If you're ever after a long-awaited interview, but things just don't pan out, don't do it do what Esquire Singapore just did and come up with one via AI. It's a bad look. These people get it into their heads that it's a smart solution, but what do you know? Fandoms are angry. Ethical concerns arise. It's a complete mess. It's just not worth it.
When Mackenyu Maeda, who plays Roronoa Zero in Netflix's live-action adaptation of One Piece, was unable to attend a scheduled interview session, the publication did what I truly hope few others would do. They turned to generative AI to force a just-correct hallucinatory depiction of an actual interview with Maeda. Now that the word is out, rest assured, no one is happy.
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“Nature abhors a vacuum,” concludes Esquire Singapore's statement about the fictional interview, “and in its place a story fills the void.” Perhaps someone should have thought twice about doing this, or at least avoided going into deeply personal subjects like Mackenyu's late father. But “Claude and Copilot,” the wonderful pair of AIs that Esquire's team chose to tap into instead of scrapping the interview, don't have the same kind of appreciation for life that we do. Because they are not alive. So. Yes.
As Kotaku notes, this absurd 'AI Mackenyu', if you will, discusses concepts like “disappointment” and does so with that trademark vague-non-answer thing that encapsulates so much of what these AIs tend to do: revive what's plugged in and respond in a strange, nonsensical, but ultimately philosophically charged way.
“With a pressing need for a feature, we had to be inventive. Leveraging our creative license, we took his verbatim from previous interviews and fed them through an AI program to formulate new responses.” -Send to Singapore
I'm not going to pretend I don't know what it's like to have plans changed at the last minute, and the need to keep pace with important articles like feature films. But this is not the solution. Although “Claude and Copilot” had performed impeccably here, and not brought up more challenging, intimate, parts of the pseudo-interviewee's life? It still wouldn't matter, not really. Because that's still a pretty sick, disingenuous way to go about it. We're not even sure yet where Mackenyu stands on all this. Well.
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