Someone sent me a link to something that has been causing some concern within the Doctor Who fan circles – a fan-made episode of Doctor Who that was crafted entirely with AI. It opens with David Tennant’s Doctor on the verge of regeneration and turning into a completely AI-Generated actor named John War or something like that.
I only caught glimpses of it here and there before shutting the video off and making a note to watch it later… only to discover that the video had been taken down. From what little I’ve seen, this AI thing may have done a better Doctor Who story than anything to come out of Marble Mouth Davies’ second stint in the Who chair.
If you find that response concerning, you should… and I can say that just from watching a few minutes of clip here and there.
Yeah… we might as well have THAT talk, too. Why not?
It is no secret that the topic of artificial intelligence and its application in the creation of consumer content has been – to put it kindly – contentious. It has its fair share of proponents and opponents who will argue for and against its use. It’s no secret that the rising costs of memory chips, storage mediums, and other such things is due to the data centers that houses these AI components, which is another thing against its use or existence or whatever.
It’s no secret that I’ve dabbled with AI tools in the past. Uberduck was a thing that I dabbled with and even snuck into a few videos here and there… back when the technology was still in its infancy. I did a thing on this blog where I would post images of something I would tell an AI image creator to make and poke fun at how far off it was. Hell, I even gave the Youtube thing a chance… and yes, I even used the AI thing to ask quick questions on certain things… while making a point to double check the work before diving deep into something.
That’s the extent of my AI usage – of all which were free to use. Those programs that cost hundreds – if not thousands – of dollars to produce these whole video things or games or whatever the case may be… I ain’t got those. I’m not sure I want those. I like making my own shit just fine without those things. I have no qualms about using something that talks like Microsoft Sam to throw up something for a lark because if nothing else, it is an interesting toy that amuses me for the short term. Hell, AI-generated content in short form can be quite amuse given some of the absurd material that has come out of this camp as a result.
But when it comes to more longform content – not just in terms of online video content, but in terms of full-length features or episodic series – being completely generated by AI, I’m not sure I want to buy into that.
In terms of general Youtube content, we were already at a point where lots of content creators are just swiping clips left or right while talking over them without any real effort put into it. Sometimes, the dubs are done with Microsoft Sam-like voice tools that feel artificial and fake. These things have been around YEARS before the current AI craze came into the picture and those have always been an instant turn-off for me. Give me something that has some semblance of human effort put behind it and I might give consider your content… for a bit… and only a bit…
Now you’ve got these videos where not only are the voices fake, but also the people on screen are fake. And of course, the images are used using stuff that’s been taken from other sources and regurgitate into something that is supposedly original, but not really. I can watch other people talk about this shit and they can sample such clips, but I cannot get myself to watch these. Even an AI-generated thumbnail is enough for me to go “Fuck that.”
As such, for the three video reviews where I used such thumbnails, I totally get it if you decided to skip those on that count… but do know that all my other thumbnails are made the old-fashioned way – with images stolen from a Google Search. (And also, to be fair, I did add a whole bunch of other crap on top of the AI horrors that Youtube’s former Ideas tab provide me… or was it inspiration? Fuck if I know.)
Using AI to make whole movies? How do I feel about that?
Honestly, I’m not so sure that I can tell you.
I know how I SHOULD feel about this… I SHOULD be opposed to the idea considering the ethical and environmental implications involved. AI copies what’s there before and a lot of it without permission. So real creations are sourced and not credited in the creation of these works. It’s a living Xerox with a mind of its own. I SHOULD be angry about the potential loss of work for all those writers, artists, performers, and others whose trades are affected by this development. And to some degree, when it comes to those with less reach, I feel for you folks. It’s already enough of a struggle getting noticed without this AI albatross hogging the spotlight.
I SHOULD be opposed to AI in the creation of what passes as art… but then I sample some of the AI-generated stuff that has come along. Besides the aforementioned Doctor Who episode that has since been taken down, I’ve seen samples of AI-generated films based on Star Wars, Star Trek, and others… some of which are adaptations of past works that were originally novels and comics now made into full-blown movies or something similar to that ilk. I don’t watch a lot of it because it’s still AI and there’s still an inherent inauthenticity to these things… but at the same time, the little bits of these are so well done and so compelling in terms of the writing and the performances that I find myself thinking that this stuff is better than what the official productions have been giving us.
