Real Goblin

I recently saw a video of a tech CEO describing the value of his new AI music program. He said something along the lines of, “creating music is not fun.” His program circumvents the process of creation and skips to the result stage. In his mind, he’s created the ultimate tool for musicians. One that cuts the musicianship out of the equation entirely.

Kanye recently declared that he would be utilizing AI in his next album. He believes that his use of AI will usher in a new age of acceptance for the burgeoning technology. 

I thought about this for a long time. Kanye’s complete and utter mental collapse aside, this was disappointing to hear. You expect this type of language from the millionaire ghouls who peddle AI. Those are the words of a man who’s never created something just for the hell of it; a man who has never worked on a project, hit a wall, gone for a walk, had an epiphany, power-walked home, and gone back to work. To say that there’s no joy in the creative process is both lazy and foolish. The process of creation IS the entire purpose. If all you have is a result, then what was the point? 

This seems so simple to me. But a lot of things I believe feel that way these days. It feels as if a person with basic empathy or critical thinking skills could easily come to the same conclusion as  I do without issue. In terms of AI specifically, it feels entirely soulless to myself and my colleagues. But maybe these AI tech CEOs don’t actually mean to appeal to people like me.  Maybe their target audience is one that has no interest in creating for creation’s sake at all.  

Maybe five to ten years ago, Kanye’s endorsement of artificial intelligence-driven music would have had more of an impact. It’s difficult to treat anything that man says with any shred of sincerity at this point. But regardless, there was a time when he was a trailblazer. A time when his use of AI would have sent shockwaves throughout the music community. I think most people are just tired now. But either way, it’s hard to hear. 

A working artist will pour days, weeks, or months into a piece. They will try and fail and try again. And they will have setbacks and breakthroughs and the meaning and purpose behind their art will change with the context of their mindset and the evolving world around them. 

I’m a mediocre creative. My apartment is full of half-finished drawings and stories and rolls of film and old cameras and musical instruments. I don’t excel at any particular thing. But I try. I try to finish a song. I try to find the words for a story. Sometimes I pick up a paintbrush just for the hell of it. I’ve never excelled at a physical medium of that kind in my entire life, despite my retired art teacher grandmother’s best efforts. I write, and from time to time people read what I write.

I sincerely believe that everyone has the capacity to create. We all approach it in our own way. I don’t care if it’s a Van Gogh or a sketch on a napkin while you wait for your meal at Applebee’s. That is the act of creating. Doing bits with your friends, making a meal, completing a crossword puzzle – you create each and every day.

You don’t need to create art to appreciate art. If you aren’t creating every day, you’re likely consuming the creation of someone else. When you watch Netflix, you’re consuming the result of hours of work by the hands of 100-1,000 people. And that product hit roadblock after roadblock. A dozen suits in a conference room created issues for the production. They disagreed with the portrayal of a character. They ran out of funding. A production assistant had to quickly throw together a character wardrobe at a Goodwill. Every step along the way is creation. 

Now imagine for a moment that you remove all of that. One person at a computer types a prompt into an AI program. And that program pumps out a video of Will Smith eating spaghetti. And hundreds of thousands of people look at that as though it’s some kind of breakthrough.

Imagine a less ridiculous scenario. Imagine someone needs to make an advertisement for a local company. Maybe it’s an insurance ad. The normal steps of that process require location permits, careful planning, and collaboration. You have to hire a crew to operate the equipment. Someone has to account for the way the light shines through a window. Someone has to sit down and write that script, even if it’s just one hundred words of insurance lingo. People, human people, have to put in the time. 

If you agree with the ghoulish tech CEO’s notion that creation is the worst part of the creative process, I pity you. I find it deeply upsetting that the age of artificial intelligence has not come to take work off of our hands, but to replace working artists so that they have no choice but to work. This development is entirely dystopian. And if you don’t think that AI is damaging to creative industries, then you aren’t paying attention to the many ways that it’s already happening. It’s not a real secret who this type of technology appeals to. This is for the pathetic man-o-sphere creeps. It’s for the type of people who think Gary V. or Elon Musk are intelligent people. It’s for the “grindset” freaks. These are the people who already happily use AI narration to make twenty Tik Toks everyday about Reddit stories. If you can pump out 100 AI tracks in an hour, that’s just “passive income”. 

