Since AI first reared its ugly head, I’ve been keenly observing its progress as a ski review creator (https://realskiers.com/revelations/chatgpt-ai-has-ski-patter-down-cold/) with a sense of impending doom. My second peek at its progress, The Con is On!, was one of the most read Revelations of last season, an indication that many of my Dear Readers share my curiosity about AI’s infiltration of our little world.
Now that AI has had another season to sharpen its skills, I thought it might be illuminating to check in on its evolution. Here’s what I discovered.
While AI remains a formidable mimic, and gets enough facts right to dupe those with little prior knowledge of ski attributes, it has several glaring tells that tip its hand. Its biggest shortcoming is that its bottomless appetite for data hasn’t quite caught up with the present day. When asked to compose a 300-word review of the 2025 Blizzard Anomaly 94, it didn’t flinch, but nor did it have a clue what characteristics the ski did or didn’t possess. It wasn’t even sure if the Anomaly 94 was a ski or snowboard.
Not that this deficiency slowed it down. It still whipped out a review in less time than it will take you to digest this sentence. It peppered its piece with the usual hyperbolic claims, like “revolutionary design,” “advanced damping technology,” and “lightweight yet sturdy.” AI’s specialty is evasive twaddle that sounds meaningful without depending on any actual facts: “hybrid camber profile,” “premium materials,” and “advanced damping technology” all pretend to mean something but are actually information-free.
When prompted to create a 300-word review as if I had written it, AI fumbled badly, writing the usual tripe about a mythical “XYZ” model, an open admission that it doesn’t need to know the model name – or anything else of a remotely factual nature – about a ski to write expertly about it. The review was such a vaporous botch that I decided to give AI another swing at the pinata, so I asked for another, Realskiers-style review. (If you’d like to hear what AI wrote for me this week in its entirety, I’ve recited them all in this week’s podcast.)
This time AI swung even more wildly, digging up a hypothetical snapshot of the 2022 Atomic Redster S9 FIS GS [sic], its name a heady blend of both Atomic’s Slalom and GS Race skis. Even if such a ski existed, I wouldn’t have reviewed it/them, as I’d (regrettably) dropped Non-FIS Race skis from coverage some years prior. Hard for AI to craftily imitate what it can’t find and/or never existed.
But AI has an admirable “can-do” attitude about it. Undaunted by its stumble out of the gate, the software rallied and extolled the virtues of what sounds like one terrific ski: “The Redster S9 FIS GS is a true powerhouse on the slopes, thanks to its Titanium Powered laminate construction that delivers a smooth and stable ride at high speeds. The ski’s Servotec technology enhances agility and control by dynamically adapting to the skier’s input, allowing for effortless turns and precise handling through variable snow conditions.” It reads like a perfect recipe for Word Salad: take two capitalized features, one inflated claim and a soupcon of benefits of fuzzy prominence; toss lightly without irony, and serve.
Oh, and good luck with the variable snow conditions on an Atomic race ski.
The AI bot I worked with was on more confident footing when contriving a review of a mainstream ski of its own choosing, as if written by a digital magazine writer/editor. It chose the Blizzard Bonafide, giving it an enormous archive to digest and regurgitate, given the Bonnie’s longevity and sustained popularity. The review would have helped its credibility if it hadn’t called the Bonafide “all-new,” but let’s not quibble. The software wanders away from its strong suit with such babble as, “the Blizzard Bonafide sports a sleek and modern look that is sure to turn heads on the slopes.” And its prosaic prose vacillates between hyperbolic panting and breathless awe. If this sounds like some of the dreck you read online, it’s because it was born in the primordial soup of the thousands of reviews it has absorbed into its DNA.
To be fair, AI lends itself to editing and re-writes, so some errors in its first drafts are readily righted. While it doesn’t hesitate to compose a review about a ski it knows nothing about, these more fanciful efforts (like the one on ski XYZ) can also be tweaked to create a more plausible product. One glaring omission in any AI-generated review is the absence of quotes from humans, perhaps a rare instance of concern about plagiarism and AI’s unblushing theft of other people’s work. Since the truth is never of much interest to AI, I don’t see why it would hesitate to create quotes from whole cloth.
The real danger of AI doesn’t lie in the larcenies and follies it commits on a daily basis, but in its inexorably expanding knowledge and sophistication that no one seems willing or able to check. Fabricating misleading ski reviews strikes me as the least of our worries.
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Of Podcasts, Archives & Revelations
According to my tight-knit circle of advisors, idolaters, sycophants and astrologers, I was made for this medium.
Of course, any garden-variety sycophant will whisper words of inspirational twaddle, but the faint note of sincerity I detect in the smarm-storm of platitudes meant to buck me up has proven sufficient to spur me to action. I quickly acquired a very professional looking microphone and a pop filter to knock down my fierce sibilants. To preserve my objectivity, I opted not to take any lessons, follow any tutorials or otherwise prepare myself for this venture. By the powers vested in me as the Pontiff of Powder, I declare myself to be, now and forever after, a podcaster.
I’ll give you a moment to recover.
The Making of a Skier, Chapter XI: Desperate Measures
When Head humanely, if rather brusquely, terminated my tenure in 2001, the ski business in the U.S. was already facing stiff headwinds, a brewing storm that would turn into a full-on debacle when 9/11 disrupted all commerce. I became unemployed just in time for the job market to implode.
I don’t handle inactivity well. I started writing a very long, very dreadful novel, composed a handful of scripts for Warren Miller – and later, Jeremy Bloom – to recite and scribbled batches of brochure copy and white papers for industries as diverse as accounting software, instrumented football helmets that registered concussions and risk assessment based on location.
The pickings were slim, but they wouldn’t have amounted to anything at all were it not for a little help from my friends. Andy Bigford, who I’d worked with at Snow Country, hired me for the Warren Miller gig. A college chum kindly engaged me to write white papers on accounting fraud. But it was Dave Bertoni, an erstwhile colleague from Salomon days, who joined me in creating Desperate Measures: A Training Method for Selling Technical Products at Retail.
Reader Comments on Why Ski Sales Have Shrunk
In this week’s Revelation, I posted my top ten (twelve, actually) reasons why skis sales have shrunk, along with the musings of two Dear Readers on the subject. Note that the topic’s focus was ski sales at retail, not skier or skier/rider participation rates, subjects that are certainly related but just as certainly not the same.
Below are verbatim reader responses culled in the last 48 hours. I’ve corrected the odd typo, but otherwise left these contributions intact.
My thanks to all who took the time to tell their tales. – J
