Getting REAL in June
June 2026 was the month to Get REAL.
It was… well it was A LOT.
Get REAL was one of many Real Good AI pilot programs this year. It doubled as genuine educational outreach and a way to get the REAL Rating in front of as many people as possible by leveraging a massive audience thanks to Bob and Mark.
Our goal: get as many people as possible to adopt the REAL Rating as a standard to talk about AI. We wanted to move the conversation away from the usual “AI good” or “AI bad” (I'm being polite, I am aware this is official correspondence so I need to be good) shouting match and into something actually useful. Something that gives people real information about what they're looking at.
Now at the end we can say it was a massive success!
The Numbers, Because We Love Number:
By the end of June, we had
1,000+ emails sent to organizations asking them to adopt the AI Rating
AN INCREDIBLE Logo by the incomparable Kampko
Workshops and Conference Invitations received!
20K+ Views on Roll4REAL Social Campaign
410K+ Views on the Live-streamed Panel Do-Over with Mark
12k+ Followers Gained on TikTok and Instagram EACH (Blasting past our annual goal)
First there was the planning. In March “Get REAL in June” was just a name in the team chat; then in April and May Dr. Eric took the reins and laid out a vision: a TikTok campaign ("Roll4REAL"), a pledge, custom merch, a massive email push with a button counter on our website, and a massive announcement at SXSW London with Mark and Bob on June 4th.
But before all of that; every Real Good Campaign needs a logo.
Dr Eric made a prototype for “Get REAL 2026” and threw it into the Discord. Within hours, Real Good Volunteer Kampko took that rough idea and turned it into the logo you saw on shirts, stickers, livestreams, and videos.
I asked Kampko about the process of making the logo and how they approached working with the Real Good AI Team and Dr Eric:
"Dr. Eric was looking for [a Logo Design] that gave off the feeling of old school paint or graffiti. Like we used to see a lot in the 90's, with bold colors, which RGAI's are perfect for.
The results were phenomenal.
The Prototype
The Final Result
So, the actual Get REAL 2026 campaign was supposed to start off at SXSW London. We even had a panel that would have announced “Get REAL 2026” that the universe was determined to prevent. Visas were held up, Bob and Mandy got sick, SXSW London didn’t have the ability to let us remote in, and the whole thing fell through.
It would have been easy to let that derail everything. But the community that Mark, Bob, and Wade have built over nearly 15 years doesn’t let something simple like an international incident stop them from doing what needs to be done.
Mark, Bob, and Mandy rallied and did the panel anyway on Mark’s YouTube channel, you can watch it here: Talking AI with Bob and Mandy.
Keen eyed readers will notice that June 12th is very much not June 4th. That means the announcement for kicking off Get REAL was delayed by *eight*(8!!) whole days. The new plan with the livestream and some amazing volunteers meant that it was a sprint to the finish. And oh boy did you guys SPRINT.
In less than three weeks the community had sent or started over a thousand conversations, emails, letters, posts, and carrier pigeons (we cannot confirm the carrier pigeons, but we can’t deny them either and I choose to believe it happened). Real human beings took the time to write, sign, and send messages to organizations, creators, and institutions asking them to adopt the REAL Rating.
You pressed that button, watched the counter go up, and turned a wild idea into a reality. You bought merch, stickers, mugs. You donated. You shared videos. You shared the message. The energy spread. We had people refining designs. Volunteers sending email templates. Volunteers making signs, using REAL Ratings on their own creations, and embracing the nuance of the rating system with an enthusiasm that matched our own.
We got responses from industry professionals, from schools, teachers, libraries and watched the number of emails sent tick up one email at a time.
Dr Eric was a one man content machine between Roll4REAL and REAL Jeopardy there was always content available to make sure the REAL Rating was getting the attention it deserved.
By the way, REAL Jeopardy is very real, very good, very glorious, and the team played it together on Real Good Thursday. You can watch the VOD on YouTube: https://youtube.com/live/vroFo170STE
Meanwhile, Roll4REAL literally had Dr Eric rolling dice on TikTok. He rolled for an art form (drawing, music, video, image, story) and then a REAL rating, and made something that matched.
Dr. Eric said this I asked why he picked those specific art forms:
"Those art forms were chosen because they were the things I felt like I knew how to do without AI. The whole point was to roll with whatever the dice gave me."
And it worked!
It was a series of four videos demonstrating the proper use of the REAL Rating System. You can check them out on our YouTube Channel.
Roll4REAL | Real Good Inc | Feel Good Inc Cover | REAL 0: This cover of Feel Good, Inc. by the Gorillaz was made entirely without AI, with all instruments being recorded directly by Dr Eric. It was an effective showcase of how digital tools can be effectively used to create art with no AI. It was also one of the most popular of the series.
Roll4REAL | Story Time with AI | REAL 4: Dr Eric wrote a story with a local AI that was not very helpful at all. The AI did not understand the direction of the story and did not advance the narrative at all. A surprisingly effective demonstration of the importance of human art.
Roll4REAL | AI for Image Correction | REAL 3: Dr Eric demonstrated “generative fill” running on a local device to remove signage from an image. It took a very long time and he probably could have done a better job. With the usual non-AI tools.
Roll4REAL | TOP 5 SAUCIEST SONGS | REAL 2: A top 5 style video that used AI for brainstorming. Dr Eric thought it would be a slam dunk for the AI since all he was asking for was identifying specific words, but wrangling the AI to give him what he wanted was not easy. He had to try several different words before landing on “sauce”, and even after landing on it, the information the AI gave him was not all reliable or useful.
The Campaign might be over, but the work isn’t done.
We learned a lot; people really care about transparency and are willing to learn more about the ways they can be better about it. The REAL Rating gives them a simple and actionable way to be more aware of their choices. The response to this campaign and the stats of that response tells us that people want things like the REAL Rating. What started as a hypothetical now has real concrete proof in the numbers.
The success of Get REAL led to our biggest donor month ever! Our social presence growth has not slowed down, and morale is higher than ever.
It also fed directly into our next big project.
The attention you brought to Real Good AI has had a huge impact on the organization. For one thing, it made The Scary Tapes competition so much more successful than we could have anticipated. Over 450 people submitted their writing for the competition, putting our writing competition into the upper ranks of writing competitions. But that wasn’t all, more than 200 people also volunteered to help us review the submissions! Which means we can actually handle the level of submissions. The winners will be Real Good too.
We want to congratulate Dr Eric Bell for leading the charge and making Get REAL our most successful initiative in 2026 so far. But, we couldn’t have done it without you and can’t thank you enough for making all of this possible. Your support, your time, and your trust ensures Real Good AI is able to keep doing this for years to come.
