Cindy Gallop, founder, MakeLoveNotPorn and If WeRanTheWorld, believes that the ad industry should be standing up for its consumers against the likes of AI companies.

In conversation with Manifest (full conversation in the February issue that can be bought here), Gallop said, "Going forward, Sam Altman (CEO, OpenAI) desperately needs to make money. There are two ways he can do that, one of which is advertising. This is the advertising industry’s chance to take back power. We need to tell OpenAI that we have studied the tech, and this is how we can use it in the collective interest of effective advertising and communication."

She stated that this is a way to correct the perception of the industry.

"Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg have been dissing advertising over the years. There’s something fundamentally broken when they rely on us but disrespect us. We are the business model for the internet. Facebook, Snapchat, Instagram, and TikTok all made their money through advertising. We need to take back the power. The advertising industry has gone and pleaded to platforms like Facebook to advertise on the platform."

She also called for these tech platforms to use more human intervention.

"Imagine what Meta and Snapchat could do if they adopted human curation. We do that. One could call it way too expensive – but if it’s adopted, they would make way more money. The moment one announces that they are curating content pre-publishing, it means that violence, child abuse, sexual assault, and other negative content won’t get through. And that helps with brand safety for advertisers. Those advertising revenues will only get bigger with that."

She also rallied the industry to stand up for consumers.

“We also have to tell the AI companies to protect our consumers. OpenAI is a completely non-guard- railed force. When we are the business model for OpenAI, we have the opportunity to input how we want it to operate so that our messaging lands in the right way in a safe environment. The young white male founders of all those platforms are not the primary targets online or offline of harassment, abuse, racism, rape, sexual assault, and so they don’t proactively design for the prevention of them. Whenever tech giants want to make money, they default to two things. Firstly, advertising, and secondly, sex. Those VCs won’t fund what I’m doing – countering rape culture, but they fund these platforms. It’s 'outfuckingrageous'. We are getting into a problematic world, and it’s going to get more so with AI.”

Catch our full conversation with Gallop in the February issue, which can be bought here.

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