Some Thoughts on AI-Generated Content
Some Thoughts on AI-Generated Content
Things are gonna get real weird soon...
There's a big protest going on at Artstation against AI generated images. Personally, I think we, as a society, aren't ready for what AI-generated media will bring. As a writer, I'm terrified that someone soon will be able to say "write me a sci-fi novel about black holes" and the AI will spit out a 120,000-word book that some publisher might actually print and the average reader might consider "good." I labor over each word, sentence, chapter, and overarching story, and most novels take me over a year to write. And now someone will soon recreate this with a few mouse clicks. Terrifying.
This is also happening in the digital art world. Digital artists are rightfully terrified that this tech is coming for their jobs. And another thing to consider is that AI-generated media uses existing media as its source material. It's only generating a sort of average of all the media it's consumed. So in a way, AI art (and other media) is profiting off of (many) others' labor.
Now you might say that all artists do this in a way — we absorb media from everywhere and use that to color our own work. But in this case the AI is literally using that media to generate new media, like a meat grinder. I foresee a day not too long from now when AI art will use as its source material more AI art, and that's when things will start to get really weird.
What happens when the AI influences itself? Do we get an infinite pattern, like pointing a camera at itself, like putting two mirrors together? I don't think we'll get sentience. More like a flattening of novelty in the arts, and a tendency towards some dull mean.
For the record, I don't think we can stop AI-generated art. But we need to be prepared and ready for the changes it will soon bring. Because I bet you've already read an article/post/review and seen an image created by an AI and not even known it.
We definitely live in interesting times.
It is impossible to stop this. However, it may be appropriate to push for legislation that compels a publisher to reveal the source of their works. Maybe require "AI-Generated Novel" in place of the author's name, like the nation of origin on other products. Personally, I believe that after the initial novelty wears off, most people will opt for "hand-crafted" entertainment writing. I turn bowls and such on a wood lathe. My bowls sell for 20X what similar, but wholly machine-made products sell for. There is VALUE in human effort that most people appreciate and seek out. Perhaps copywriters and Non-Fiction writers are in trouble because simple instructions or unembellished information is easy for AI because writing that is created primarily to communicate information without creating a new "world." Finally, I believe reading is a fundamentally different activity than almost anything humans do. Unlike many other human endeavors, it is NEVER passive. Visual arts and music can be appreciated at both cursory and "deeper" levels, depending on how much effort is put into the observation. Reading is different. It ALWAYS requires the brain to translate obscure symbols into a coherent narrative. The more that the writing is required to convey both emotion and information, the more complex it becomes. Yes, I believe AI can be programmed to emulate emotion, but I also don't think faking it is good enough.