Tag Archives: artificial intelligence

A Californian, an Illinoisan, and a Dane Walk Into a Videoconference

I was recently talking with a former colleague, whose name I am not at liberty to reveal, and they posed a question that stymied me.

What happens when multiple people join a videoconference, and they all reside in jurisdictions with different privacy regulations?

An example will illustrate what would happen, and I volunteer to be the evil party in this one.

The videoconference

Let’s say:

On a particular day in April 2026, a Californian launches a videoconference on Zoom.

Imagen 4.

The Californian invites an Illinoisan.

Imagen 4.

And also invites a Dane.

Imagen 4.

And then—here’s the evil part—records and gathers images from the videoconference without letting the other two know.

The legal violations

Despite the fact that the Illinois Biometric Information Privacy Act, or BIPA, requires written consent before acquiring Abe’s facial geometry. And if Cali John doesn’t obtain that written consent, he could lose a lot of money.

And what about Freja? Well, if the Danish Copyright Act takes effect on March 31, 2026 as expected, Cali John can get into a ton of trouble if he uses the video to create a realistic, digitally generated imitation of Freja. Again, consent is required. Again, there can be monetary penalties if you don’t get that consent.

But there’s another question we have to consider.

The vendor responsibility 

Does the videoconference provider bear any responsibility for the violations of Illinois and Danish law?

Since I used Zoom as my example, I looked at Zoom’s EULA Terms of Service.

TL;DR: not our problem, that’s YOUR problem.

“5. USE OF SERVICES AND YOUR RESPONSIBILITIES. You may only use the Services pursuant to the terms of this Agreement. You are solely responsible for Your and Your End Users’ use of the Services and shall abide by, and ensure compliance with, all Laws in connection with Your and each End User’s use of the Services, including but not limited to Laws related to recording, intellectual property, privacy and export control. Use of the Services is void where prohibited.”

But such requirements haven’t stopped BIPA lawyers from filing lawsuits against deep pocketed software vendors. Remember when Facebook settled for $650 million?

So remember what could happen the next time you participate in a multinational, multi-state, or even multi-city videoconference. Hope your AI note taker isn’t capturing screen shots.

How “Humans in the Loop” Kills Companies

What happens when you and all your competitors adopt a “humans in the loop” methodology for your marketing and your product marketing?

Quotes from Robert Rose, Content Marketing Institute.

“Generative AI promised to relieve humans of the tedious, mechanical work — freeing them to be more strategic, more creative, more human.

“The reality? We’ve wrapped our rationalizations around this new concept called “humans in the loop.”

“This often means marketers are demoted to glorified spellcheckers and fact-checkers for machine output. Not creators. Not strategists. Just custodians of content they never had a hand in shaping.

Perhaps Rose’s thoughts are wishful thinking on the part of carbon-based marketers.

But if the “humans in the loop” thought persists…isn’t everyone using the same undifferentiated loop? When everyone yells “we use AI,” no one is differentiated. And no, it makes no difference with AI flavor of the week you’re using, since they all train on data. Human data.

And if the humans at all the companies are imprisoned by their identical loops…who has the competitive advantage? No one.

Except for those that use humans…especially humans who have been around for a while and remember this. If you don’t have a full five minutes, skip right to the three-minute mark.

On AI-generated Realism

(Imagen 4)

There are groups and communities for every interest, including AI art.

Through Danie Wylie, who I originally met when she revealed her misgivings about HiveLLM, I eventually joined a private Discord server (Promptly Collective Hub) devoted to AI art. Regardless of the reasons that the members create (in my case, primarily to augment Bredemarket’s self-promotional messaging), the common thread is enjoyment in using the tools, and learning how to use them better.

My next mission, should I choose to accept it, is to read the “Realism” guide and work through the workbook I downloaded from the server. While the use of the term “realism” with AI art may sound jarring, the purpose is to have the viewer suspend disbelief (like the Velveteen Rabbit) and treat the image(s) as something that really happened. 

Just like the movies: I hate to break it to you, but Frankenstein’s monster was a guy in a suit wearing makeup.

Anyway, the server itself is private, but if you go to the public “Promptly Ai Collective” page on Facebook at the https://www.facebook.com/dysfunctionalfairytale URL you can learn how to join it.

And to see how the picture in THIS post was created, visit the https://facebook.com/groups/bredemarketpicclub/permalink/3628048683992263/ URL.

Huff + Puff, the Magic Camera Hardware Failure Correction

It was 8:48, just before an important client meeting this morning, and I was freaking out. I had scheduled the meeting in Google Meet, and I started up the session…and the right third of the camera view was obscured.

Imagen 4 re-creation. I didn’t think to take a screenshot at the time. And no, I don’t have facial hair.

I attempted various fixes:

  • I stopped Google Meet, started it again…and got the same result.
  • I logged off and logged back in again…and got the same result.
  • I restarted my computer (turn it off and turn it back on again)…and got the same result.
  • I tried Zoom…and got the same result.

Which meant that the possible problem was a hardware problem with the camera itself. Which meant a lot of hassle sending the computer in for a fix, which was especially upsetting because this was a new computer.

Bredebot proves useful

So I turned to my buddy Bredebot.

In a huddle space in an office, a smiling robot named Bredebot places his robotic arms on a wildebeest and a wombat, encouraging them to collaborate on a product marketing initiative.
Bredebot is the one in the middle.

And he wasn’t reassuring:

A black section in a laptop camera feed is most often due to a hardware issue, such as a damaged camera sensor or a problem with the ribbon cable that connects the camera to the motherboard. Software issues are less likely to cause a precise, consistent black area like this, but they’re still worth checking.

Then I began working down the checklist that Bredebot provided, beginning with the first item.

The most common and easiest issue to rule out is a physical object blocking the lens. This could be a speck of dust or debris, a stray piece of a sticker, or a misplaced privacy slider. Even a tiny particle on the lens can show up as a large black spot or area in the image.

A speck of dust? Just a simple speck of dust causing that major of an obstruction?

Not having a can of compressed air available, I used my mouth to blow on the top of the laptop screen.

The obstruction partially cleared, and now three fourths of the screen was visible.

One more blow, and my “critical hardware failure” was fixed.

What does this mean?

So some computer problems are NOT fixed by turning it off and turning it on again. Sometimes a lot of hot air is necessary.

Imagen 4.

By sheer coincidence, the Just A Band song “Huff + Puff” is on my current Spotify playlist. Nothing to do with computer video hardware, but it’s a good song.

The Power of Artificial Intelligence

(Imagen 4)

“The rising popularity of AI is driving an increase in electricity demand so significant it has the potential to reshape our grid. Energy consumption by data centers has gone up by 80% from 2020 to 2025 and is likely to keep growing. Electricity prices are already rising, especially in places where data centers are most concentrated. 

“Yet many people, especially in Big Tech, argue that AI will be, on balance, a positive force for the grid. They claim that the technology could help get more clean power online faster, run our power system more efficiently, and predict and prevent failures that cause blackouts.”

But other people are skeptical, as this MIT Technology Review article indicates: https://www.technologyreview.com/2025/09/09/1123404/ai-grid-help/