The good, the bad, and the downright ugly of AI within AAC systems.
About seven weeks ago, I was out walking Winter around the vineyard thing near my apartment on a Thursday afternoon.
She’d just been decommissioned from actual walks, so we were both adjusting to whatever this new version of normal was supposed to be.
I was bored.
Then my phone lit up.
A Messenger notification from Mum. Three letters.
WTF.
This’ll be good, I thought.
It was.
In the worst possible way.
I opened the message and there it was. A perfect image, in the exact style my workplace uses for social media. Clean. Familiar. Corporate.
And then the words.
AI for iOS apps.
I work for an AAC company. One of the big ones.
Before you get your knickers in a knot, I’m very pro-AI. I have to be.
The gap between what I can produce and what most people can is only going to get bigger as this technology improves and spreads. I want it everywhere.
Just not in my AAC system.
Not yet.
I always knew this conversation was coming.
I just thought I’d have more time.
I don’t.
We’re already there.
And if my language is going to bother you, this is your warning.
I’ve thought about this too much, for too long, to clean it up now.
Grandma, you can close this email.
It gets worse from here.
The problem isn’t AI.
It’s what happens when you put it inside the one place I should always have control.
My AAC system.
My voice.
How I communicate, work, write, and access the world.
Because once you start mixing AI with AAC, this stops being a fun little innovation conversation and starts becoming an ethics one.
A big one.
AAC users have spent decades fighting to prove that our words are our own.
So if we’re still arguing about the legitimacy of Facilitated Communication forty-something years later, why in the fuck are we so eager to shove AI into the middle of this before most people even understand what it is?
People already question whether our communication belongs to us.
This just opens the door wider before we’re ready to deal with what walks through it.
And that’s the part that should make people uncomfortable.
