by Christian Duque
When I saw the video that Marc Lobliner put out that Kali Muscle was using artificial intelligence on his videos I literally could not believe it. Not because Kali is any type of upstanding member of the fitness community because he’s not. I mean this is an individual that promoted the prison lifestyle, prison meals, and somehow became a crossover through slapping men on the back without a shirt on. I’ve never been a huge fan of Kali’s and I don’t really quite get it.
Now we have Wes Watson who’s another loser that has promoted the prison lifestyle and there’s of course the Strength Cartel that have been promoting it all along as well. They will tell you until they’re blue in the face that they do not promote it. They will even tell you that they condemn anyone that willingly put themselves in a situation where they can be charged with crimes, prosecuted, and put in prison. But at the end of the day if you remove the prison element from their content there isn’t really much for them to do in terms of content creation. We see the same thing with Michael Franzese.
Here’s a guy who allegedly left the mafia life behind and has been saved again. You would think that his videos would be centered on Christianity, bible research, and doing right by your neighbor. Unfortunately the vast majority of his videos have nothing to do with godliness or salvation, rather, they are all about the mafia. So here’s the deal, you can purport to be against something but when everything you do is about that particular something, that not only makes you a hypocrite, but it also makes you a liar. Therefore, I’ve never really cared too much for the jail bird in bodybuilding vibes, but now to find out that this tool is using AI to present a physique that is not his own is really the needle that breaks the camel’s back.
We all know that goon lighting is used in bodybuilding. We also know that a lot of people like to use special effects. Airbrushing has always been something that has been used by fitness models, men and women alike, to try to hide some of the flaws in their physiques. Now bodybuilding purists will tell you that the way to do that simply involves proper posing. After all that would be the authentic way of hiding weaknesses. There are a great number of champions that have won top honors and big titles while perhaps having a lagging body part.
The way to address that is to work it over time and improve it. In the meantime however you pose in a certain way as to show your strength and hide your weaknesses. Some guys may have a stronger right side than a left side. Some guys may need to employ the use of lighting and shadows on stage. You can find better spots for you so that the judges may not see it. But now using artificial intelligence is somehow beyond dishonest. It’s more dishonest in my opinion than goon-lighting, airbrushing, and even the use of fillers and implants. Because even an implant – while being incredibly disingenuous – is actually now part of your physique. AI is not you. AI is just some sort of a markup of you.
I guess at some point we start to get into a rabbit hole. It’s a slippery slope when we are in an industry that allows for all sorts of tricks that somehow deceive the public. I just feel that AI is the next generation. It’s almost like the next frontier. It’s in a very real way an all-time low.
Now I don’t know if Kali Muscle is using AI often, but Marc has a fantastic video that I’m going to include in this article and hopefully it will make the cut. Marc has been pointing out these sorts of inconsistencies for a long time. In fact he actually earned the scorn of RX Muscle when he took shots at one of their regulars for using (or abusing) the airbrushing feature on Photoshop.
The bottom line is that at some point even the most celebrated physique athletes need to be held accountable. And Marc is certainly someone that has been championing that cause. Not only is he a harsh critic, but he himself is a professional bodybuilder. He understands what is acceptable and what is not.
Now again that criteria is largely subjective. Some people don’t have an issue with fitness models employing all sorts of tactics from airbrushing to even AI. I don’t think that is something that Marc stands with. I think that he realizes that a couple of little tricks of the trade here or there are okay but to completely deceive the public is not. And I would happen to be in the same camp as him.
I think that artificial intelligence is going to generate a whole world of images and videos that are going to make it even more difficult for everyday athletes to attain. It’s as if the gear alone is not enough. Now, you’re going to have seemingly perfect physiques that are not even human. They are digital markups made by less than serious individuals. I mean Kali is not even a competitor. He never earned a pro card. He never competed at the Arnold or the Olympia. In fact he had to dramatically downsize because of the fact his lifestyle led him to a widow-maker stroke.
And so there is another aspect to this issue which I take exception with. If you’re leading a lifestyle that is literally compromising your health and wellbeing, then you downsize, but then you come back with a similar look that’s not your own, that’s fucked up. And again it is subjective and it is ad hoc. There is no black and white when it comes to this. There is no objective criteria. I’m writing this article from my perspective. And I watched the video from Marc’s perspective and I happen to agree with him.
Fortunately, some of the social media platforms are requiring those that use AI to admit to the use before publishing content. The viewer doesn’t really see this necessarily but the platform knows it and sometimes will treat the content differently. It may reduce its ability to earn revenue and/or it may also limit its ability to be suggested for new viewers. While that may not have an impact on the viewer necessarily, it does have an impact on the content creator because they will not be able to earn the same amount of money as if they were using their own image and likeness. In a way it serves as a deterrent for the abuse of AI in fitness content.
At the end of the day, many of these influencers make their money from social media and the various income streams related therein. So if they stand to make less by using these so-called tricks of the trade we may see a reduction in their use. But that’s only assuming that we’re dealing with fitness influencers that make their money on social media through AdSense and third-party incentives like it. A lot of these guys sell their own products and don’t even monetize their videos. Someone like Kali probably doesn’t make enough money from YouTube as to where earning less from it will somehow motivate him against using AI excessively.
Honesty is a very important factor to me. And there isn’t a heck of a lot of honesty in the bodybuilding world. This is an industry dominated by bait and switch and snake oil. Therefore, I don’t anticipate people like Marc being extremely forthcoming with their use of AI. Now perhaps Kali is not using AI all that much and Marc is mistaken. That’s a possibility, but I think that what we are seeing is pretty self-evident. AI is still so new that it is not completely impossible to tell the difference between it and reality. As technology improves, I suspect that we are going to start questioning what is real and what is not to the point that we won’t even know at the end of the day. And that is where I think we are headed. It’s quite frankly very frightening.
What say you? Do you think that AI is just part of the new landscape of the fitness world? Does it anger you that you may be seeing a physique that is not real? As always, thanks for reading my article, here, at Iron Magazine. I look forward to reading your feedback in the comments.