As Juneteenth approaches, many Black Americans, including myself, feel a special connection to their past. However, many of us don’t have documented family history and rely on secondary data sources, most notably the internet. Unfortunately, as AI becomes pervasive, while still hallucinogenic and misinformed, our history is at risk of being erased or mistold — even more than it has been already.
For Black Americans, oral storytelling and informal recordkeeping have been an instrumental part of culture and community. While our white counterparts could often preserve their heritage through formal documentation and written accounts, anti-literacy laws and the lack or loss of documentation during slavery denied that opportunity to many Black Americans. For example, only 5–10% of Black Americans in the antebellum South could read as a result of decades of abuse and oppression.
While the literacy gap has closed, oral storytelling has persisted as both informal recordkeeping and tradition. Today, keeping our cultural identities alive outside of mainstream practices through oral tradition honors our heritage.
In the digital era, our family storytelling has adapted and become more digitized as people share their personal anecdotes on social media platforms. However, AI technologies now threaten to disrupt this vital system of storytelling. The technology’s ability to produce content, like old photos, birth certificates, or other historical records, that is indiscernible from actual documentation, poses a real threat to our community and its traditions.
In fact, this has already happened with the YouTube channel “Dark Epoch Tales,” which journalists and historians alike have called out for producing false stories about a romantic relationship between a plantation owner’s wife and an enslaved man. Copycat channels have also emerged, producing AI-generated images to push a false narrative of interracial friendships in the antebellum South. This diminishes the actual lived experiences of enslaved and recently freed Black people in the South, and allows for further “whitewashing” of their legacies.
The rise of falsified AI-generated cultural content is dangerous for three reasons.
First, through these tools, anyone can push narratives about marginalized groups, once again suppressing voices and actual stories while accelerating misinformation.
Second, AI allows bad actors to profit from the erasure of actual Black stories and the promotion of harmful accounts. Big Tech platforms like Meta and YouTube have lackluster content policies that allow these videos to go viral and generate revenue.
Lastly, oral storytelling becomes devalued by academics and society, often seen as not objective or fact-backed, despite systemic barriers like low literacy rates that made verification impossible. As unfettered AI makes it harder to distinguish reality from fiction, our stories and histories face even greater scrutiny.
Yes, oral tradition has always been hard to factcheck, but the AI threat only exacerbates that problem. In the past, constant retelling made family stories so familiar that communities could police and regulate embellishment. For example, in my family, older family members often interject mid-story, correcting small details. It’s clear they think preserving the minutia helps keep our stories alive.
Fortunately, even in the age of AI, the loss of human storytelling is not inevitable. We need sustainable regulation. Platforms must enact mandatory and visible content disclosures for AI-generated content; voluntary reporting is not enough. Content should also have reporting mechanisms, allowing viewers to report AI-generated photos and videos. This serves the same role as a family member correcting a story by letting communities provide feedback and factchecking.
While these solutions are not perfect, they are a step in the right direction. As a society, we have a responsibility to preserve these stories and prevent contamination by harmful, profit-seeking false narratives.If we simply accept AI contamination of our culture, we concede to a generation’s long battle to silence our heritage.
Sparkle Rainey work as a digital strategist for youth engagement organizations and is a Public Voices Fellow on Youth Well-Being and Power with the OpEd Project and Hopelab.
