A.I. Joe Rogan Has Made IRL Joe Rogan Put on His Thinking Cap

As we’ve seen constantly during the emergence of ChatGPT-generated internet content, people who employ A.I. tools for creative/deceptive ventures love — and I mean love — using Joe Rogan as a test subject. However, podcasting’s premier conspiracy platformer doesn’t quite reciprocate that artificial infatuation.

Earlier this month, yet another A.I. YouTube channel went viral for their tool-assisted Rogan impression. The Joe Rogan A.I. Experience, unlike some more insidious Rogan imitators, wears its artificiality on its sleeve, explaining in its description, “This channel depicts fictional podcasts between Joe Rogan and guests he hasn’t had on the show, with all content generated using A.I. language models. The ideas and opinions expressed in the podcast are not reflective of the thoughts of Joe Rogan or his guests.” Notwithstanding the name, we can tell that the JRAIE isn’t actually a Rogan project because A.I. Joe interrogates his guests’ claims and asks for things like “evidence” and “explanations” when they opine on the future of this terrifying technology.

Yesterday afternoon, the actual, verified Rogan tweeted a rare acknowledgement of his artificial imitators when a follower posted the first episode of the A.I. podcast. As it turns out, real Rogan is scared of this crazy shit too.

The pilot episode of JRAIE featured fake Rogan hosting Sam Altman, the CEO of OpenAI, the company responsible for ChatGPT’s development. The A.I. approximations of the two figures spent an entire hour discussing the political and philosophical implications of the real Altman’s product as not-Altman explained the technology behind the bot, its practical applications and its future potential as it relates to replacing human workers, its possible misuse as a disinformation tool and its theoretical usefulness in colonizing Mars. Yeah, that last part will get real Rogan’s attention.

The A.I. Rogan plainly urged the importance of caution and skepticism as this technology continues to change real human beings’ relationship with the internet, as well as their trust in their own eyes and ears. On that note, both fake and real Rogan appear to be on the same page — though, A.I. Joe is decidedly better at staying on topic. ChatGPT Jamie, pull up that video of Arnold Schwarzenegger in Titanic.