{"id":1867,"date":"2025-05-30T22:02:56","date_gmt":"2025-05-30T22:02:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/college-grads-furious-ai-butchers-names-commencement\/"},"modified":"2025-05-30T22:02:56","modified_gmt":"2025-05-30T22:02:56","slug":"college-grads-furious-ai-butchers-names-commencement","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/college-grads-furious-ai-butchers-names-commencement\/","title":{"rendered":"College Grads Furious After an AI Butchers Their Names During Commencement"},"content":{"rendered":"<div>\n<div><img width=\"1200\" height=\"630\" src=\"https:\/\/wordpress-assets.futurism.com\/2025\/05\/college-grads-furious-ai-butchers-names-commencement.jpg\" class=\"attachment-full size-full wp-post-image\" alt=\"College graduates were left speechless\u00a0after officials at New York City's Pace University deployed an AI model to read out their names.\" style=\"margin-bottom: 15px;\" decoding=\"async\" fetchpriority=\"high\"><\/div>\n<p>College graduates were left speechless<strong>\u00a0<\/strong>after officials at New York City&#8217;s Pace University deployed an AI model to read out their names during a commencement event this month.<\/p>\n<p>A <a href=\"https:\/\/www.instagram.com\/reel\/DJ-KWX_TzsH\/\">video<\/a> that has since gone viral on social media shows students having a QR on their smartphone scanned, only to have an AI read their name out loud \u2014 an irritating use of the tech that turned what should&#8217;ve otherwise been a proud moment in their academic career into what commenters <a href=\"https:\/\/www.reddit.com\/r\/Futurism\/comments\/1kssntu\/comment\/mto7cgn\/?utm_source=share&amp;utm_medium=web3x&amp;utm_name=web3xcss&amp;utm_term=1&amp;utm_content=share_button\">likened<\/a> to using the self-checkout counter at the supermarket.<\/p>\n<p>It&#8217;s especially galling for an institution that charges <a href=\"https:\/\/www.pace.edu\/admission-and-aid\/undergraduate-admission\/tuition-and-cost\/cost-of-attendance\">north of $50,000<\/a> a year in tuition alone.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;So even public event speakers are getting replaced,&#8221; one Reddit user wrote.<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Pace University Used AI to Announce Graduate Names at Commencement #ainews #graduation2025 #voiceai\" width=\"500\" height=\"281\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/yZE46SGlF0M?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>As the <a href=\"https:\/\/nypost.com\/2025\/05\/23\/tech\/college-grads-shocked-as-names-are-read-at-commencement-by-ai-what-a-beautiful-personal-touch\/\"><em>New York Post<\/em> points out<\/a>, Pace University ostensibly performed the stunt for the sake of accuracy. Well ahead of the event, officials directed students to visit a website where they could phonetically spell their names and confirm how they were pronounced.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;To ensure your name is pronounced correctly, you must register to attend Commencement through Tassel by Wednesday, April 23,&#8221; reads an FAQ on the university&#8217;s website.<\/p>\n<p>Tassel is a private company that claims to have helped more than 600 schools &#8220;deliver the perfect moment for millions of students over 20+ years.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>The company offers &#8220;live ceremony stage-crossing software&#8221; designed to streamline convocation events and ensure &#8220;accurate pronunciation&#8221; of graduate names.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;With AI and our proprietary multilingual models \u2014 powered by a growing database of over 2 million names, phonemes, and linguistic patterns across multiple languages \u2014 our platform allows students to hear exactly how their names will be pronounced as they cross the stage,&#8221; Tassel <a href=\"https:\/\/www.tassel.com\/product\/name-announcements\">boasts on its website<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>If the AI butchers their name even after it was coached by the student, graduates can &#8220;submit an audio recording of their name&#8221; instead.<\/p>\n<p>The software raises some thorny questions about when it&#8217;s truly appropriate to deploy an AI, particularly concerning jobs that could&#8217;ve easily been taken care of by a human.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;When I graduated, the person reading out the names had done a run through, just to check they were getting it right,&#8221; one user wrote in a <a href=\"https:\/\/www.threads.com\/@thedeveloperstory\/post\/DJ_N8KNTSxL\/video-pace-university-used-ai-to-read-out-student-names-at-graduationbecause-nothing-s\">post on Threads<\/a>. &#8220;It didn&#8217;t take that long, and was less weird than showing your phone for them to scan.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Worst of all, despite all those technical bells and whistles, Tassel reportedly still managed to butcher some names.