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Artificial Intelligence (AI) is a tool … nothing more, nothing less. It’s not a replacement for human judgment or real-life experience. And it definitely can’t duplicate the special relationship of sisters.
1. How do we know Red & Black is real and not AI-generated?
Our bestselling book, which established the Red & Black brand, was launched long before AI. It was intended as the basis for a sitcom before it became a state-approved high school textbook (in Texas, no less) and then detoured into the prison system. Even AI couldn’t have made that up! And we can’t imagine AI would have come up with an overly warm-and-fuzzy stay-at-home mom with an extremely pragmatic older sister who retired from the corporate world, raced Ferraris, and thinks feelings are optional and sarcasm is a second language.
2. Why should we trust your statements about AI?
If you know us and/or have followed us for any length of time, you know that everything we do is about values and priorities. Whether personally or in terms of our business. Of course, it can be extremely difficult (and expensive) to put them first ... but without them, you have nothing. We promise we’ll always do everything we can to maintain our integrity and earn your trust.
3. What’s your opinion of AI, especially generative AI?
Black will be the first to say, “I have never disliked AI … I dislike it in the wrong hands.” We see its potential, but also know it can easily generate inaccurate information, be misleading, or be misused — either innocently or not. We also know the overuse of the old-fashioned em dash (see dash in prior sentence) is often considered a tell-tale sign that something was AI-generated. Especially as most people, Red included, don’t even know the keyboard shortcut to type one. However, they’re all through our first book, so it’s a matter of style and consistency for us. (And we love the Oxford comma, although we have no idea how AI feels about them.)
4. Have you ever tried AI?
Black has been playing with it for many years, as she wanted to know firsthand what it can do, and has been fascinated by how quickly it evolved. Red has never used AI, although she has read things Black generated using AI and sometimes is amazed by how well it works, but other times is scared because AI can sound knowledgeable even when it’s making things up, aka hallucinating. (Funny thing is that can be said of some humans, too.)
5. Do you use AI to create your posts and content?
No. Black has tried feeding it examples of our posts and even our bestselling book, which is the basis of our brand, but ended up spending more time writing detailed prompts and rewriting the results than if she had started with a blank document. It may have been technically impressive, but it wasn’t us.
6. Do you use AI to write your banter?
It gets close on Red’s voice (amazing how AI can “sound” warm and fuzzy), but can’t replicate Black. That doesn’t surprise Red because even she can’t predict what Black’s going to say. Or what dots Black’s going to connect.
7. Are any of your animations, cartoons, and images AI-generated?
No. Our animation was done the old-fashioned way. We hired an industry-renowned company to do character design, storyboards, and animatics, leading to the production of traditional animation. We’ve always hired artists (even when Black did the original doodle of our logo and the chapter drawings for our first book, everything was “polished” by a professional graphic artist) and are committed to supporting the real-world creative community. Does that mean there will never be exceptions? Well, we may use AI to brainstorm ideas, but all published images will be created by humans. And if we ever break that “rule”, the images will be clearly labeled.
8. What about your videos and audio?
None of our videos (and any audio we may create) are AI-generated or AI-modified. To date, we’ve not even used AI tools to assist with video development or editing — everything has been done 100% by humans. However, if that changes, it will be clearly labeled. Especially as we’ve joked about using AI to generate the voice of Black because AI would sound more human than Black trying to read from a script. (Trust us, we did the voice-overs for all our animation and know how many takes it required for Black to sound non-robotic.)
9. When it comes to checklists, worksheets, or other downloads you may offer, wouldn’t using AI to generate them be more efficient?
Yes. But so much of what we have is what we’ve been using for years or was developed years ago — whether when Red first had her “crisis” (her word, not Black’s), when we developed and taught the “Red & Black Personal Finance & Life 101” course at KIPP Houston High School, or when we published 30+ different curricula for Career & Technical Education (CTE) courses. Would we use AI to outline new items? Or polish old ones? Maybe, as there’s no reason to reinvent the wheel. But everything would be given the Red & Black treatment — differing perspectives based on experiences, as well as very different approaches (emotional vs. pragmatic), tweaked, and then test-driven before sharing.
10. Don’t you think AI has a place in Red & Black?
Yes. However, the key is knowing when to use it. And how to use it. We won’t pretend we don’t use it at all (don’t you hate people who won’t admit using AI when it’s blatantly obvious they do, as if it’s a “dirty little secret”), but AI still needs to be combined with human intelligence. AI can quickly generate a list of possible headlines and titles, but Black loves to get even more creative (she always dreamed of working for an advertising agency), and then Red, our “self-proclaimed” mere mortal, will typically make the final decision. And we’ll admit that sometimes we use AI for something as simple as generating multiple options when we’re struggling with a sentence. However, when it comes to technical applications, AI is ideal for helping with the backend of this website — things like SEO descriptions and tags, segmentation, and search. And analyzing and summarizing large amounts of information (it provided a fascinating, we hope “unbiased”, analysis of our book, including why it’s resonating with men and women of all ages).
