Did I Say That?

By Gordon Hopkins So, a great quote came across my Facebook feed this morning while I was trolling for column ideas. It is from the great lowlife LA poet and novelist Charles Bukowski, “My ambition is handicapped by laziness.”I cannot describe how much I relate to this quote.However, I was distracted by the associated photo, which was clearly not Bukowski. I soon noticed other peculiarities in the photo. The subject's left sleeve is clearly visible but no arm or hand can be seen coming out of it. As for the right hand, it looks more like a foot.My father was an excellent portrait painter and he once told me one of the hardest things for an artist to learn are hand studies. Apparently, this is true for AI (Artificial Intelligence) as well.Yes, the photo accompanying the quote was clearly the product of AI. Social media is now filled with forgeries being mass produced by AI and it is getting harder and harder to tell the difference. Upon realizing I had read an AI forgery, I immediately went on a quest to find the source of the quote and determine if the quote, itself, was legit. It turns out Bukowski really did write that, in his novel, “Factotem.”I love a good quote. As Oscar Wilde once said, “a quotation is a serviceable substitute for wit.” I am unhappy that, like everything else, good quotes are going to soon become impossible to find amongst a morass of AI-generated fakery.

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