By Drew Dietsch
| Published
AI is garbage and anyone using it is an uncreative hack without a shred of actual inspiration in their body. This isn’t news to anyone with a brain that hasn’t been consumed by moronrot, but AI has become something that is actively hurting the planet, the workforce, and the very fabric of our objective reality.
So, naturally, my focal point for this discussion isn’t part of those actually important subjects we should be talking about. No, the thing that matters the most when I talk about AI has to be the least important thing in the world: movies.
Because AI is ruining my ability to enjoy a certain facet of watching movies.
I Need This To Watch Movies And AI Is Ruining It

Ever since I was a very young kid, I would put on closed captioning while watching television. It helped with progressing my reading comprehension and helped clarify anything I couldn’t understand in the audio track. Once DVDs replaced VHS tapes, movies were all including caption/subtitle tracks. I was ecstatic. It was easier than ever to watch movies and shows with a dependable subtitle track.
But ever since the rise and widespread implementation of AI, I’ve been noticing a lot more errors on subtitle tracks of late. The one that inspired me to write this was The Criterion Channel’s streaming debut of The Shrouds (my review), the new and highly anticipated (in my house) outing from master filmmaker David Cronenberg.
There were multiple flubs on the subtitle track that gave me pause. It’s not out of the realm of possibility that these were human errors, but I’m extremely doubtful. If Criterion or whatever outfit is responsible for the subtitle job on The Shrouds wants to reach out, hit me up.
That said, the goofs on the subtitle track were often very obvious to suss out in the audio track. I don’t have the greatest hearing in the world but even I could distinctly make out the difference between what was being said and what was written in the captions. This leads me to the only possible conclusion: a human did not do the actual captioning. I’m willing to bet it was fed through an AI, given a very passive double-check by someone, and sent out into the world.
While this is more of a convenience for me, captions are a necessary and vital element to film and television viewers who are deaf or hard of hearing. Knowing that companies are devaluing those viewers by passing off caption work to soulless AI programs says something about how deaf and hard-of-hearing customers don’t actually matter to film production companies.
The AI Doubting Intensifies

And here’s the real rub of it all: I could be 100% wrong! The many mistakes on The Shrouds subtitles could feasibly be from human error. The problem is that we have now accepted a landscape where there is always going to be severe doubt about human involvement.
By allowing AI to proliferate throughout every facet of our lives, we are being programmed to do three things: 1) Accept poorer work as the standard, 2) Doubt the involvement of humans involved in work, and 3) Accept deflected responsibility from the humans pushing AI. It’s a toxic and unsustainable model in all areas of use, but definitely one that’s going to backfire in the creative industry.
The niche subject of proper captions is a microcosm of all the ways AI is ruining the world. Just wait until the AI that subtitled The Shrouds gets to run our nuclear weapons arsenal! Who would’ve predicted that Skynet wouldn’t be overtly evil, just maliciously stupid?