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the way we talk about AI Art is wrong
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A couple of days ago, I stumbled across
a video on Tik Tok that started like this.
this.
>> How bad's the pain from 1 to 10? [Music]
[Music] >> 10.
>> 10. >> Good.
>> Good.
>> It's a good hook. It's got sort of an
analog horror vibe and it stuck with me.
So much so that I actually scrolled past
and then I returned. I wanted to know more.
more.
>> I think this one's good to go. What do
you say? This is an episode of the Tik
Tok series Angel Engine, an analog
horror series about an angel who
descends from heaven to come to the
earth, who's captured, and whose energy
is harnessed to power the world,
ushering in an era of prosperity. And
here's the thing, it's AI.
Not the writing, not the memorable part,
but the voices and art isn't made by the
human hand, it's generated. As AI
continues to sweep through industries,
decimating white collar entry-level jobs
everywhere, it seems like every group is
waiting with baited breath asking,
"Well, they can't possibly replace me,
can they? Can it?" It was announced a
couple of weeks ago that Amazon was
investing in a studio dedicated to
making AI TV and movies. And as the film
and television industry still hasn't
fully recovered from the strike, and
more and more voice acting and graphic
design jobs are slowly being outsourced
to AI, there's been at least one
recurring saving grace. Well, it can't
make anything good. >> Bye-bye.
>> Bye-bye. [Music]
[Music]
>> If you see her walking alone at night,
don't stop. Don't speak. just run. She
is Rokur Kubi.
>> I mean, it's clearly just a lot of
garbage, you know, like a whole lot of
nothing. But as I watched Angel Engine,
I began to ask myself a question for the
first time. What if it figures out how
to make something that's not completely
terrible? What happens? What will happen
when AI art is good?
There's clearly no AI citizen cane yet.
If you look up best AI art, basically
everything that comes up is just
advertisements for products that create
AI art. As much as I've enjoyed Angel
Engine, while the art is AI generated,
the actual story is written and produced
by an account called Unearly Guy,
presumably a human. But he got his start
in the game by producing lots and lots
of AI content. Stuff like what your
favorite character would look like as
Studio Ghibli art. The sort of stuff
that if you scroll long enough,
eventually you'll stumble upon. Ever so
slowly, AI content is beginning to creep
into our lives. A couple of weeks ago, a
bunch of people got tricked by that
video of a bunch of bunnies jumping on a
trampoline. And in a way, that doesn't
seem that bad. It's not like everything
else the average person scrolls through
is such high caliber. Take the
environmental concerns away, and is this
video of a lady jumping into a pool
really that much worse than all the
other crap we consume every day? Videos
of bottles rolling down the stairs, and
guess which one of us is the drummer? Or
these couples shooting each other with
Nerf guns? Or did baby Gronk ri up Livy
Dune? I don't think there's any depth to
an AI kitten skydiving, but is there any
depth to this?
>> Thanks, bowling ball.
>> These AI videos feel like to me less of
a new thing and more of an extension of
a phenomenon that's been on the rise for
the last two decades. We as humans are
consuming more and more entertainment
and less and less art. 10 years ago, if
I was bored or lazy, I would watch an
episode of a TV show or like read a
comic or something. And now I find
myself consuming the oh so dreaded
content. And while you and me both still
watch good TV shows and movies and read
good books, the ratio of time we spend
consuming pure entertainment is gaining
on art. And it's because the ven diagram
of art and entertainment is growing
increasingly distant. For a very long
time, most of the entertainment that
people consumed was on some level art.
While maybe you aren't going to be
profoundly moved by a Bem movie horror
flick or an episode of All in the Family
or Archie comics, each of those was the
product of hundreds of hours of
deliberate choices and decisions. Even
if they were bad, they all represented a
specific worldview, a specific point of
view. Even the garbage back then would
at least have the decency to be
embarrassed that it was garbage and try
and defend its quality. So why the
change? What happened? Before the
algorithm era, distribution was a hugely
expensive and time-consuming process.
