https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N5YDkQ6oFcE

https://www.heraldextra.com/news/2026/a ... tage-days/

I had a long post, but it keeps getting eaten up by server delays, so.......... more later.

I am not sure if that youtube creator channel is real or fake?

Look,
it is 16 year old channel,
14 years with mostly not narrated railfan videos,
after that videos of obscure topics with maybe AI generated voice...
plus asking for patreon money on the end of the videos?
For me that is a hacked account without any proof of the working.
Clickbait and money the only goal!

Is here some real people who was in that museum lately?

It’s definitely a real channel by a real person.

Great Basin Car Shops channel is ran by a good friend of mine, and I've even helped him film some of the videos with him riding shotgun in my car sticking a camera out the windows chasing Rio Grande Southern 20 in Durango (curiously he was accused of AI on that too, which had us both howling the rest of the trip freezing in snow waiting for RGS 20 to pass and we'd crack jokes like "this AI is SO convincing, my legs really can't feel anything!") He rebranded the channel about two years ago which is why the content style shifted, but trust me it's very human made. I saw photos of the Lehi museum trip before the video was made in a group chat and we were all a bit flabbergasted by them.

There is a group in Ohio right now trying to raise money for locomotive repairs. The picture in their FB post and on their website is an AI-generated shot of the locomotive flying around a curve with no one in the cab, no headlight and sparks flying off the wheels. Whoever posted it says it was meant to be "fun". Most of the replies are negative but the attitude of the group's responses is "we don't care what you think about it, just send us money!" The leader of the group is perfectly fine with it as well.

Well, I guess that's one way to decide what projects are worth supporting... It's a shame the project will suffer though.

This whole thing is so obnoxious.

AI is a really good tool when used responsibly. It's how I built the Catalogr tool that lets the CRHS distribute cataloging duties along with a whole bunch of digital infrastructure and tools for other groups. The New Haven Archive (https://archive.nhrhta.org/), for example, wouldn't be possible if it were for GenAI (specifically Vercel's V0.app IDE).

But, and this is the important part, you'd NEVER know. That's because the tools were used responsibly and intelligently.

People are freaking out aboug GenAI, in some cases legitimately, but we also need to remember that ALL big technological advances bring dangers. Hell, the Best Friend of Charleston killed someone in its own first six months of operation.

In that instance, like this one, the operators of the technology did something ill advised with it. In one case it was tying down a safety valve while the other was making and passing slop off as historical fact.

I think the REAL threat from GenAI is that the harmful repercussions from its poor use are far less obvious than a boiler explosion, although possibly more harmful to more people.

https://www.facebook.com/tlewrm/posts/p ... L8W4wRp7zl I saw that, and I was positively astounded by the over-the-top reaction to something about as bad as photoshopping a smiley face on a unit a la Thomas. Definitely a mob dynamic developing, where if you don't agree that AI is evil you are morally suspect. I am reminded of the scene in Voltaire's Candide where the main character, visiting a protestant area of Europe, is asked if he believes that the pope is antichrist, and when he isn't sure that the pope is antichrist, and hadn't even thought about it, the people are outraged, dump chamber pots on his head, etc., and essentially run him out of town.

As both a graphic artist and musician, I'm pretty much vehemently against AI in the creative arts. Do note that I think AI does have its uses. Just not in these cases.

However, in my opinion, the TLE&W post isn't as egregious as some make it out to be. Would I have used AI in that post? Big nope. But I'm not hideously offended as it's not grossly portraying something it's not. Is it a "fun" graphic? Maybe so, maybe not. Though, again in my opinion, it just doesn't fit the campaign.

As far as the Lehi museum goes, if true, extensive use of generative AI to make historic displays is such a bad move - kinda like making up history. AI does no research. It extrapolates and regurgitates what is in its training data - none of which has been screened in any way to achieve accuracy in the final output.

I'm also a big fan of requiring clear labelling of AI content.