Julie Helen: Generating 'normal' pictures of myself felt like I was agreeing there's a problem with me 

The resident six-year-old was watching YouTube in the kitchen. Although it is met with moans and groans, I have a code on the popular application so that he can only watch it while I am there.

At the moment, he is watching a mix of music videos that he can jump around to, and his fancy footwork is a joy to watch. He also watches a smattering of wrestling videos, and every so often he will chance his arm with an annoyingly narrated gaming video. Those are the ones I will never understand.

One video flashed up with elaborate images, and I said, “You know that one was Artificial Intelligence (AI), don’t you?” I got an eye roll akin to one a teenager would give, and was met with “Obviously, Mom!”

We laughed, but I think I was really talking to myself rather than my son.

I get an unsettled feeling with AI images, despite not being able to resist asking the applications to show me what I would look like standing up, even though I present a photo of me sitting in a wheelchair with physical characteristics of the twists and bends of Cerebral Palsy.

When I saw the generated images, I did feel a pang, but more because I knew I would never know what that body would feel like, regardless of how it looked. I showed it to my family and some close friends. I actually only sent it to a few people, because after I had done so, I felt like I had crossed a line I try hard to avoid.

Having Cerebral Palsy shouldn’t mean there is something wrong with me. I have been in this body always. There are no before-and-after pictures. It just is. Generating so-called ‘normal’ pictures and sharing them with friends felt like it was me agreeing that there might be a problem with who I am. My beautiful friends all came back with the same answer: “I prefer the real you”.

In that instance, it was very easy for somebody to discern that the images were fake. It isn’t always so easy. I am grateful to my friends for their answers, but another part of me knows, as my friends, that was the only answer they could give. Nobody who loves me was ever going to tell me it would be amazing if I looked tall, straight, and steady on two feet.

In the world of AI, I think we will need, more than ever, to rely on common human decency to get us through.

Another element that changes the online landscape is now how we sometimes get chat summaries instead of lists of websites with sources when we use search engines. AI is pulling an answer together for us, often not really showing us proper sources, and it will easily become a habit just to accept the crafted answer. That will make it harder for businesses and organisations to get website traffic, and it is already changing the face of independent journalism.

People want their news and content so fast that it is becoming too immediate for us to use our critical thinking skills which we spent years perfecting.

Maybe I am wrong? Maybe I am stuck in the ‘in between’ generation, and the ones coming after us will be comfortable with how ‘obvious’ AI is. I hope that is the case. I hope we mind the things that make us human in it all. Change is not coming, that’s for sure, it’s already here.