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;They told us to write our names phonetically so it&#8217;s said correctly, and they still said my name wrong, which is forever documented in videos,&#8221; one user <a href=\"https:\/\/www.instagram.com\/reel\/DJ-KWX_TzsH\/\">commented<\/a> on Instagram.<\/p>\n<p>The use of AI to read student names has been met with significant blowback from college grads across the country.<\/p>\n<p>Student journalists at Northeastern University, which also deployed Tassel, <a href=\"https:\/\/huntnewsnu.com\/87085\/editorial\/op-ed-read-our-names-at-graduation-its-the-least-you-can-do\/\">published an op-ed<\/a>\u00a0arguing that the institution should &#8220;read our names at graduation, it\u2019s the least you can do.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;To many students like myself, a small switch from an AI voice bot to a physical person would mean the world,&#8221; reads the op-ed, penned by student Henry Bova and published in <em>The Huntington News<\/em>. &#8220;A human can reciprocate our sense of joy and can understand the gravity of the moment and the academic rigor that we endured to get to this point.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;All the AI voice does is reduce the recognition of our accomplishments as a menial task to push through with brute computations,&#8221; Bova wrote.<\/p>\n<p>An <a href=\"https:\/\/www.change.org\/p\/stop-the-university-of-north-georgia-from-using-an-ai-speaker-for-graduation\">online petition<\/a> by students at the University of North Georgia called on the university to stop &#8220;using an AI speaker for graduation,&#8221; garnering over 2,000 signatures.<\/p>\n<p>The backlash was so fierce in some parts of the country that West Chester University in Pennsylvania ditched the AI altogether, as <a href=\"https:\/\/www.axios.com\/local\/philadelphia\/2025\/05\/08\/west-chester-university-graduation-ai-backlash\"><em>Axios<\/em> reported<\/a> earlier this month.<\/p>\n<p>Other onlookers pointed out the irony of AI <a href=\"https:\/\/futurism.com\/signs-ai-bite-job-market\">coming for the jobs<\/a> of recent college graduates in particular.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;A whole lifetime of studies and 100k in debt just to have your name announced by the very entity that&#8217;s going to make your studies useless,&#8221; one Reddit user <a href=\"https:\/\/www.reddit.com\/r\/technology\/comments\/1ky9kx5\/comment\/muvhcc5\/?utm_source=share&amp;utm_medium=web3x&amp;utm_name=web3xcss&amp;utm_term=1&amp;utm_content=share_button\">joked<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>However, not everybody was opposed to the use of the tech.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;I appreciate that everyone had the chance to hear their name pronounced correctly,&#8221; one Reddit user <a href=\"https:\/\/www.reddit.com\/r\/technology\/comments\/1ky9kx5\/comment\/muw9cur\/?utm_source=share&amp;utm_medium=web3x&amp;utm_name=web3xcss&amp;utm_term=1&amp;utm_content=share_button\">argued<\/a>. &#8220;Imagine being an international student and worried that someone will butcher your name. I&#8217;m ok with the solution the university gave here.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p><strong>More on AI:<\/strong> <em><a href=\"https:\/\/futurism.com\/rfk-jr-make-america-healthy-again-report-studies-ai\">RFK Jr&#8217;s &#8220;Make America Healthy Again&#8221; Report Cites Studies That Don&#8217;t Exist, in Clear Sign of AI Generated Slop<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n<p>The post <a href=\"https:\/\/futurism.com\/college-grads-furious-ai-butchers-names-commencement\">College Grads Furious After an AI Butchers Their Names During Commencement<\/a> appeared first on <a href=\"https:\/\/futurism.com\/\">Futurism<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div style=\"margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px;\" class=\"sharethis-inline-share-buttons\" ><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>College graduates were left speechless\u00a0after officials at New York City&#8217;s Pace University deployed an AI model to read out their names during a commencement event this month. A video that&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[177,197,183,1166],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1867","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-artificial-intelligence","category-college","category-generative-ai","category-university"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1867","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1867"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1867\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1867"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1867"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1867"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}