Anyone who participated in the school yearbook class while they were in high school can attest to the hard work and attention to detail that goes into creating the annual yearbook.
From curating photos, documenting important events from the year, interviewing students and teachers, and creating other highlights, the yearbook is meant to be a special memento for students when they graduate.
TikTokers who were sentimental about their yearbooks and others who had experience putting a yearbook together were left reeling when fellow TikToker @rtbjj19 showed his yearbook.
All appeared well when he showed a cover full of smiling students, but then he flipped to a page about halfway through.
The page highlighted the Future Farmers of America (FFA) student group on campus, with pictures of the group gathered together and volunteering to clean up their community.
But the text written about the FFA group looked sloppy in comparison to the photos, as it was left-justified, leaving large swatches of white space on the right side of the page, and the passages appeared in different typesetting.
To make matters worse, the student then pointed to the bottom of the FFA group description, which read:
"Feel free to let me know if you need any adjustments or additional information!"
That's right: someone had not only asked ChatGPT to write about the Future Farmers of America group on their school campus, but they also did not proofread the body of text, including not removing ChatGPT's prompt at the end, which immediately clued everyone in on the nature of the text.
You can watch the video here:
Some were deeply offended by the fact that the yearbook staff had not even proofread the text they'd borrowed.
@rtbjj19/TikTok
@rtbjj19/TikTok
@rtbjj19/TikTok
@rtbjj19/TikTok
@rtbjj19/TikTok
Others who had been involved in their school's yearbook team were offended that the drafting process had come to this.
@rtbjj19/TikTok
@rtbjj19/TikTok
@rtbjj19/TikTok
@rtbjj19/TikTok
@rtbjj19/TikTok
@rtbjj19/TikTok
It's disheartening to realize the speed at which some people are viewing ChatGPT and other AI-generation tools as the default options for getting tasks done.
Between being a fairly large group of students and seeing that they were involved in their community, there was surely much that could be said about the Future Farmers of America student group, and it should have been fairly simple to write.
Not to mention the fact that the yearbook is meant to be a sentimental artifact from the school year, with time and care put into it, by students and for students.
That's not something that AI should be trying to replace, even for a quick passage.
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