26/08/2025
A little food for thought here.
Ever since Jeremy Clarkson and his two bandmates left BBC Top Gear - and ever since I stopped writing for the Daily Nation - car reviews have become bland, lackluster, lifeless recitals of vital statistics gleaned from Wikipedia entries and Page 1 Google Searches; splashed with a meaningless cliche here and a misplaced metaphor there, presented in dull and often incorrect prose or a woefully edited film which serves as a cautionary tale against overreliance on unpaid (and unskilled) labor while blatantly exposing the brown envelope in the "kontant kriyator's" back pocket bearing a return address coinciding with that of the vehicle provider; but that's not why we are here today.
We are here because nowadays people outsource their thinking and parrot prepackaged opinions they picked elsewhere as their own, which they then defend harder than they defend their own friends and family in times of trouble. That's why we have AI and everyone is going for AI: one, because people can't think for themselves any more so the latest fad is always the default fallback for the smooth-brained to look trendy and forward-thinking; and two, so that the non-thinkers can have an easier time downloading the prepackaged opinions for subsequent regurgitation in the general direction of fellow non-thinkers.
The hostile tone of this little writeup is the literary equivalent of an old man yelling "GIT OFF MY PROPERTY!!" from his porch: loud but ineffective, but also with an underlying tinge of pain that can only come from one or both of two things: nostalgia from the good ol' days and the fear that the present tense is pointing towards a future that will be irreversibly corrupted.
Consider the film attached below. Yes, there are cars in it, but that's not the point. The point is AI: the crutch of the Darwinian reject when mental muscle is called upon to rise to the occasion. We are now past the point of the uncanny valley as far as AI visuals are concerned: it's getting realer by the day. And instead of showing concern about Skynet, HAL1000s, T800s, Linda Hamilton toting a pump-action shotgun and a n**e Arnold Schwarzenegger declaring he wants my clothes, my boots and my motorcycle, we are swallowing it wholesale. Without care. Gleefully, even. Goodness.
As earlier stated, my rant is little more than screaming against the wind. Agent Smith held Neo by the neck on the train tracks and forced him to gaze upon the approaching train:
"You hear that, Mr. Anderson? That is the sound of INEVITABILITY"
AI is here to stay and if AI can make a film as visually believable as the carboarding craze depicted herein, it leads to a very important three-part question:
When will the first AI car review video come out, who will be the first to do it and what will be the point of it anyway? And I do mean a full video review, with scripts and challenges and tests and driving stunts and road trips, the full Monty like Carwow does or the Canadian dudes do or like, ahem, Top Gear used to do. But unreal, all AI.
(We already have AI-generated videos of Clarkson's reviews and they're uncanny as hell, right down to the wording. It's scary good. But for this discussion we are looking at "official" reviews meant for authoritative distribution, not a showcase of how good an AI user I can be to the point of mimicking an English hack-turned-farmer)
Yes, that's a real question and I want to hear what y'all think in the comments below. I will give my own views in the follow-up article coming next week.
This is also a teaser for a special announcement concerning the future of the Motoring Press Agency. Stay tuned....
Regards,
J. M. Baraza
Director & Head of Strategy
Motoring Press Agency © 2025
Motion | Power | Advancement
