I do a lot of creative work. I do music, graphics, and writing. I don’t feel even slightly threatened by AI, and I’m not anti-AI. That said, I can understand why so many people feel threatened.
Their reasons are pretty realistic, to be fair.
Let’s spell it out:
The fears are based on knowledge of their markets.
Most creative media markets are lazy, nepotistic, habitually fraudulent, and cheapskate. The current US writers’ strike is a very good example of the very real bottomless pit of cheapness.
As everyone knows – The media hates creative people. Mainstream media is run by the least imaginative, least creative people on Earth. They know less than nothing about the arts, basic ideas, etc. They’re out of their depths on any and all subjects related to creativity. These guys are numbers-driven. They want products, AI delivers products. They’ll source the easiest option every time.
It’s always been extremely hard to make a living in any creative field, and AI is the perfect excuse to pay less. They don’t have to pay the AI. They also don’t know the difference between “brilliant” and anything else.
Even if you do get a break, mainstream media generally defaults to a “meh” level of success for its creators. Very few creative artists ever get into the super-successful bracket. AI makes it a lot harder by swamping the media markets with volumes of materials and endless hype.
AI’s creative quality is derived from what it’s taught. It inevitably gets taught a lot of mainstream materials, and its own quality suffers from the banal stuff it’s taught. It naturally becomes a competitor for any mainstream media role.
Let’s be fair about this – How many times have you been told to “use a style, a voice, whatever”? That’s what it’s doing. It’s just a bit better organized.
Creative people do get highly stressed on a routine basis. Having an unknown factor like AI in the mix undermining confidence on an hourly basis doesn’t help.
BUT…
If you know your stuff, you can deconstruct AI work pretty easily. You can see where it came from on multiple levels. Whether it’s derivative art, music, or writing, the cracks are easy to see.
AI art seems to be largely generated by comic book art like this stuff, which looks like it’s from the early 1980s. It’s only miraculous to those who don’t know any better. It’s OK, but it’ll always be comparatively outdated by any level of new thinking.
AI music is on the rampage. Try remembering any of it. It’s exactly what you’d expect, even using AI Rihanna and AI Justin Bieber doing a synthesized duet. The music is also cookie-cutter. I recognize waveforms from the 1970s, bare-bones writing, and basic velvet paintings easily enough. There’s no real fire in these works. AI is a sort of creative museum, synthesizing different exhibits.
AI writing is even less impressive at the creative level. It can do a good job of bare-bones A to B storylines, but it doesn’t really empathize. The market is now saturated with high-profile AI writing tools from Grammarly and everyone else, but there’s an even bigger problem for AI products in this field.
This is the insurmountable problem – AI has already turned itself into the lowest common denominator. It can’t generate unique selling points. This is Marketing 101. AI has shot itself in the foot by becoming the average. It’s Brand X by default.
AI is the management scientist consultant at a gunfight. It’s not its fault. It’s the instant misinterpretation of what AI can and can’t do.
If AI essays and academic papers were any indication, everyone is a super-literate genius. That’s hardly the case. The students pay a fortune to do no actual work and get degrees that are meaningless by definition. The papers will look similar, even with voice tweaks and ponderous terminologies. They might be correct, but they can’t be interesting.
Real creativity generates real market interest. AI just generates cut-and-paste copies of creativity. Feel better now?
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Disclaimer
The opinions expressed in this Op-Ed are those of the author. They do not purport to reflect the opinions or views of the Digital Journal or its members.