Whether it was getting what you made on
TV or getting published in a magazine,
it involved logistics in transport and
convincing gatekeepers to give you a
shot. And if you were going to invest
money and time in something, then you
were incentivized to make it good
because you didn't have infinite
chances. But the almighty algorithm has
essentially made the price of
distribution so low that it's
essentially free. You don't even have to
build a fan base. your stuff will just
be shown to people which you know has
its advantages. Thank you to the
algorithm for you know all of this. So
now everyone is making stuff all day
every day. And if you can make hundreds
of hours of content on your phone for
free the algorithm incentivizes you to
do just that. And the price of that is
that we've become inundated with content
that lacks complexity, care, or meaning.
It's not like things like America's
Funniest Home Videos didn't used to
exist. But even then the videos were
curated and there were jokes in between
and there was a competition format.
There was no avenue to watch hot knife
versus random object. And now there is
and people are watching a lot. As
distribution costs reach zero and
production costs reach zero too because
everybody's got a camera in their pocket
now. The only real cost left is time.
And as we offload more and more to AI
that's disappearing too. Soon you won't
need to write a sketch or sing a song.
Now you don't even need to buy a knife.
And the worrying thing is that we as
consumers are okay with this. Maybe not
consciously, but many of these videos
have millions of views. We're voting
with our attention. And this is what we
want. Art and entertainment have become
decoupled to such an insane extent. So
much so that even without the human
fingerprint being involved in it, Angel
Engine, when I stumble across it, feels
much more interesting than a lot of the
other stuff that I'm watching. Is the
use of AI to make the images really that
much worse than all the other garbage
that we see out there? The comments on
every Angel Engine video seem to think
so. Uh, and I do too.
Act two. I'm a big believer in not
letting robots dream for us. Robots
cannot reflect the human condition for
us. Nicholas Cage. Months before I saw
Angeline, something terrible happened to
me. Uh, I stumbled across an AI video
that I liked. It was a video of a bunch
of AI people responding to the idea that
they were prompts.
>> Honestly, the biggest red flag is when
the guy believes in the prompt theory.
Like, really? We came from prompts? Wake
up, man.
>> Vote for me and I'll ban the prompt
theory from schools. There's no place
for that nonsense in our lives. Now, I
don't know if the script for this was
generated or whether it was directed by
a person or what, but I found the video
interesting. Probably just because it
was meta in the way that I like. I don't
have an answer for why I specifically
thought this one was good and not the
other ones that I stumbled across. Maybe
I'm just falling for this meme, which I
see a lot anytime somebody freaks out
about AI. Act like you're a scary robot.
I'm a scary robot. No. And Angeline,
even though the writing is human, the
art is made by AI by Midjourney to be
specific. And I like what I've seen of
Angel Engine. See, when guided
correctly, AI is a tool and maybe even a
tool that can be wielded well. But
everyone's missing the point with the
recent discussions around AI art.
Discussions around AI art need to stop
focusing on quality. That's not what
this is about. There's a much more
important route. That being said, here's
a really quick discussion about AI art
and quality. [Music]
[Music]
The greatest move in marketing in the
2020s is the intelligence part of
artificial intelligence. AI can't think.
It doesn't. It can't make anything new.
I mean, what most people consider to be
AI isn't even named AI. It's an LLM.
What it really is is just the synthesis
of billions of words and all of the
writing of the internet. And what it's
done is it's made an amazing technically
impressive autocomplete. A couple of
months ago, there was a pretty major
paper released by Apple about AI and
about how it's not thinking, it just has
the illusion of thinking. When tasked
with puzzles, it gave up at a threshold
that given enough time, you or I could
figure out. I know we all read things
all day every day from like the news or
Twitter about how AI is going to
revolutionize every single industry. I
see so many articles quoting like a wild
prediction from a guy who would make a
lot of money if that prediction came
true. Like, oh, Sam Alman, the CEO of
Chat GPT, thinks that ChatGpt is going
to be important. Breaking news. Beeper
salesman predicts big summer for
beepers. What I'm trying to say is that
the straits may not be as dire as we
think. The best AI art that I've come
across has been only in service of good
writing. But I think even if that wasn't
the case, it wouldn't matter. Is Angel
Engine good because of its use of AI or
in spite of its use of AI? Doesn't
matter. If I asked an LLM to generate me
a movie and it did with a full
beginning, middle, and end and it popped
out, wouldn't matter. If I asked AI to
make me a crime movie and it popped out
the actual Godfather, it wouldn't
matter. See, as we cope and frame the
problems with AI like it's one of
quality, we seed ground to the enemy by
allowing them into the arena in the
first place. We're giving them something
to fix. Because the problem at the core
of AI isn't about quality. It's a
spiritual one.
Every artistic movement from the
beginning of time is an attempt to
figure out a way to smuggle more of what
the artist thinks is reality into the
work of art. David Shields. I think at
best art is an invitation for
connection. This is what the world looks
like to me. Come into my living room and
take a look around. Every proper artist
is more or less a realist according to
his own eyes. Zola, the problem with AI
art is that AI doesn't have eyes. It
doesn't have a worldview. It has
amalgamated billions of words and
millions of pieces of writing into an
unimaginably large faceless mass. It
takes whatever sharp edges of human
experience that we have and it sands it
down. It filters it through everybody.
What happens when AI art is good? It
can't be. It never will be. It's only
capable of making entertainment. It's
patently incapable of creating art. All
of the best art and even the worst art
is a reflection of the individual or
individuals. It's why people are
obsessed with a cinema. People who have
a singular vision from top to bottom.
It's why popthe heads make fun of other
pop singers who don't write their own
music and venerate their singers for
writing it all on their own. It's why
every time Jonathan Franson does an
interview, all anybody wants to know is
what part of his writing is reflection
of his real life upbringing. The most
interesting part of art has always been
and always will be the human
fingerprints that are left behind. The
problem with AI art is that every piece
of it is written by committee. It can't
have a worldview. Angeline's mystique is
man-made. Its art is just a rehash, a
boring fimile of Evangelian. The Studio
Ghibli trend was just a rehash of
something real. Just as you can tell
that every time a movie has 15
screenwriters that it's going to suck,
AI is just millions of screenwriters on
everything that you make. Who cares? The
stylistic developments that AI
regurgitates back to us, it's patently
incapable of developing on its own. So
much of art is found in serendipity.
Jaws is one of the greatest films of all
time because of its score and the
tension generated by a single fin in the
water. But that's not what Spielberg
wanted to do. Spielberg wanted to show
the shark more, but it kept
malfunctioning. And because of that, he
had to find a different way to generate
tension. Instead of showing the shark,
they hinted at it, increasing the
tension with that iconic score. And it
worked. He went on to say that shark not
working was a godsend. That could never
happen with AI. A John Williams score
can be regurgitated by it, but it can
never be originated by it. In my
opinion, the best bits, the best jokes
are when somebody says something and you
think, "Oh, how did I never think of
that?" When somebody crystallizes a
universal human experience and puts it
into words for the first time. Language
models can't do that. They'll never be
able to push any mediums forward because
what human experience do they have to
offer? What insight?
They literally can't notice things. So
much great art and artistic progress
happens through people who push the
boundaries forward. And while yes,
humans are beings that create things
based off of synthesis, they're all
filtered through our unique human
experience. If you and I both watch the
Super Bowl, we're going to both
experience the exact same thing
completely differently depending on who
we are and what teams we root for. An AI
can only make things based off of stuff
that other people have already made. It
can't make anything new. It's just like
a big game of telephone and so much is
lost in the process. When people
emphasize that AI can't make quality
art, they're moving the goalposts.
They're letting it into the arena. And
if you're like, "Yeah, okay, whatever.
AI can't make art, but it can make
entertainment. Isn't that distinction
super pretentious?" Uh, and to that I
say, yes, it is. But I also think it's important.
important. [Music]
[Music]
Every few months, I see a new study pop
up polling American and Chinese
children, and it's always like, "The
average Chinese 8-year-old wants to be
an astronaut, and the average American
child wants to be a movie star, and this
is why we're falling behind." W But as
somebody who's been paying attention to
these for years, I think there's a much
more interesting trend in place. In the
past decade, American children's dreams
of being a rock star or a movie star
have been replaced with dreams of being
a YouTuber or an influencer. And while
those are similar in some ways, I think
it's an important distinction. For a
long time, if you were a kid and you
dreamed about fame or prestige, it came
at the end of a craft or a work. A dream
of being a movie star just by byproduct
involves a dream of being part of the
creation of a movie. A rock star
involves being musical. The fame is an
extension of an act. The children, even
if not consciously, are still dreaming
of being artists. But what is a YouTuber
or an influencer? Not that there aren't
high quality artistically valuable
things happening on those platforms, but
I don't think that's most of what it is.
