Comment by keiferski
4 hours ago
In the world of arts/media, I think AI basically only has a future as a hidden thing. Openly admitting that you used AI to make something will be used against you, in order to dismiss your work. For a lot of people/things, it already is - see Hank Green, or the daily comments about "I don't want to read what you didn't write."
Expect a massive marketing reversal in 6-12 months, when every "AI-powered" company removes the keyword from their home page.
That used to be true of autotune too. It was either tastefully hidden, or obvious and trashy. Then projects like 808s and Heartbreak and Tha Carter III put it front and center and it's been a legitimate tool ever since.
I didn't know if generative ai has a strong enough signature to go through the same evolution, but I wouldn't be shocked if it did.
It’s autoslop can become an adjective for Generative AI content whether it’s hidden or not. It’s so AI - can mean different things to different generations - derogatory for Gen Alpha and like a good thing for older generations
Autotune is legitimate as a surgical tool, used as little as necessary so you can't ever hear it, not when it's front and center as they have tried to do in the 2010 era of awful.
AI is still in the 2010 autotune phase, where more is better.
“Death of autotune, moment of silence”.
Nah, they were still keen to let people know it made you a clown.
Autotune, and quantization in general, is a legitimate artistic choice though. It's like using a ruler. It's not strictly required either.
AI is literally the exact opposite of that. We had been building software with ruler-like precision even when it was unnecessary and got in the way. That's the only reason we ever wanted AI to begin with.
One mistake people keep making is the assumption that arbitrary and probabilistic imprecision ("wisdom of the crowd") is automatically equivalent to artistic or experienced/curated choice. It's absolutely not. Another mistake is that approximations are always enough to satisfy all problems, or at least "real world" problems. That's obviously not true either. That's flat out ignorance.
I actually agree with your prediction (on a longer time-scale though) but because I'm convinced it'll go the opposite, where AI begins to blend in to services people use in the background more and more, and people slowly move on and stop caring about it, both in terms of hype and doomerism.
I have heard multiple arguments that point towards this future, where AI largely becomes "normal" technology. I'm hopeful for it. There are tons of great use cases for AI, but it absolutely should not be in... everything.
This feels similar to the timeline that lots of new technologies go through. Blockchain (put that into everything!). The internet + dot com era were probably similar as well.
Treating ANYTHING like an everything tool just seems to feel this way. There's no reason I want to use AI to buy something on Amazon. Or plan a vacation for me. I absolutely want to use AI to scan through 5000 files and find that one thing I was looking for though. Different applications.
I almost always use Claude when shopping online, to find unknown unknowns. And I loved using Claude to plan a recent trip, instead of not bothering to plan at all because it’s so tedious. Just as a counterexample.
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I agree strongly with your sentiment.
Historically, including "AI" in a name meant it wasn't complete or ready for prime time use.
I'm not convinced our AI nor ML implementations that throw "AI-powered" into the marketing copy have meaningfully changed that notion.
We don't call spellcheck "SpellcheckAI" or "SpellcheckML" but it is arguably one of the best integrations of AI we've ever seen.
yesh I argue! Spellchrc ist he beat investor humanity has ever conceded of!
This sounds like the toupee fallacy.
I wonder if any movie special effects that you notice will be considered AI?
> I wonder if any movie special effects that you notice will be considered AI?
Zach King is a YouTuber to watch on this topic.
> Expect a massive marketing reversal in 6-12 months, when every "AI-powered" company removes the keyword from their home page.
The slogan that keeps coming to mind to me is 'AI has a massive PR problem'
When such a disruptive and powerful technology is made popular by slop art that undervalues creators and shits upon the cultural value of the arts, by unlikeable billionaires telling people how you'll soon be out of a job, by having it forced upon you by your boss, by marketing teams pushing for doomerism to increase the IPO value, you know that no PR campaign will ever save it and make it palatable for the masses.
And it's for the best, I'll say. AI as a technology is here to stay, but the masses will be wary and mildly disgusted by it for a very long time. The lunatic dreams of artificial superintelligences ruling over humanity are accepted to be blasphemy, not a glorious future to rush towards. The tech world is still too far deep in its echo chamber to see that no one really wants whatever they are selling.
I really doubt it. I think more and more people will get used to it and accept it. It's not going anywhere. The best artists and creators will figure out how to use tech which empowers them and then what will the rest of the artists and creatives do? Refuse to engage with modernity? I doubt it.
It only takes a single project to show it works to get other people jumping on board. Some amount of gamers are pretty vocal about it (though I'm sure it's being used in most studios these days in some fashion). If a company creates a game which embraces the "slop" and has great assets on a fun game are people going to avoid it? If that works out, will companies following them avoid it? That's just not how people work.
How does AI “empower” artists…?
It allows them to take on tasks they could not before.
For example, creating a game where before you'd have to pay for assets or creating a movie to where you'd have to pay for a lot of various things. I gave an example earlier where I've watched vids people generated based on existing fiction. These are artists (you're still framing the shot, selecting dialogue, etc), and they could not have done this before; it would have been too expensive.
Some artists get cut out of the loop but it allows small teams to do what was impossible. Is this not valid?
> he best artists and creators will figure out how to use tech which empowers them
But that is NOT the selling point of AI in relation to art. The selling point is "it will make all artists obsolete and unemployable". Literally. That is how Sora was sold too. It was not sold as tool for artists. It was sold as replacement for artist.
If AI ends up as a tool for artists, then that tech failed on its creators terms.
You're replacing some artist and empowering others. If a single creative can gen a 3 hour movie (we'll pretend it is high-quality), then they can do things which were previously impossible. Was it not marketed as a tool which enabled people to do more?
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Maybe, but the slop will still be painfully visible and avoided. I don't need to be told it's AI when I see a perfectly-formatted and overly-detailed comment — I already know.
I went to buy a new phone about a year ago - all the branding/blurbs etc was "AI this! AI that!"
I didn't end up buying at that point, but 6 months ago my existing phone failed, so I had to return to the shops. Same phones for sale more or less, but not a single word about AI anywhere.
This is super naive. And does not follow any other productive technology's trajectory.
Counterexamples: windshield wipers and spellcheck.