Since the video was published earlier this month, millions of Tiktok users have seen as a young Chinese with a blue shirt sits next to a traditional tea game and speaks directly to the accentuated English camera: “We expose the largest secret of luxury.”
He stops and raises what seems like a Hermès Birkin bag, one of the most exclusive and expensive bags in the world, before making a gesture towards the shelves full of more bags behind him. “You recognize: Hermès, Louis Vuitton, Prada, Gucci, all elaborated in our workshops.” He ends up urging viewers to buy directly from their factory.
Video “Exposés” like this, where a sales agent breaks down the material cost of luxury products, from bags to perfumes and appliances, are everywhere in Tiktok at this time. And if their statements are true or not, these videos and their virality speak with a new and serious impulse of Chinese manufacturers to connect directly to US consumers. Read the complete story.
—Caiwei Chen
How AI is interacting with our creative human processes
The rapid proliferation of AI in our lives presents new challenges about authorship, authenticity and ethics at work and art. But it also offers a particularly human problem in the narrative: how can we make sense of these machines, not just use them?
Three new books examine what we win and lose when we let the machines believe, and raise the question: How do we choose and the stories we tell about technology affect the role we allow it to assume (or even take care) in our creative lives? Read the complete story.
—Rebecca Ackermann
