it's always the kiosk, it's never me. But when the person has to come over to like fix it or whatever, I feel like the look they're giving me is like, oh, this stupid boom, this stupid old lady doesn't know how to use the self checkout and is like messing it up. There's no

way to convey. It's like no, no, no, your technology has failed, not me. I feel very shamed. I feel like other shoppers are like, look who was to be hollowed for a self checkout and broken and a human had to come over to fix it. It's not a pleasant experience.

in the store who does everything. And I feel like that's what doesn't work, right, Like, even when you have the self checkout machines, there need to be staff there tending them to like check your ID if you're trying to buy alcohol or you know, clear clear the machine if it has experiences an error or something. The top when the machines are most frustrating is when there's not a human there, or there's just like two teen humans more interested in flirting with each other than like helping

me check out. But when there's like, you know, either of those two two older folks at Giant who like know the drill and are on it, it's a perfectly reasonable experience.

work is that they make everything more expensive. Not only do self checkout machines allegedly double theft rates, they actually increase labor costs because employees who get taken away from their other duties to help customers deal with those chios and errors and blah blah blah overall, some analyst said, the machines increase costs overall. So I don't think it's a good use of a human's time to service a robot, so that at that point they're not like you're paying

a human. Yeah, it's less human staff, but you're paying that human not to engage with the customer, but to engage with a robot that system. It doesn't make any sense to me just have like things are going fine with human cashiers.

it works, determining the systems in which it works. Yeah, they should hire more humans to make them work, but like, I don't know, I think it could be a useful tool, right, Like the scanner gun that they use, that's a useful tool, right, Like, I mean, they hear what you're saying, but I feel like they work.

those machines not work. I want to I do want to say, like, well, I'll say this, there are probably people listening who have all kinds of reasons to prefer self checkout, Like maybe I definitely I'm not saying they should be phased out entirely, Like I don't think they should be given the real estate that they have in

retail stores. Like I think if you're somebody who, for whatever reason you might have where you're like I don't really want to have to engage with a human today the hungover line or whatever where you can just scan your stuff and go, you probably will have to engage with a human when it invariably fails. But Okay, all I am saying is that the massive investment in that cause, Like when you go to Giant, it's like, I think the Target is a good example. They have more self

checkout than they have human checkout. I think that is ridiculous.

so this is Future bridget here. I'm here with producer Mike. You were qaing this episode about self checkouts. It got very heated. We both have strong feelings. A gauntlet was thrown. Mike and I have decided we are going to go to the supermarket. We're going to get the same amount of stuff we are gonna get in self checkout, and I'm you're gonna do self checkout. I'm gonna do human checkout. I guarantee you. I will be out of there faster and more efficiently. I guarantee it.

by Joey pat Jonathan Strickland is our executive producer. Tari Harrison is our producer and sound engineer. Michael Almado is our contributing producer. I'm your host, Bridget Todd. If you want to help us grow, rate and review us on Apple Podcasts. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, check out the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts