AI-generated entertainment is coming, and there’s nothing you can do about it.
Audiences will be able to insert themselves into their favorite movies, or prompt an AI engine to generate all-new movie or series using their favorite fictional characters. Played by themselves.
It won’t be novelty, it’ll be the standard. Think people won’t stand for it? Balderdash. They’ll be all about it.
You see, only other creative people care about where the art they consume comes from. Nobody cares who wrote their favorite movie. Nobody cares about the nuts and bolts of how the things they like came to be.
The general public’s attitude towards writers is “Give me what I want, word monkey!”
The human writer can say “No. I’m not doing that. I’m doing this.”
With AI, there is no argument. You’ll pay a subscription fee for the use of characters from various IPs, and be able to implement them into custom-made movies and shows. The internet will be absolutely lousy with clips from these garish pieces of self-indulgent shit, which no one but you will want to watch.
Personally, I don’t care to watch myself in my favorite movies. As a creative person, I’m interested in all of the human components that make up what I’m seeing on the screen. Writers, actors, directors, composers, set designers, effects teams, etc.
That grown-ass man at your job(Let’s call him Kevin) who guffaws at stupid TikTok vids all day and insists on showing them to you will be fully on board with a Marvel Kevinmatic Universe, or a nonsensical Star Wars/Batman/Transformers/Fast and Furious clusterfuck with his and his bros faces all over it.
Will people still make movies in the traditional way? Sure. Indies and big dogs like Spielberg, Wes Anderson and Tarantino will. Their output will coexist as a niche with all the AI stuff for years, until it becomes a completely passé endeavor.
There’s a reason why no one on Star Trek: The Next Generation sits around watching TV. It’s because they can go into a holodeck and experience it instead of watching it on a screen.
That’s where we’re headed. Will it “kill” creativity, as many claim it will?
No, I don’t believe so. Creative people are hardwired to create. It’s not something that’s going to be bred out of us. We just won’t be able to make a living at it anymore, because few will want to pay for it. It’ll be like bands selling CDs in 2023. (“New” AI albums from Nirvana, Jimi Hendrix, Linkin Park, 2Pac and other dead artists are on the way, too, but that’s a different post.)
On Star Trek, people still paint and play music, despite the fact that they could just as easily speak such things into existence on the holodeck. That’s what it’ll be like.
So yeah, while AI does herald the end of the industrialization and monetization of human-created art, it in no way represents a threat to human creativity.
Look, it is what it is, and you’re not going to stop it. Fighting against technology has never proven fruitful. Society is ready for this, and they’re going to embrace it with open arms.
Will I? Honestly, I don’t care much. I don’t make any money to speak of from my creative endeavors, anyway. I create for the sheer joy of it. I will never utilize AI in any capacity in my writing. Other writers are already using it to generate story ideas and tighten up story structure. Do I think I’m better than them, somehow?
Yes. Yes, I do! I’m not going to lie and pretend that I don’t. I think they’re pathetic and I look at them like this:
I’m never going to read an AI-generated book. I’m never going to listen to AI-generated music for non-novelty purposes. If I see a link for “AI generates new Beach Boys song with Glenn Danzig on vocals,” sure, I’m going to click on it for the lolz, but such things have no place in my regular listening routine, which includes obscure Ukrainian black metal and ambient/new age spacey music, among other things.
I’m never going to want to watch myself in my favorite movies. I would absolutely feed AI my books and prompt it to faithfully adapt them into a movie, possibly casting myself in a non-intrusive role, but other than that? No thanks.
Like I said, though, it’s coming, and it is what it is.
Patrick Walts 