My Concerns about "AI Art" (Part One)
Part One: The Artist and Society
I have wanted to write about AI art generators since 2021 but I had nothing to say and, truth be told, I didn’t really know what to think at the time.
But now I feel ready to write about the subject after mediating on the topic at length, reading different ideas and arguments, and playing around with some free generators myself.
From the moment these generators came available online, I didn’t like them and wished they would be outlawed but I could not explicate my deep-seated reservations.
As much as I have heard the arguments that AI art generators steal from real artists or can be used to create gross, immoral and sometimes illegal images, they have never hit the mark for me. None of them explained my inherent disgust and mistrust of AI generators and their outputs.
After dwelling on the subject and reflecting on my own creativity, I have realized my intuitive dislike of these generators comes from two deep-seated concerns.
The first concerns the artist, the second concerns society.
The Artist
Let us first state an obvious truth:
AI art generators will never produce exactly what you want.
It’s not that AI generators aren’t powerful enough or are bad at reading prompts, it’s that the picture in your head, the story in your mind etc. can only be realized by your own creative skills.
I have numerous stories swirling in my mind but I could never expect a text generator to generate any of them. If, in an alternate universe, I asked an AI text generator to analyse my first two books in the High Realm Trilogy and tasked it to produce the third with a few choice prompts, it wouldn’t make anything near my own standards and creative vision. I’d take one look at the generated text, get irritated and start writing it myself.
Now, I am only an amateur and self-taught artist who doesn’t have the skill to bring his mental pictures to the page in perfect image form, but I imagine that, if I had the same proficiency in drawing as I do writing, and I did something similar in an alternate dimension, I would get frustrated with the AI image generator and just start drawing myself.
In fact, even though I do not have the mastery of drawing that I would like, I have had no inclination or desire to use AI image generators to try and translate my imagination into picture form. I have tried doing it for research purposes and have found it tiresome, frustrating, disappointing and the complete opposite of fun.
I can honestly say that I much prefer using my subpar skills to draw mediocre pictures than utilizing AI art generators. No matter how badly my skills might render a scene, it will always be closer to the picture in my mind than the one amalgamated onto the screen by some generator copying millions of different references.
The Concern for the Artist
After reading the above, it may surprise you to hear me say that I think AI generators of all kinds are a great threat to the artist because they will encourage him not to develop his skills.
How can I say this, when I have already stated how AI art generators are incapable of generating what you can see in your mind’s eye?
I will explain.
AI art generators are no threat to my growth and development as a creative and the same will hold true for the artists and writers reading this substack. We grew up in a world where these generators didn’t exist and learnt that there were only two ways to get the art we want in the world:
Make it ourselves
Find someone else to make it
Hence, we have either acquired the skills we need to create art or paid commissions to get someone else to create it for us. For example, I write my own stories and draw sketches which I send to professional artists so they can create full-blown covers for my books.
To our minds, the idea of using AI art generators to produce work for us is alien and feels wrong. Culture, habit and the reality of not having a program at our fingertips to produce art has inoculated many of us against these generators.
The same is not true for children growing up today.
Today, the young and developing artist has the generators available on his computer and smart phone. By the time a twelve year old boy or girl today reaches maturity at eighteen, these generators will have jumped leaps and bounds.
And these generators will be like the lotus fruit in the Odyssey, sweet, pleasurable and irresistible to the young and developing artist. Like forbidden knowledge they will be temptation beyond what young souls are able to resist.
We can imagine a young artist learning digital art, teaching himself and learning from others so he bring the pictures in his mind’s eye to life on the screen. Supposing this kid has talent, he might draw impressive things even early in his art journey.
But it doesn’t matter what your artistic discipline is, be it music, writing, painting etc. one day, you will hit a wall where a combination of practice, study and experimentation (not to mention time and effort) are needed to break through and improve your skills and the quality of your work. To get to the next level in your art requires honesty, self-reflection, self-criticism, humility, stubbornness and a dash of perfectionism – the process can be gruelling.
AI art generators open up a route to circumnavigate the journey to mastery while still providing the general results you want.
Let us come back to our young artist, imagine he has little difficulty drawing persons, creatures and objects that are the focal point of his pictures but has profound difficulty drawing backgrounds. In the past, he might overcome this great weakness by study, practice and lessons from others. But today, he has the option of using AI to create backgrounds for him in any style and in any shape he wants.
Imagine that this artist uses AI image generators to generate backgrounds for his pictures, if he does this, he’ll never improve his skills at drawing backgrounds. But what is worse is he’ll also cap his skills at drawing things in the foreground and in the focal point of his pictures.
Everything is connected in a picture, the background, the foreground, the focal point/s etc. all work together to bring the picture to life. A work of art is always more than the sum of its parts. If an artist neglects to understand how to create backgrounds, he’ll cordon himself off from deeper knowledge and understanding on how all the other parts work together in a picture. He won’t just make himself a worse artist in one regard but in every regard. The holistic whole of his skill and work will be undermined.
The artist will be stunted and never reach his true potential.
Art is a Journey, not just a Destination
Sometimes in life, we get obsessed with the end point and forget to smell the roses. We can be like this with art.
I have said in a previous essay that what is important to crafting a good story is exploration. The writer sometimes has to act as an explorer in his story and see where it goes and see what ideas and themes reveal themselves to him as he journeys across the pages of the novel he is writing. A curiosity, an openness of mind, heart and spirit, and a sensitivity to all things help the writer see deep into his own work and reach its true potential.
Flannery O'Connor vs Dinosaur (2000)
A friend - Issac Young - sent me a link to a written version of Flannery O’Connor’s lecture The Nature and Aim of Writing for my enjoyment.
What I did not mention in that essay is the creative process and journey can help the creator learn more about himself. When the sculptor realizes the potential in a block of marble, he also realizes the potential within himself.
Writing my own books has allowed me to wrestle with my deepest emotions, my subconscious and unconscious desires, my long-held beliefs, my fierce passions, my intellectual conceptions and understandings of the world, and my intuitive knowledge and experience of life.
I have sharpened my mind, opened my heart and awakened my own soul in every creative journey I have seen to the end. I have developed and improved not only my writing skills but also myself.
The world is bigger and not smaller when I finish a project.
The creative journey can act as a metaphysical journey which rekindles the soul of the creator who is willing to travel into the unknown. Overcoming challenges in the creative process and challenging himself can build the inner strength and resolve of the creator. The journey can empower the artist and open his eyes to great truths and realities in the real world which would have otherwise remained hidden to him.
The greatest treasure can be the journey itself rather than the destination.
So when the artist ignores the call to adventure by using AI generators and chooses to stay in his safe little world where he doesn’t have to lift a finger to create, he is the one who is most abused. By denying himself all possible negative emotions that can accompany creative work - disappointment, depression, frustration and pain - he also denies himself the chance of glory, excellence, adventure and growth.
AI art generators act like the seductress who tries to sway the hero from his quest in the old stories. She offers pleasures and delights, seemingly appetizing and sensual at first glance, but which are all merely ploys and acts to stop the hero on his journey. The pleasures are shallow and the affection offered is not real love.
All young and aspiring artists must be warned from a young age to shun AI art generators for what they are: siren songs which lure men to their doom in the depths of the sea.
Society
To explain my concern about the harms that AI art generators will inflict on society, we must first consider what AI art generators can do and what consumers want.
The “Nature” of AI Art Generators
Recently, I found this video on YouTube and, since I am addicted to The Only Thing I Know For Real and listen to the song or a remix of it at least once a day (I have never played the game in case anyone is curious), I decided to give it a listen.
I was impressed on my first hearing. Musically, vocally and lyrically it was similar enough to be recognized as a rough but functional addition to the original song. I could believe that an actual human wrote these lyrics, recorded the music and then used a vocaloid to sing the song.
For this essay, we’ll focus on the lyrics to assess the generator’s capabilities.
Please note that the person who used the generator to produce the lyrics and music obviously doesn’t speak English as his first language and has written the lyrics incorrectly for both the original song and the two AI versions (although it is possible the AI is to blame). I have taken the liberty of correcting these mistakes.
Let us start with the original song lyrics:
The Only Thing I Know For Real
Memories broken
The truth goes unspoken
I’ve even forgotten my name
I don’t know the season
Or what is the reason
I’m standing here holding my blade
A desolate place ( place )
Without any trace ( trace )
It’s only the cold wind I feel
It’s me that I spite
As I stand up and fight
The only thing I know for real
There will be blood -shed
The man in the mirror nods his head
The only one-left
Will run up upon the dragon’s back
Because the mountains don’t give back what they take
Oh no
There will be blood ( blood )-shed ( shed )
It’s the only thing I’ve ever known
Losing my identity
Wondering have I gone insane
To find the truth in front of me
I must climb this mountain range
Looking downward from this deadly height
And never realizing why I fight
AI Version 1.0 Extended Lyrics
Shadows are creeping
My resolve is weakening
Yet I can’t afford to fail
Each step I take now
There’s no turning back now
I’ve cast away my fears like a veil
In the eye of the storm
My destiny’s formed
The echoes of my past call to me
It’s the end of the line
As I cross it I’ll find
The only thing I know for real
There will be blood –shed
The man in the mirror nods his head
The only one-left
Will run up upon the dragon’s back
Because the mountains don’t give back what they take
Oh no
There will be blood-shed
It’s the only thing I’ve ever known
In the darkness, I hear the whispers calling
Guided by my blade, I won’t be falling
Clashing with the fate that has bound me tightly
In the fire of combat, I find my clarity
Deep in the abyss, I see a shadow rising
Guided by the blade, the truth is binding
Never to forget the struggle inside me
This battle defines me as the only thing I know for real
There will be blood-shed
The man in the mirror nods his head
The only one left will run up upon the dragon’s back
Because the mountains don’t give back what they take
There will be blood-shed
It’s the only thing I’ve ever known
As the echoes fade away, I stand alone
In the silence, I find the strength to carry on
With each step forward, I embrace my fate
For in this endless war, there is more room for hate
AI Version 2.0 Extended Lyrics
Deep in the abyss, I see a shadow rising
Guided by the blade, the truth is binding
Never to forget the struggle inside me
Unleashing my fury, the battle defines me
The only thing I know for real
There will be blood –shed
The man in the mirror nods his head
The only one-left
Will run up upon the dragon’s back
Because the mountains don’t give back what they take
Oh no
There will be blood-shed
It’s the only thing I’ve ever know
Shadows are creeping
My resolve is weakening
Yet I can’t afford to fail
Each step I take now
There’s no turning back now
I’ve cast away my fears like a veil
In the eye of the storm
My destiny’s formed
The echoes of my past call to me
It’s the end of the line
As I cross it I’ll find the only thing I know for real
There will be blood –shed
The man in the mirror nods his head
The only one-left
Will run up upon the dragon’s back
Because the mountains don’t give back what they take
Oh no
There will be blood-shed
It’s the only thing I’ve ever know
Standing tall, I face the final trial
Through the pain and the rage
I’ve walked every mile
In this desolate place
In this desolate place
Where shadows still chase
The only truth I know is there’s no escape
There will be blood-shed
It’s the path I’ve chosen
The life I’ve led
The only thing I know for real is there will be bloodshed
At first glance, both AI versions appear to be effective extended versions of the original song. But on closer inspection, you will realize both AI versions are not lyrically connected to the original in any coherent or meaningful way.
You will notice that the original ends with the singer admitting that he thinks he may be going insane and that he doesn’t know why he fights. But in both AI versions the robot sings about how in battle it finds its clarity and how in the eye of storm its destiny is formed. These lyrics, and the sentiments conveyed by them, do not match the ones in the original.
The best possible interpretation is that the AI versions are a reprise of the original where Jetstream Sam discovers why he is fighting and finds purpose and sanity in his cause. But that means they are not extended versions but instead reprises set in an alternative version of the game’s story.
This is only one example of where the AI lyrics don’t match with the original tone and meaning of the song that it’s trying to extend. More examples and deeper analysis would show other problems and inconsistencies but we need not go into the weeds here.
What concerns us is why the AI generator came up with lyrics that seem to match but don’t actually resonate with the ideas and feelings of the original. Fortunately, it is not necessary to know the actual mechanics and inner workings of the AI generator to explain why this happened.
The reason this happened is because the generator which computed these extended lyrics doesn’t understand the meaning of the original song.
Memories broken
The truth goes unspoken
I’ve even forgotten my name
I don’t know the season
Or what is the reason
I’m standing here holding my blade
The AI generator doesn’t know what it is like to feel confused. It can’t understand what it is like not knowing who you are anymore.
A desolate place ( place )
Without any trace ( trace )
It’s only the cold wind I feel
The AI generator doesn’t know how it feels being trapped or stuck in a bad place. It cannot feel the physical sensation of cold wind gusting on a winter’s day. It has never felt numb or experienced how it feels to be dead inside.
It’s me that I spite
As I stand up and fight
The AI doesn’t feel any emotions; it cannot understand what spite is and there is no way it could possibly feel the internal conflict of knowing that something is bad for you or wrong and then doing it anyway. There is also no way it could really understand what it means to fight.
The AI generator cannot relate to these mental pictures, these feelings, these thoughts and these sensations because it is not human; it is a program with internet access.
An AI program cannot suffer from depression, nihilism or fatalism.
What the AI generator can do very effectively is pattern recognition. It scanned the lyrics of The Only Thing I Know For Real and other similar songs in the same genre/s and complied a set of words and instrumentals which met the criteria it identified as being appropriate for forming an extended version. It did not imagine new lyrics by dwelling on the meaning of the original song and then dwelling within its own thoughts and feelings on the subject matter.
Lines of code cannot dream or imagine because they cannot think, feel or believe.
What Consumers Want
Notwithstanding the inability of AI to think, feel and understand the art it is copying, amalgamating and mashing together, it can produce facsimiles of human imagination and inspiration.
The two AI versions of The Only Thing I Know For Real which were shared in the last section pass the smell test if you are not paying close attention. If you put it on in the background while doing some work, you won’t notice that the lyrics don’t make sense and don’t connect meaningfully with the original song.
For instance, these lyrics from both AI versions aren’t coherent and don’t make sense:
Deep in the abyss, I see a shadow rising
Guided by the blade, the truth is binding
Never to forget the struggle inside me
What is this even supposed to mean?
However, if you don’t pay attention, you can enjoy these meaningless extended versions and even catch yourself singing along to them.
On a shallow level, it does feel like you are listening to an extended version of The Only Thing I Know For Real, even though it isn’t real.
If you want real extended versions, you can listen to these two covers:
With the nature of AI generators discussed, we must now concern ourselves with what consumers want from art and media. Here I am talking about the moth-like masses, not people who are reading this substack publication.
Spotlighting Art for the Moth-like Masses
A version of this article was published on Praxarchy under the penname Edward White on 25th June 2022. It can be read here.
So what does the average person want?
I received some important insight into this matter after watching a video essay by CarrieTooTired: Wish is an INSULT to the disney formula. This is a brilliant video critique which outlines how Wish does not follow the usual Disney conventions and how it is a bad film.
CarrieTooTired describes the conventions associated with Disney animated fairy tale films as part of a formula.
I personally prefer a term I invented at the end of one of my videos to categorize this package of conventions: it’s not a formula but instead a genre – a franchise genre.
The Walt Disney Company has a franchise genre with recognizable tropes and conventions which its films adhere to. Wish breaks with those generic conventions at key junctures as CarrieTooTired demonstrates brilliantly.
The not-so implicit thesis in CarrieTooTired’s video essay is that Wish is a bad film because it breaks too much with the Disney Franchise Genre (or the Disney Formula - to use her term). However, as someone who has never seen the film but trusts CarrieTooTired’s summary, assessment and criticism of it, I have to wonder: is Wish bad because it breaks from the Disney formula? Or is Wish bad because it’s just bad?
There is a world where Wish was rewritten so it followed the conventions of the Disney Franchise Genre to a tee. And I think if we all travelled to this alternate universe we’d still be watching a trite and terrible film. But in this other dimension, CarrieTooTired would probably gush over this vision of Wish because it would follow the formula that she loves so much.
CarrieTooTired is honest and open about her adoration of Disney media and her love of the Disney Franchise Genre. Her honesty is refreshing and respectable, so nothing I write here is meant to criticize her. She is her own person and can decide what she wants to watch and see in media.
I am going to repeat myself here: I do not mention CarrieTooTired to criticize her; I mention her, not only because of her excellent critique of Wish, but because she is a good representative of what the average person wants.
The majority of people want comfort food - media which make them feel cosy, safe and comfortable. They want the familiar and they want more of the same.
The secret behind the success of reboots, prequels, sequels and spin-off media? Consumers want more of the same and will pay for the pleasure.
This doesn’t mean consumers by-and-large will accept anything. The backlash from huge fandoms and audiences against new derivative media (such as the Star Wars sequels) is explained by the lack of craftsmanship in said media. People want more of the same but they want the derivative media to have a similar level of quality and they don’t want it to be an insult to their memories and intelligence.
Again, a lot of consumers are like CarrieTooTired who can recognize what they are being given is rubbish and are happy to voice their opinions about it.
But how does this link to our subject of AI generators and their impact on society?
This is how.
Eventually, AI generators will have the ability to output films, books and comics with coherent-ish stories and compositions. They won’t be able to produce anything original but the media industries which will invest in these technologies won’t want original.
When Walt Disney obtains a functional and highly-sophisticated set of AI generators for producing an animated, feature-length film, they won’t use them to try and tell an inspired story but to produce generic Disney animated films.
The AI generators will be given the entire Disney catalogue to copy, provided some choice keywords and prompts, and then they will produce a feature-length, animated princess Disney film. In fact, it will generate many different variants and versions which a small team of animators and editors will stitch together as they please.
It is conceivable that Disney will be able to release a new film for the masses to enjoy in a mere fraction of the time and cost.
Inevitably, the bean counters at Disney will argue that the profit margins on AI films are much greater than those animated by human beings and the Disney executives will order mass layoffs of creative staff and instead utilize AI generators.
I predict that in ten years’ time, nearly all of Disney’s animated features will be produced by AI generators with only a minimum of human input and involvement. I predict further, despite how soulless and bland these films will invariably be, the general public will swallow them hook, line and sinker.
Recently, people went to cinemas to see the completely unnecessary live adaption of Lilo and Stitch; Disney has no reason to change its current business practices, it only has reason to optimize them.
The general public will swallow the AI generated films because they will be harmless, formulaic and comfortable. These films will be more of the same, more of what audiences already loved and enjoyed from years ago, different enough to scratch the itch for something a little different but similar enough to not confuse or challenge them.
AI will never produce any great media but it will produce fast food media for the masses who will consume them wholeheartedly, even as they admit that they aren’t great or even good films.
The Concern for Society
Fast food media have always existed in one form or another. There has always been art aimed at the lowest common denominator, there have always been derivative and generic stories, and there have always been rank fan artists, hacks and copycats.
So why should we be concerned if AI generators take over the role of producing fast food art for the masses? The people they would be replacing aren’t the modern Miltons, Shakespeares, Michelangelos, Turners, Bachs etc. they would be replacing modern creators of the same breed that made Wish.
Surely, this isn’t a terrible loss for the world?
You may be surprised.
Allow me to say something in defence of Wish here. Again, I have not seen the film but I trust the YouTube videos I have seen which go into depth analysing and critiquing it.
Wish’s story was written by humans, it was animated by humans, edited by humans and the actors and actresses who voiced the characters were human. Thus, in every scene, there is a soul, a human element, and sentiment/s and perspective/s which is showcased to the audience and the wider world. Each scene is not a copy of that which came before but instead the expression of a whole collective of creators with their own real world views and experiences. The official art book that was released with the film showcases this rather well as CarrieTooTried demonstrates in her video essay.
It is not just on the micro scale that this is true for Wish, it is also true of the narrative of the film. I will not give a rundown of its plot beats and structure for the sake of brevity, but the message of the film appears to be this:
If someone has the ability to grant your wish but doesn’t do it, that individual is an evil person. You deserve to have your wishes granted and you should pursue your dreams.
For context, the antagonist of the story has the ability to grant wishes to those who ask him but he doesn’t grant every person’s wish and this upsets the protagonist.
Of course, the notion that someone’s wish should always be granted and, if someone doesn’t grant it, that someone is evil, is a foolish and stupid proposition.
Now to the film’s credit, the actual conflict does start out more nuanced than this. The antagonist has a practice where if he chooses not to grant a person’s wish, he also removes the memory of that wish from that person’s mind, so although they still remember having a wish, they don’t remember what it was. They only remember they had a wish and that it hasn’t been granted.
This is wrong, evil even, but, in the antagonist’s defence, every person who offers him their wish for consideration knows that there is a possibility it will be rejected and they will have their memory wiped. They all know what the deal is.
Nevertheless, the message taken by audiences and the internet has been that it is wrong not to grant wishes and only evil people wouldn’t want to grant your wish, because the antagonist is portrayed as an evil villain.
The film’s message is terrible and irresponsible but it is a challenge at least.
When I watched videos diving into Wish and its story, I was challenged by the foolishness of the film’s message. The film was far from comfort fast food for me, it was directly telling me the opposite of what I believe to be true. It was identifying someone like me as a villainous person because I would be more like the antagonist than the protagonist in the film.
The people making the film were saying something and I can respect that, even if what they said is just flat-out wrong on so many levels.
Wish is fast food, yet it still has a voice, a message and a challenge for its viewers. It might not be high cuisine but it is still something to chew on.
The same is true for many more generic, derivative and self-referential media. Human beings are not content to simply copy with their creations, even if they are deliberate, hard-core copycats.
