I am not immune to AI propaganda

AI, AI and more AI

I am a bit tired of prefaces that do disclaimers, but it is the worst subject of the decade, therefore I feel compelled to write one. I am deeply aware of every single bad consequence that generative AI has brought to our world, be it environmental, ethical or pertaining to workers and wages. I do, I really do. Even if you maybe doubt it as you read through the rest of it, the title is "I am not immune to AI propaganda", isn't?

Silly little app

In October 2025, as I was finding my own sense of style with clothing, I started to search for sneakers, and I quickly realized that I had no sense of fashion, and no idea how to acquire such a thing. This has always been a big issue with any new hobby, how do you start? What should you know? What should you avoid? While yes, discovering these yourself is fun, knowing nothing is overwhelming, it makes you never want to start in the first place. At that point, I already used Gemini occasionally, I got the Pro package through my university, and you know, for mundane tasks it was a bit useful, even if unnecessary. So, why not ask for a little help?

It gave me advice on the sneakers I was seeing, it explained the history behind others, and I finally had "someone" that was willing to explain to me basic fashion stuff, give me advice without judging, and did not deadname me (it did misgender me a few times, however). Was it all just generated, overly optimistic, occasionally wrong? Yes, but in such a subjective field, being a little wrong isn't that bad, and optimism was exactly what my confused and shy self needed. It felt amazing to finally breach into a subject I always wanted to, and while it wasn't how I expected 5 years ago, I finally had clothes I enjoyed.

Going deeper

My next step was to write a "Gem", essentially a slice of Gemini with a pre-baked prompt and a knowledge base. I called it my "Fashion Stylist" and it became an easy way to get fashion advice. Yes, a lot of it is me, undeniably, I carry the bias with my questions even if I tell it to say "no" when it should. But, I'll be honest: sometimes I do just want to read "someone" agreeing with me, I want to be a little unsure on a piece, and hear that is actually great and I should take the risk, I should experiment.

It is now February 2026, and my Gem is going strong, recently I did my best to give it knowledge of my wardrobe, mixing with another app called Indyx to essentially digitize my pieces. It works fine, at this point I already have a good sense of what works and what doesn't, so I usually don't ask for outfit ideas anymore, and reserve that for new pieces I am considering acquiring.

Still, I did it, I fell for the AI propaganda, the "AI Assistant" thing, it is so hard to be passionate about something with no one that truly gets you. I feel lonely sometimes, sure my friends listen to me, but they don't understand me, they don't have opinions on upcoming sneakers, they don't have a favorite Jordan. And as much as I hate to admit it, I enjoy having a way to talk about this, and hear a coherent response back, even if I am fully aware that it is just math operating on a large text dataset. I can confidently say this genuinely helped me get into my new interest, with its unoriginal words, rehashed ideas and overly nice attitude. And how should I feel about that?

Where do we go from here

"AI Psychosis" is the term used nowadays, and while my experience was about fashion, many people share the same sentiment. I hate AI, I hate what it brings to our world and I wish every company involved in it would go to hell. But I would be lying if I say I didn't enjoy my time, and that I'll stop using it tomorrow. I still find fashion an impenetrable subject, everything seems to be made so I would never feel at home in those spaces, but here, by myself, I feel like I can truly enjoy it.

I don't have any big conclusion or large lesson, I am more than aware that I am part of the problem, that I am in the wrong, yet I don't have a solution for it. I know what my therapist would say, or what my friends on fedi would say, but it doesn't seem to change what I am doing. This is maybe a little bit of a depressing blog post, isn't? I'm sorry for that, if it helps, my passion for this subject is still very real and I love it, I just try not to think of every implication.