And I don't think that's part of the
dream. I'm always astounded by the
amount of people on the YouTube
subreddits talking about faceless
channels and niches. It's like, why are
you even doing this? The dreams of our
children represent our societal values.
Just as presumably the children of
Sparta dreamed about glory in combat and
the children in medieval England dreamed
about being landed gentry, the switch
from our kids dreaming about making art
to dreaming about making entertainment
or content is indicative of a larger
societal trend. We're downstream of
something. How much longer until our
children stop dreaming of making their
own entertainment and start dreaming
about asking a robot to make it for
them? Act three. But Paul
But Paul, you say, "I'm a human. I'm not
a robot. I've got a worldview. I can
mold and prompt this robot to do
whatever I want it to do. It's just a
tool. A hammer can't dream, but does
that make the house that it builds count
for less?" And to that I say, "Good
question." But let me answer with a
really long anecdote. A couple of months
ago, I was hanging out with this girl
and we were both getting some work done
on our laptops. I was working on a
thumbnail and she was working on some
schoolwork for college. And I looked
over and she was like, "Haha, don't
judge me." And she was copying and
pasting her homework into chat GPT and
then posting the answers. And it's like,
yeah, she doesn't care about an
astronomy 101 class that she's taking
just cuz she needs the credit. And her
teacher doesn't care about some minor
homework assignment for an introlevel
community college course. So, like, why
not? Why not use it? I saw a really
fascinating graph showing chat GPT use
declined dramatically when summer break
began. And I've seen so many articles
about how both students and teachers are
relying on it all day every day. How
teachers are using it to create and
grade assignments and how students are
using it to complete those assignments.
And I've been thinking about that
astronomy homework a lot cuz this was a
really smart, well- readad woman who I
really respected. But here she was
telling her prompt, "Write it like a
23-year-old. Make sure not to use any M
dashes." just so that she could convince
her robot to trick her teacher's robot
into thinking it was human. Even if AI
is a tool, it costs us something. It
detracts from our humanity. And maybe
that's a price you're willing to pay for
homework, but for art, for everything.
One of the challenges with discussions
around AI is that it's so broad and it
covers so many bases. So much of what we
think about as AI is just an algorithm
that's been brushed up for marketing
purposes. What does the work gain from
you meticulously cutting a guy out of
the background compared to just pressing
the remove background button? Probably
nothing. But generative AI using it to
make something from scratch, skipping to
the end result without any of the middle
parts. I know this is silly, but I think
so much about the movie Click. Adam
Sandler gets a remote that lets him
pause and skip time. So, he begins to
use it to get through fights with his
wife or stressful days at work or boring
dance recital. And what ends up
happening is his remote picks up on his
patterns and begins automatically
skipping through those moments. By the
end of the movie, Adam Sandler can't
stop it and his remote skips through all
of his life, the stress, the negative,
and the positive. It's a shockingly
moving film for a movie that also
If we offload the pinnacle of human
experience and wealth, the opportunity
to get to express oneself and create
something, then what are we doing? Our
fathers were soldiers and farmers, so we
could be lawyers and doctors, so our
children could be artists and poets,
John Adams. We're greatly privileged to
get to act and write and sing and create
things. And if we're willing to skip to
the end of that, too, then what are we
here for? generate me a painting and
then, you know, let's turn on an AI TV
show and let's get a drone to bring us
food and, you know, I'll text my chat
GPT girlfriend on my phone. Let's just
let's just get rid of all the human
parts of the human experience. Let's
just skip right to the end.
