I try to follow the trajectory of AI development from an objective distance. Aside from my own developments and models, I don’t have a lot of stakes in the discussion at this point. And it’s just too noisy to want to be part of the argument.
It’s a sad thought, but that’s what happens when a topic gets drawn into yet another “culture war” skirmish and every discussion becomes a grift.
That’s exactly what I’m seeing. It’s little more than talking heads on the internet repeating the same lines over and over, farming clicks with their echo chambers.
That’s the internet, right? What’s really annoying about it is that so many of the “hottest takes” are short-sighted, obtuse, or downright wrong.
I’m just going to give my opinion of what I’m seeing these days.
If AI is so bad at creating art, what’s the problem?
It’s obvious that the AI discussion is drowning in grift because so many of the arguments contradict themselves.
First and foremost, I want to know why AI is posing such a danger to the world if one of the loudest arguments against it is that it’s bad.
Look…this is simple stuff. You can either argue that AI is replacing real artists, or you can argue that AI can’t produce art. You can’t have it both ways.
If the things people are creating with AI are terrible, then there is no risk to artists who don’t use it. It’s really that simple.
Not all creation is art.
I come from the world of marketing. Ironically, it’s been said that the most important artform of the 20th century is advertising. Considering its pervasiveness and sway over the world, I might agree with that.
But most people who gatekeep the idea of art — hipsters, purists, self-righteous douchebags, etc.— would say that advertising and marketing don’t belong in the same realm as “real art.” As soon as you connect art to money, it dies. It’s selling out. It’s commercialized (or literally, a commercial).
Well, the sector that’s using AI the most, and which has the most to gain from AI generated content, is the marketing sector. Especially small business marketing. Entrepreneurs. Startups. People who can’t afford to hire “real artists” are using AI art to spread the message of what they’re really passionate about — their business.
Previously, these people would have used stock websites to get photos or illustrations for pennies. Now, they’re using Leonardo or GPT. Most of them were not hiring artists for hundreds or thousands of dollars before they discovered AI image generation.
They don’t have the money to. Trust me. I’ve worked with startups and entrepreneurs for over 20 years at this point.
AI is helping the little guy. Whether you like it or not.
This leads me to…
AI is further democratization of creativity
That’s all it is. It’s no different than any other tool or platform that has allowed more people the ability to see a project come to fruition.
Think about how many people are bitching about AI on YouTube. Well, YouTube is a platform that democratizes video distribution. There was a time when TV executives hated YouTube for the same reason many people hate AI: it’s not “real,” it’s flooding the market with low-quality crap, it’s taking money out of our pockets, etc.
(And for you people still using the environmental impact argument against AI, YouTube has a much larger impact on the environment than…well…damn near anything else in tech. So if you’re griping about AI’s carbon footprint on YouTube, you’re being dishonest.)
I can’t sew very well, but I can use a sewing machine. That machine could be used to make clothing that I sell. It’s giving me skills I don’t have, and allowing me to monetize those skills. But who is advocating for the destruction of sewing machines?
What about LucasFilms? How many practical special effects people lost their careers when CGI started replacing “real” special effects? Sure, people were up in arms about that for about ten minutes — but now audiences swarm to terrible Marvel movies where 99% of the damn things exist only in a hard drive.
The same can be said for the dozens of video and audio editing tools that “real artists” use to make their work better. Any special effect added to a video is an example of technology doing something for you that you can’t personally do.
Get real. AI isn’t going to replace the best of the best.
I saw a long discussion this morning (which prompted this rant) about how terrible it is that AI is trying to replace Studio Ghibli’s Hayao Miyazaki.
If you honestly think that AI is trying to — or able to — replace Miyazaki, you’re a fool. AI is coming from the lowest common denominator, not the real talents of the world.
It’s not going to replace “art” but only fill in those situations where the cost of production is more important than anything else. A robot burger flipper might replace an employee at McDonalds, but it’s not going to replace a Le Cordon Bleu-trained chef.
Likewise, someone on Fiverr might miss out on a $5 gig because AI can spin up some throwaway social media graphics for free. But is that really worth lamenting?
Is that worth all of this gagging and screaming and grifting?
Things designed to be cheap or easy are being replaced with something cheaper and easier. That’s just what happens because that’s the arena they’re playing in.
(Example: The only place I’ve used AI art is in the images for these blog posts. Doing this harms no one, because I would never, ever, ever pay money to an artist for a damn-near disposable image that’s just sitting on my blog. In the past, I used stock images and photoshopped them a little. Using generated images saves me time, which means I have more time to do what I want to do.)
But what about the theft?!?!?!?
Ah! Someone is going to say that I’m wrong. It’s not “hurting no one” because the AI was trained using other people’s art, and those people weren’t compensated.
Well…I’m torn on that one. Because I get the argument, but I’m not sure how I want to process it.
