“How soon TTG is widely embraced depends on how soon people learn to assume aiueo.”

  • 1. “aiueo” = “AI unless explained otherwise”

    “aiueo” is shorthand for the safest assumption about remarkable images created after the early 2020s: “AI unless explained otherwise.”

  • 2. Assumptions were different in the pre-digital age

    • Until the digital age, members of the public usually assumed that if an image looked like an undoctored photograph, it probably was an undoctored photograph. (They were leaning on 200,000-year-old instincts.)

    • Back in the 1800s and 1900s, viewers also assumed that they would somehow be made aware — whether visually or through some kind of an alert — when an image was not what it appeared to be.

  • 3. Those old assumptions are being abandoned

    • The public is learning that comprehensive manipulations — and even photo-like images fabricated without any use of a camera — are often neither disclosed by their creators nor detected by viewers.

    • The more that people get fooled by AI images, the more they learn that they should not automatically believe their eyes, no matter how “real” an image may look.

  • 4. How does this affect the timeline for TTG?

    • TTG is the most reassuring way* to label images that are exceptions to the assumption “AI unless explained otherwise.”

    • Thus how soon TTG is widely embraced depends on how soon a critical mass of people learns to assume “AI unless explained otherwise.”

    *Why not use a label that says “AI-free” instead of “TTG”?

     

    NOTE
    “aiueo” is not an approved Wordle word
    and for obvious reasons
    probably never will be.