There's a quote from Marcus Aurelius
that I love, and it's a long one, but
it's worth it. At dawn, when you have
trouble getting out of bed, tell
yourself, "I have to go to work as a
human being. What do I have to complain
of if I'm going to do what I was born
for, the things I was brought into the
world to do? Or is this what I was
created for, to huddle under the
blankets and stay warm? So, you were
born to feel nice instead of doing
things and experiencing them. Don't you
see the plants, the birds, the ants, and
spiders and bees going about their
individual tasks, putting the world in
order as best they can, and you're not
willing to do your job as a human being?
Why aren't you running to do what your
nature demands? You don't love yourself
enough or you'd love your nature too and
what it demands of you. As evidenced by
the decline of its use during the summer
break, AI is primarily a cheating tool.
But it's not just cheating school. It's
cheating you out of your ability and
your opportunity to be human. The thing
with AI art is the only one losing out
is you. AI will make art accessible for
everyone. It already was. Every time you
choose to use AI to skip to the end, the
only one losing out is yourself. If you
can't write or sing or act or dance or
dream anymore, you're denying your own
nature. What are you here for?
And I'm torn on Angeline. Unearly Guide
the Creator confuses me. His backlog of
work prior to Angel Engine is almost all
AI slop, Studio Ghibli stuff, and like
uh this is what your favorite character
would look like in a different art
style. But Angel Engine is good. And
even if it's not your cup of tea or you
like much more niche, hip analog horror
than I do, it's something. It's
interesting, and people are connecting
with it. Is it the creator's
responsibility to not use AI visuals,
even if maybe the visual arts aren't
something they're passionate about or
interested in? If they can't afford to
pay a creator, is it their moral duty to
not create anything at all? I don't
know. I can't offer an answer that's
completely satisfying because it turns
out life is complicated. It's not that
AI isn't convenient or that it can't be
useful, but it's a pact with the devil.
How much of your humanity are you
willing to outsource, to sell off? Angel
Engine is such a fascinating example
because it's about technological
overreach. It's about the price that
humanity pays to achieve progress. An
angel descends from heaven, something
that exists beyond our wildest
imaginations. And the way humans use it
sacrifices our own humanity. Like the
kid who can no longer figure out how to
complete an assignment without chat GBT,
or the lawyer who can't figure out how
to send an email with that one, or the
programmer who's lost when he runs out
of tokens. Where is the end of the
slippery slope? And usually these sorts
of videos end with somebody being like,
"The world is terrible. Everything's
going down the toilet. We can never go
back." So rarely do these sorts of
videos have like a happy ending, but
this one does. Every top comment on
Angel Engine videos are people
criticizing the use of AI. Almost all
the discussions around it aren't about
the series itself, but about its use of
artificial intelligence. And now,
finally, the creator has commissioned a
real artist to make the visuals for the
series. The most recent episode is
man-made. That's a win generated by us,
by cultural pressure, by people
believing in something and believing in
the human experience. And look, I've
used AI before. Not a ton, but I was
fascinated by it. I was curious about
it. And I bet you've used it, too. But
as I've thought more and more deeply
about it, I've decided I'm done with it.
I'm swearing off of it. In a world where
everyone else is becoming less human, is
outsourcing the point of all of this to
something else, there's an actual
solution, and it's you and me. You don't
need to be perfect, and you don't need
to have been. But every time you choose
not to use AI, you're making a decision
to be more human than the other people
who are letting it diminish their own
human experience. I can ask AI to
generate me a an image of a cave
painting and it will be technically
complex. But there is nothing more
meaningful to me than images of this
cave painting. It's just hands on walls,
but it's so powerful. We were here. We
were alive. So go make art and write a
song and make a puppet and wear a
costume. the the poem that you wrote in
your notes app 6 months ago will tipsy
outside of a bar. That terrible,
terrible poem is worth literally 10,000
times more artistically than any poem or
piece of anything generated by a robot
ever will be. Art is a celebration of
your life. So go out there and make
Special thanks to John Howard, Parker
Burgett, and JP King, my patreons. Yes,
I started a Patreon account. These
videos take a lot of time to make
because I do it all by myself. So, if
you want to support me being able to
keep doing this, go give that a check
out. Um, these videos will release a
couple days before and there's some
extra stuff on there that I think is
fun. Um, but thank you guys so much for
watching. Please like and subscribe. Um,
and have a great day. Go have fun
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