For example, if I paid someone $100 for each one of my blog images, I do so without knowing a lot of things. I don’t know how they were trained. I don’t even know if they’re outright stealing IP from other artists.
In fact, I’ve hired artists in the past who turned around and tried to tell me that something from a stock website was their work. (They didn’t know that I’ve spent a decade combing through stock websites because I’M IN MARKETING and I could spot it a mile away.)
In short, the “theft” argument sounds good from a distance, but I can’t sink my teeth into it.
Especially since my own writing has been floating around for 20 years. I’m pretty sure if GPT was scraping the internet, it landed on a few hundred of my articles and stories at some point. And I simply don’t give a shit.
Because it will not be replacing me. That’s what so many people don’t seem to get. You have a lot of agency over determining whether or not you will be replaced. If you have real talent, real skills, and something to offer, stop being so afraid of the tech. You are safe.
There are middle grounds.
The most awful thing about culture war grifting nonsense is that it removes all hope for logic, compromise, or common sense solutions.
“If you use AI at all, you’re a scum.”
“If you don’t embrace AI, you’re an idiot.”
And so on.
At some point in the future, I really hope people can evolve to naturally see that nothing is black and white. The world exists in gradients, plain and simple. We live in a manufactured bipolar society where artificial boxes are drawn so people can cling to the legs of whoever is standing in them.
(Note: I wrote about this a little in The Game State. One of the key social shifts of the 2070s was the rise of ‘Antidichotomism,’ or the aggressive rejection of any concept that has two fervent opposing sides and no room for discussion or examination. This happened after people realized that dichotomous situations are used to manipulate and control in 99.9% of situations. The world moved forward after it stopped fighting with itself over what amounts to subjective opinion.)
Passion is not great in all situations.
For example, passion usually kills any hope of a rational debate. If you’re “passionate” about slapping people who think AI is useful, you have nothing of value to add to the discourse.
(Note: I also want to slap some of the people in these arguments…but simply stating that does nothing to advance the discussion. Vitriol and anger are not positions.)
Likewise for those who are “passionate” about AI-generated or AI-assisted art being “real art.”
A little ambivalence can go a long way. If you don’t like AI, prove it with your wallet. Don’t support people who use AI…then move on with your life.
If you believe in AI-generated art, then create it. Do what you want to do with the tools and skills you have. Then move on with your life. There is no need to go on YouTube and try to convince people that an AI-generated illustration is the same as a hand-drawn one.
And I’ll just say this. It’s not the same. It’s not the same in so many ways. It has nothing to do with talent or skills or time invested or anything. It’s just not the same because everything about their existence is different. Their creation, their output, their conceptualization, their history…if ALL of these things are different, there is no basis for comparison.
You people are like if someone who races souped-up Yard Kings stood around arguing that lawnmower racing is the same thing as Formula One. We all know it’s not…as do you…but you have some weird need to put them on the same shelf.
If you have fun racing lawnmowers, and people enjoy watching you race lawnmowers, who gives a crap if it’s not looked at the same way as automotive racing? Why does that matter?
I blame the insecurity of the people defending AI, to be honest. They feel like what they’re doing is somehow wrong, and thus they must stand up and defend it at every turn. They’re not trying to convince you of AI’s legitimacy, they’re trying to convince themselves.
I know this because I’m still experimenting with my own AI models. And you know what? I don’t give two craps what anyone thinks about it at this point. I’ve proven that I can write. I’ve made a living off of it for 20 years. If I want to play with my AI tools to see if I can make a model write like me, then that is entirely within my rights.
But you know what? I’m not going to sit here and try to say that training an AI model to write is the same as writing a novel. That’s stupid. And even if my goal was to someday have an AI model that could write a novel, I would never say that it was the same as sitting down for months and actually writing a novel.
I’ve done both. I can see the differences. But I’m NOT experimenting with AI to replace the traditional novel. Not at all. I’m trying to figure out the best ways to use AI to make something different.
That’s where the future is, people. Eventually, the YouTube algorithms will start devaluing AI grifter topics, which means people will stop talking about it because there’s no money in it.
When the smoke clears…
The culture war will die down. AI will still be around, and it will be bigger (don’t forget that).
But what remains will not be tech that’s replaced King, Miyakazi, or Banksy. It will be tech that was leveraged to create something entirely new.
What entirely new thing? I’m not sure. I’m envisioning something that merges novels with tabletop games, to be honest. Maybe it will be streaming shows with branching storylines. Or movies with alternate endings based on the audience’s mood.
The point is that we have no idea until someone builds it. And that’s what the AI pioneers are working on.
So don’t crap all over generative AI wholesale. It’s just a thing. And don’t crap on people using generative AI to make stuff, because at the end of the day, they’re people — and it doesn’t improve the world when we bully people just because we don’t agree with them.
