So... I have to talk about Ann Reardon, the youtuber behind the "How To Cook That" channel.
If you don't know her, she's an austrialian food scientist who mainly does cooking and baking videos, with a side of debunking and testing kitchen gadgets. Sometimes her husband Dave and their three children appear in the video to help her out or to taste stuff. Lately, like many others debunkers, she has taken some interest in generative artificial intelligence and AI slop. She's also very respected in the field with her 5 millions subscribers.
Every year in december she posts a video about gingerbread houses, and every year tries to make it better and bigger... Until this year.
This video starts with her writing prompts in chatgpt to find a house to recreate, then during the entire building process there's a voice over where her husband narrates a chapter of his young adult book, and the video ends with her telling us to read the Bible.
I zoned out during most of the badly voice over of the book and came back to hear her say this, kinda jarring to be honest. The entire video felt off in general.
Needless to say, many viewers did not appreciate that, there's also a few threads on reddit talking about. They also discovered that she's part of a church that's anti queer, and point out that in the video in june she was wearing a big cross, and her husband wore a shirt with the heterosexual symbol a couple of years ago. On top of that, this particular video can only be commented by her subscribers, while all her other videos have no restriction whatsoever.
Look, I understand that many youtubers are jumping on the trend of using AI prompt to then debunk it or correct it, I don't particularly like it but I understand it's a trend and it gets clicks and views. And I'm generally fine with people being religious especially at Christmas, but telling me that "the Bible is real" is crossing a line or two. And when all of this comes from a debunker, it feels extra morally questionable.
Anyway, so long and thanks for all the fish, I guess.
