"For a generation that often struggled to contextualize much of what it saw online, AI created a hyperpersonalized fantasyland. When Sandy, a 29-year-old part-time teacher, moved from her native Pennsylvania to live with her husband’s family in Canada, she knew she was signing up for caregiving. Her husband’s mother, Nora, had suffered a series of strokes; Sandy considers her a second mother and was more than happy to help. She did not, however, anticipate the role YouTube would play in her days. At any given hour, Nora can be found listening to AI-generated 1950s music that “sounds like someone singing in a tin can,” Sandy tells me. There are also 40-minute AI prayer videos — “This AI Jesus with a fake glow behind him just constantly going,” Sandy says. Sandy noticed her mother-in-law was often served videos of AI-generated doctors speaking in her native Tagalog and touting natural remedies in place of her diabetes medications. Nora trusted these doctors: At one point, she became convinced that two eggs a day would prevent another stroke. Several adult children I spoke with report similar stories. One man in Los Angeles tells me his aunt stopped taking her cholesterol medication after watching videos that advised her against it; she readily believes any ad that features “somebody in a white doctor suit,” he says. Another woman watched her father slip down a “QAnon health funnel” that eventually led him to adopt a meat-only diet. “When I go over there,” she says, “I’m always trying to help them incorporate vegetables.”" From : NY Mag / Intelligencer