Toronto comedian who made AI-generated parody to silence babies on planes met with anger

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A Toronto area comedian who prompted artificial intelligence technologies to create and promote a parody product designed to silence babies on planes has garnered millions of views in just a matter of days — many from enraged users who believe the product to be real.

Brad Gosse, Toronto comedian and author of more than 100 parody books described on his website as dark-humoured “children books,” shared the product’s website, www.babymute.com, to Instagram and Reddit on Tuesday.

The caption on the Reddit post read, ‘Baby Mute.’

In 24 hours after Gosse shared his creation, the Reddit post has garnered more than 3.5 million views, has been reshared dozens of times, and made it to the top 25 global posts.

Many of the users who encountered Gosse’s advertisement believed the product to be authentic and were shocked and angry, he said.

‘A LOT OF ANGER’

“I do all kinds of parody projects,” Gosse told CTV News Toronto Wednesday. “I’m always coming up with weird ideas.”

When he saw that a local packing company was offering discounts on bubble mailers, he said knew it was time for another.

After being struck with the idea to make a parody product that could purportedly silence a baby’s cries while on airplanes, Gosse said he turned to the artificial intelligence program MidJourney to generate all the images featured on the website.

That image, featured on the post and the website, has perhaps drawn the most ire from the masses, Gosse said.

“There was a lot of anger.”

Then, he utilized ChatGPT to create the copy for the website and all the fake reviews for the product, dubbed ‘Baby Mute.’

“I said [to ChatGPT], ‘Here are the features and benefits of the product. Now help me write the sales copy,’“ Gosse explained. “It asked me a few more questions and then it spat it out.”

It would appear that the artificial intelligence did a sufficiently believable job – as Gosse said he’s been inundated with messages and phone calls since sharing the product.

“I put a Skype phone number on the bottom of the website,” he said “And I’ve probably gotten 200 calls in the last 24 hours.”

Many of those calls, he said, have been from those who believe the product to be real.

“A lot of people sent angry messages saying that babies express themselves through crying, that it was upsetting, that healthy babies need to be attended to,” he said. “One person told me it was the most pathetic project they’d ever seen.”

Ultimately, Gosse said the project did what it was intended to do.

“If I’m honest, I expect everything I do to get a lot of attention and most of it doesn’t,” he said. “I go into everything hoping for this outcome.”