Professors Disturbed to Find Their Lectures Chopped Up and Turned into AI Slop

Arizona State University rolled out a platform called Atomic that creates AI-generated modules based on lectures taken from ASU faculty by cutting long videos down to very short clips then generating text and sections based on those clips. Faculty and scholars I spoke to whose lectures are included in Atomic are disturbed by their lectures being used in this way—as out-of-context, extremely short clips some cases—and several said they felt blindsided or angered by the launch. Most say they weren’t notified by the school and found out through word of mouth. And the testing I and others did on Atomic showed academically weak and even inaccurate content. Not only did ASU allegedly not communicate to its academic community that their lectures would be spliced up and cannibalized by an AI platform, but the resulting modules are just bad. 💡Do you know anything else about ASU Atomic specifically, or how AI is being implemented at your own school? I would love to hear from you. Using a non-work device, you can message me securely on Signal at sam.404. Otherwise, send me an email at [email protected] in schools has been highly controversial, with experiments like the “AI-powered private school” Alpha School and AI agents that offer to live the life of a student for them, no learning required. In this case, the AI tool in question is created directly by a university, using the labor of its faculty—but without consulting that faculty. “We are testing an early version of ASU Atomic to learn what works, and what doesn't, to further improve the learner experience before a full release,” the Atomic FAQ page says. “Once you start your subscription, you may generate unlimited, custom built learning modules tailored specifically to your learning goals and schedule.”The FAQ notes that ASU alumni and those who “previously expressed interest in ASU's learning initiatives or participated in research that helped shape ASU Atomic” were invited to test the beta. But on Monday morning, I signed up for a free 12 day trial of the Atomic platform with my personal email address — no ASU affiliation required. I first learned about the platform after seeing ASU Professor of US Literature Chris Hanlon post about it on Bluesky. “When I looked at it, I was really surprised to see my own face, and the faces of people I know, and others that I don't know” in module materials generated by Atomic, Hanlon said. It had clipped a one-minute snippet from a 12 minute video he’d done as part of a lecture mentioning the literary critic Cleanth Brooks, which the AI transcribed as “Client” Brooks. “What was in that video did not strike me as something anyone would understand without a lot more context,” Hanlon said. When he contacted his colleagues whose lecture videos were also in that module, they were all just as shocked and alarmed, he said. “I mean, it happens to all of us in certain ways all the time, but have your institution do it—to have the university you work for use your image and your lectures and your materials without your permission, to chop them up in a way that might not reflect the kind of teacher you really are... Let alone serve that to an actual student in the real world.” The videos appear to be scraped from Canvas, ASU’s learning management system where lecture materials and class discussions are made available to students. Canvas is owned by Instructure, and is one of the most popular learning management systems in the country, used by many universities.…

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