AI Slur ‘Clanker’ has become a cover for racist TikTok skits

In July only After receiving an email about the “perfect” AI girlfriend and content creator Harrison Stewart Make Tik Tok skit Using the anti-squeak AI.

Posing as a disapproving father, he confronts his daughter’s robot friend in the year 2044. “What’s your name? No, it’s not. It’s the 626 Series S. That’s your name, you dirty piece of shit,” Stewart says in the video.

As one of the original creators to make clinker-themed TikToks, Stewart, who goes by the name Chaise online, was dubbed the “Clinker Man” by his fan base after racking up millions of views. But in August, the 19-year-old creator, who is black, Announce He will not be posting any more videos about this topic. He said that the joke and the responses to it had become racist.

“When I go into my comments section and people start calling me a ‘cligger’ and ‘clanka’ or ‘You “I don’t make those slurs about AI and electronics, but to my face, I don’t find it amusing or funny at all,” Stewart explains in the video.

Clinker has its origins in the late 1950s with author William Taine, who used the word to describe robots from science fiction films, but its adoption as a slur came from the Star Wars franchise, where it was used as a derogatory term towards rival robots and soldiers. In recent months, it has become a protest of sorts against the rapid implementation of artificial intelligence in almost every aspect of society.

Over the past three months, the term has received more than two million searches on Google and at least hundreds of thousands of shares on social media. In X mail In July, Sen. Ruben Gallego of Arizona wrote: “Tired of yelling ‘representative’ into the phone 10 times just to talk to a human? My new bill makes sure you don’t have to talk to one if you don’t want to.”

However, on TikTok and Instagram, the ongoing backlash against AI has taken the form of short videos, envisioning a future in which robots are fully integrated into society. The term “clanker” is used along with “tin skins”, “wirebacks” and “oil bleeders” as pejorative terms in these skits. But some of these skits appear to use rattling as a stand-in for black people, perpetuating racist tropes and scenarios that date back to the pre-civil rights era.