Not too wordy but still dead good!
Happy New YEAR (stress on the year, not on the new)
I’m going in on AI
On 13th January Sir Keir Starmer unveiled an AI opportunities Action Plan.
“Artificial intelligence, as the UK Prime Minister rightly declared on Monday, has the potential to usher in a (MUCH NEEDED) golden age of public service reform”. The MUCH NEEDED is mine. “Today’s plan mainlines AI into the veins of this enterprising nation”. Surely I am not alone in thinking that’s a really odd phrase? Mainlining it into veins?
I’m aware I (along with other copywriters and writers) am AI wary. Not AI averse. Not anti-AI. Just AI wary. The announcement from the PM included a line about using AI to spot potholes quicker. Where I live there’s no shortage of humans regularly spotting and reporting potholes. The problem, we are told, is the lack of £s to fix them. Using AI to spot potholes doesn’t seem on the face of it to be the nation’s greatest need.
Unsurprisingly some have reacted to the AI Action Plan news with similar wariness – the creative industries – cos ‘The proposed new law will hand over artists’ copyright so their competitors can be trained for free’. And specifically, British novelists - cos ‘Kate Mosse and Richard Osman have hit back at Labour’s plan to give artificial intelligence companies broad freedoms to mine artistic works for data, saying it could destroy growth in creative fields and amount to theft.’
Also AI - Grok
I know there is much discourse over sticking around on Twitter given its ownership etc. However, I’m still clinging on for now.
I had no idea what Grok was, but I hit the Grok button on Twitter and it spewed out a summary of me based on my tweets and it made me laugh so I’m reproducing it below.
‘Deborah, a writer who's been battling the lingering effects of Covid, including taste, smell, and hearing loss, while humorously navigating life's quirks. She's a self-proclaimed hypocrite veggie, pondering the challenges of cooking without senses, and is vocal about her disdain for artificial grass and the inefficiencies of bureaucracy.
Deb's been critiquing crime policies, TV shows, and even on-hold messages, while pondering if eco-homes reduce hot flushes.’
Why Deb? But ‘humorously navigating life's quirks’ fed my ego! Grok FYI is an AI chatbot developed by Elon Musk's company, xAI.
Accessible comms
There are no excuses for not providing alt text on images. For the what, why, and how have a read of this by me with additional input from a local business owner Hayley, from Dotty About Braille.
Zero tolerance
I love a good typo story, except this one. In short, it’s a consumer money issue, a local council fine for a non-paid parking ticket where the consumer had in fact paid in full but confused an O for a 0 on the app. Meh to bureaucracy and intolerance and I wonder if this is the kind of thing AI will deal with in future? It often seems like we aren’t dealing with humans when dealing with public services... what about when we genuinely aren’t?
Tacking fake reviews
Each year as much as £23bn of UK consumer spending is potentially influenced by online reviews, according to the CMA. The good news is that Google has agreed to do more to identify and remove fake reviews, including sanctioning rogue individuals and UK businesses that have manipulated their star ratings. I massively rely on reviews, AND I try to leave them when I’ve had great service or bought a great product or visited somewhere fab. This is very welcome news for all of us, except fake review writing businesses.
Effluence
This is disgusting on many levels. Do not read whilst eating. I have written before about greenwashing, both in my newsletter and my blog. But this one is really rather shocking. I expect we’ll read more about this shameful practice of greenwashing by water companies.
“The research suggests water companies have softened the language around raw sewage discharges by rebranding sewage treatment facilities as “water recycling centres”. They have also described sewage overflows as “heavily diluted rainwater” even when untreated sewage was present and posed a threat to public health.”
On that yucky note...if you have learned something from this newsletter or just enjoyed reading it, feel free to buy me a digital brew via https://ko-fi.com/deborahwroe and/or help spread the word about my way with words by sharing this newsletter. If you need me for dead good words you can find me at all the below. If you know of anyone who might be in need of dead good words, please put them in touch with me.
Deborah
E deborah@deadgoodwithwords.co.uk
M 0777 2232390
W www.deadgoodwithwords.co.uk