I run a weekly-ish Dungeons & Dragons game for some friends. I also happen to have gone to film school, though I am ashamed to admit it. As a result, I sometimes combine these two interests and create short videos in between campaigns as small teasers for the players. It’s fun for them, and it’s enjoyable to me as someone who only occasionally gets to create and edit videos for “fun”. One year ago, I went on Fiverr and hired an English voice actor to narrate something I’d written. He had a deep voice with a regal quality to it. I think it cost me about $8 USD. That guy is not living off of his voice work (yet). But if fifteen people hire him for his services each month, that’s $120 he can spend on his weekly groceries. 

Fast forward a year, and I’m playing with Adobe Premiere Pro again. This time, I get curious about AI. I search up AI voice generators and play around with them for a bit. I type out a paragraph or so of fantasy jargon for an old gravelly AI voice. The way it operates is impressive, but lacking in certain areas. It didn’t quite hit certain words in a way that satisfied me. I was about to abandon the idea when I noticed an option for “voice changers”. I was curious. So, I recorded myself reading the script I’d written and used these different voice effects to create a conversation between two people. Initially, I used a pair of male voices so that it wasn’t such a stretch. But then I decided to push the limits. I used voice effects with accents that weren’t my own. I used feminine voices that sounded entirely different. I wouldn’t say I was surprised or impressed with the technology. It worked as you’d imagine. Rather, I’d say I was sort of filled with dread. I ultimately scrapped the whole idea. 

I never made any of those videos for profit. I am just a guy with a hobby. I don’t have a budget of any kind. But imagine I was a boardroom of Netflix executives making multi-million dollar choices for the company. Those are the tech CEO types. The kind of people who’ve proven time and time again that they put money over anything else. Wouldn’t you cut out the little guy? The small-time voice actors? The animators who put the final touches on a project? The colorists? Entire post-production teams can be circumvented with a software that might cost the company a small monthly fee. 

Look at Spotify. They already pay their artists fractions of pennies for streams. So why wouldn’t they use AI to fill up their “lofi study” or “soft jazz” playlists? Google image results are so plagued by AI images that I frequently find it difficult to find anything REAL at this point. I often use Pinterest for my aforementioned D&D games. I would often save the work of independent illustrators that I found interesting or inspirational somehow. Lately, a search like “elf” will result in an AI-to-artist ratio that makes the platform unusable. 

For now, AI is easily distinguishable from human art in most cases. At least to my eyes (Facebook Boomers notwithstanding). But I am sure there will come a time when it can fool me. But realistic or not, AI “art” hurts everyone. This is a trend that will kill the “up and comer”, the niche musician, the video-essayist. And frankly, a lot of that blame falls on the consumer. If you’ve gotten this far in this rant of mine, you aren’t the problem. The issue is your roommate who scrolls Tik Tok for hours at a time. It’s your divorced father who browses cable and watches “whatever’s on TV”. It’s the office secretary whose only connection to music is the local radio station in the car on the way home. It’s a broad, bored apathy that will kill these industries just as much as the people in power. 

There is no such thing as AI “art.” Art is distinctly human. It always has been and always will be. Prehistoric cave dwellers knew this better than the most powerful people in the modern era do right now. But even if I know that, and you know that, you also have to make a real, earnest effort to live that way. You have to support indie artists in all mediums. But more than that, you need to create. For humanity’s sake.

These are some videos on these topics that I was either inspired by or enjoy in general.

Ronnie Grace – “it’s about making things”

Drew Gooden – “AI is ruining the internet“

Sasha Luccioni – TED Talk: “AI is Dangerous, but Not for the Reasons You Think”