A student was trying to get me to raise her mark because she missed the assignment and received zero, as do all the people who don’t submit it in time. During our back and forth communications one of her emails had a prompt at the front which said “consider putting it this way” as though she was checking with chatgpt or grammarly on how to reply to the teacher. Funny how grey it is, the use of machines everywhere and more frequently positioned to do exactly this – pretend to be personal. I feel this so much in modern music, the complete capture of sounds, lyrics and melodies generated by machines, positioned as the new music. I feel like I’m mostly alone rolling my eyes because my students love the contemporary hits and seem oblivious to how prefab they are. I pointed out the snippet of AI she did not erase and the student’s response was casual and unapologetic. Like isn’t everyone cool with checking an app when ostensibly pretending the message came from your heart?