But, AI…

Image generated by StableDiffusion website.

Let’s talk some more about AI and it's benefits/deficits, shall we?

Yes, AI does what it does with a certain amount of polish and ‘style’. And it does it for free or for a relatively small monthly fee. And as one becomes more adroit at coming up with prompts, those prompts will elicit work that is more ‘on the mark’.

So what happens to fledgling artists that are making their services available on 99Designs, Hatchwise or Fiver? Will they be cut off at the knees? Perhaps… And then what happens down the line as High School kids consider careers - is art, music, cinematography out of the picture?

Already I’ve seen what I call the ‘Garageband Effect’. I see kids who think that they are ‘songwriters’ just because they’ve sequenced premade loops into a 3 minute snippet. They play it for their friends and parents and consider themselves accomplished creators.

As a result of these faux compositions floating around, I’ve played music that I’ve worked to the bone to polish; playing/programming every note - and listeners assume that I’ve whistled through the process the same way as our GB Effect dilettantes have. Infuriating, but are they wrong to think this?

Which brings up two thoughts:
1) if the general public lacks the ability to suss out a ‘hand made’ piece of music from a ‘looping piece of garbage’, why the f—- should we bother? (please refer to my previous post for a possible answer to that).
2) Perhaps ‘hand made’ music is just sub-par despite all the time and effort put into it. Perhaps this machine assisted dreck is the way of the future.

Which leads to the next question - if AI gets too good at what it does, will entire professions - artist, author, musician, cinematographer, chef go by the wayside or at best become ‘old school’ cottage hobbies?

Unfortunately, humans are infatuated with technology and all it can do, so we’re probably going to see AI generated ‘art’ entering the market in greater amounts. ‘Creators’ will become renown not for their artistic abilities but for their ability to write a proper prompt into Midjourney. All this will happen as the rest of us just sit in our hover-chairs getting fat and stupid while watching AI generated sit-coms and listening to AI generated pop music. Wait! My bad, that already exists - Taylor Swift anyone?