I’m going to tell you a little story. The first thing you need to know is that I refused to join TikTok, but I am well aware that most things that trend on TikTok end up heading over to Instagram at some point in time, so I feel like I catch the trends a day late and a dollar short and I’m okay with that.

About a week ago, I was watching some random Instagram reels, and I heard a song in the background of somebody’s reel that I really liked. I immediately went to Apple Music, found the song, and downloaded it. I proceeded to play it on repeat for a full week. I played it for my brother one night when he was over cooking dinner, I learned all the words, and I tried to learn more about the artist. In Apple Music, when you click on the name of an artist, you can get to their biography and all of the other songs that they have put out to learn more about them.

What was interesting about this particular artist was that they only had this one single out, and they were featured in one other song, but I couldn’t find any other information on them. The song did have a picture of the artist on its homepage, but no other information.

Fast forward to this week, and I realize I haven’t heard my new favorite song in a day or two, so I go into my Apple library, I find the song and I click it and it won’t play; it’s grey. When I click a couple other places, Apple tells me that the song is no longer available in my country or region. I have never seen this message before, so I decide to go to the Internet to find out what is going on. I first tried to search the song again on Apple Music and now it is no longer listed in the catalog. I went to Spotify and I found the song, but you cannot download it. The song was referenced as part of a larger TikTok trend and was liked by many people. I was curious, so I spent a whole lot of time googling things and going down some significant rabbit holes, until I finally came to the understanding that the song I loved was AI generated. 😳

What was most surprising to me about this was that I had no way of knowing this. The song had a title, an artist with a first name, a last name and a picture, and the song was written by another person with a first name and a last name. The voice was great (to me!) and the beat was catchy. The song did not sound electronic, or odd, or glitchy at all. There were no obvious signs that this was an AI-generated song and not by a real live human being.

Experiencing this makes me think about how we are teaching our students to be critical consumers of all information they receive. It is not our job to teach students what to think, but rather to teach them how to think, and ideally to think critically. This is also a reminder to help our teachers continue to be critical consumers of what they are using AI for and what AI-generated media they are putting in front of students.While we have shared the many benefits AI can bring to our work and personal lives, from time-saving tips to efficiency upgrades to data crunching, we must also be aware that there is a role AI is playing in our lives whether we want it there or not. This experience reminded me to be more aware of the potential of AI in all forms of media and to dig deeper on my own (notice I did google searches above and not AI searches to solve my mystery!) to ensure I know what I am consuming. Social media makes it so easy and convenient for us to mindlessly scroll through a selection of media curated by an algorithm that is supported by AI, feeding us things it thinks we want to see and hear. This was a wake-up call to me to stop the scroll and force my brain to operate independently more often!

This was written completely by the AI that is Amy Illingworth, with no help from the AI that is Artificial Intelligence!

After finding and inserting the image above, I learned that my blog now has a feature where I can use Artificial Intelligence (AI) to edit photos. AI really is EVERYWHERE.