And THAT is where the red flag comes in.
When it comes to some of the franchises I’ve been following since forever and some of the recent output that they’ve produced, I’ve made the quip about how most of those movies could have been done with AI and it wouldn’t have made much of a difference because all these things come across as all the same. They’ve got a set formula for each of their franchises and they could use whatever random plot generator to whip up a story and then film around that. Honestly, a lot of the Marvel output feels like this. Almost all of it is interchangeable and unmemorable. Similar trailers, similar tones, similar caricatures… been there, done that. When Marvel started this cinematic kick, they had different characters in very different movies. Now it’s all the same shit. Even Star Trek has that problem where I tries to produce “different” things, but they all sound the same and they all vary in terms of suckage.
Humans produced those things. Those shoddy things. These shoddy, soulless things that feel like content for the sake of content rather than anything that feels necessarily or vital. When those are the things humans make, it makes me wonder if maybe things are better off being made by AI going forward because from what I’ve seen, they’re doing a better job of producing things based on the things I grew up watching than the humans in charge of making these things ever could. I’ve said this flippantly. Now I’m close to believing it… and that SCARES me.
At which point, are the artists opposing AI taking jobs away doing so because of the moral implications? Or are they opposing AI for the simple reason that AI is better at their jobs than they are?
When all of this so-called art feels instantly swappable and interchangeable… when you decide that you’re going to watch ten to fifteen movies from the past decade or so and in viewing these movies, you discover that all these movies sound the same, they’re filmed the same, they’re produced in the same manner… all different films, all different genres, and studios even, but all feel like they come from the same factory. Similar diction, similar plot threads and progressions, similar character traits and archtypes… do we really need humans to produce that slop? Isn’t that the sort of thing we can give to the AI machine and they can just change a few things around and xerox fifty versions of the same film and spread out those releases over the course of the next twenty years?
Art is a subjective thing. Everyone has their idea of what constitutes art, but I feel that of all things, art has to have a soul behind it. Art is not art because a human made it. Human can make a lot of things and that doesn’t necessarily make it art. I can toss together a bunch of words on a piece of paper and that doesn’t automatically make it art. What makes something art is the soul behind the art… the passion that drives the artist to produce this thing that is intended to be art. What is the artist’s intent behind the piece? What are they trying to convey? What do you get out of that piece of art? Do you even get anything at all?
Something produced by AI can’t be art. There’s no soul behind it. No passion behind it. AI produces something that exists to be consumed by the masses. How is that any different from anything that comes out of the mainstream? Franchises are datamined and regurgitate repetitive entries every so often so that the audience can consume them however they can. That’s been the way for DECADES since the concept of a “cinematic universe” was farted into existence, LONG before the controversies of AI. All of that garbage was conceived by humans. Do we really need humans to do all that shit today? Do we really need humans to assemble all these actors to do another soulless Avengers movie? Can’t we just do it in AI, pay the actors rights fees, and let the machine craft whatever recycled plot device they can and hope nobody notices?
That’s the real conundrum that needs to be posed. We want the artists to continue plying their respective trades and hopefully earn a nice living off their chosen professions for years to come, but they have to step their game up. They have to prove to people that their art is SUPERIOR to what AI is generating and not only do I believe that they CAN, but they MUST. It won’t be long before the bigger corporations decide that AI is the way to go. Why wait until that eventually comes to pass if you’re opposed to its application in any way, shape, or form? Fuck off and find something else. Go smaller. Seek those who still believe in the art. Support those who have the passion and the soul for what they do. Those are the folks who deserve to get noticed and thrive.
Those who are content to just do the same shit they’ve been doing for years, however? I’m not so sure they’re necessary. At this point, if AI is doing their job better than they ever could, why even employ all those hacks? If I watch something and my reaction after watching it is “This could have been done with AI,” why do these people have jobs? Unfortunately, that’s the feeling I’ve been getting with a lot of things I’ve watched when it comes to the mainstream.
And yet… after all that… I’m not sure how I feel about all this. I know how I SHOULD feel… but I don’t know WHAT I feel.
Yeah, so that was a mouthful… and there’s one more this coming weekend.
What fun will THAT be?
Later.