J.J. Abrams basically ripped off A New Hope when he made Force Awakens, but even his copy isn’t a copy, it is distinctly his film and it has its own soul (it’s just not a very pretty, ennobling or enlightening spirit – the complete opposite in fact). A part of every human creator finds its way into their work, something of them and their worldview, life experience and thoughts become embodied in their art and it is this which is valuable for society.
Society, people and individuals need challenge and conversation starters. They need to be jolted out of their comfort zones from time to time and they need to understand and experience different perspectives and ideas.
And neither society nor individuals will ever be challenged by AI generated art because AI generators don’t have their own thoughts, feelings and experiences which could influence their prompt-driven generations. They will simply churn out what they are prompted to churn out based on a catalogue of images, scenes and text tagged with those same prompts.
In short, it seems very unlikely that an AI could ever produce something that goes against the status quo/what it was trained on, because that’s all it’s been designed for.
AI generators will be self-referential, generic and derivative to degrees hitherto unseen and will produce utterly unoriginal slop.
But what about the people who are giving the prompts to the generator? Wouldn’t they have things to say and wouldn’t they alter the prompts to adjust the generations to better express their own experiences, beliefs and feelings?
They might try, but there are two hurdles.
The first is that the mainstream media companies (like Disney) will set up strict control boards which will already have agreed messages and every single prompter will have to ensure that their generations meet the corporate board’s criteria.
The second is that by using generators to produce art in the first place, the prompter already self-negates his attempts to express himself, his vision, thoughts and feelings to the world. Using an AI generator to produce art is similar to telling your friend to shake the hand of someone you have just met and then telling the stranger that it is nice to meet them – it’s fake and inauthentic.
There is no spiritual, intellectual, emotional or mental journey of growth for the prompter who uses an AI generator and so there will be nothing of himself poured into the generation. He does no exploring so no exploration or feeling will be found in any of his generations. His hand will be nowhere and what he generated could have been generated by anyone else with the same prompts.
But if we’re being honest, the prompters who use AI won’t have any real vision, thoughts, feelings or explorations which they will want to share with the world. Anyone who has anything to say will say it themselves and not let a generator speak for them.
And speaking of letting a machine talk for you.
We should not believe that advanced AI art generators of the near future will allow their prompters to generate anything and everything they want. The coders and companies developing these technologies have their own political and ideological agendas and are engaged in culture war mode.
If a Christian wants to generate a pro-Christian story with warnings against homosexual lifestyles, is a future version of ChatGTP going to generate a full-length novel filled with moral lessons and observations against LGBTQ+ ideology and its practices?
A considerable elite faction in the big tech sphere and media industry is censorious, committed to its cause and willing to suppress the speech and expression of its opponents to maintain power and ideological control. It is absurd to think these elites would allow their own technologies to be used against them and utilized to undermine their own messages.
Prompters will be limited in what they can do by the programmers who design the very generators they use.
AI generations will not be used to challenge and won’t be capable of giving challenges either.
Conclusion
The normalization and employment of AI art generators by both the general public and corporate conglomerates will have the joint effect of dumbing down artists and dumbing down audiences.
As a consequence, society will be dumbed down as well. Vitality, imagination and insight will be lost and swept away by a wave of AI generated content which no human creators will be able to match. Human artists will produce actual art and it will be of quality but it will be drowned by the sheer quantity of content generated by AI.
Mainstream entertainment will become unchallenging, unthinking and inhuman, and it will swallow audiences similar to how moths are devoured by a bright flame.
Creativity in the mainstream will be destroyed and it will be undermined in all other arenas of life.
It remains to be explored how the internet will be affected.
[Continued in Part Two next week]
Interesting experiment:
1. Take songs you haven't heard yet and have someone feed the first half into an AI and tell it to finish it.
2. Do a blind test between the two and see which one makes more sense.
Please forgive the extensive length.
>...while still providing the general results you want.
Pound on this point. All the generative images are... stunning. Their ability to make pleasing to the eye images that don't overtly offend the senses is an impressive technical accomplishment (I have more of a fascination of the early days of image generation, when less refined, it came up with semi-abstract images.)
But I tend to find them ... a little off. Not quite right. Not the sort of thing I would save to make into a desktop background, or want to use on my own articles. Not the sort of deep artistic thing that catches me in reverie, awed at their details, and wondering at the choices made. No idiosyncratic touches.
>His hand will be nowhere and what he generated could have been generated by anyone else with the same prompts.
In a 5th of the words I used, you struck on the same idea!