The Slippery Real

Boy, oh boy did that slippery slope we have all been navigating suddenly turn into a water flume ride. 

WHOOSH!

Down we go. 

It was bad enough when we had to start contending with the new breed of gaslighters who did it for profit and power alone. Bad actors that weaponized misinformation in ways never imagined before. In just a few weeks time we have moved to the ability of these people as well as trolls that just want to watch the world burn to turn to artificial intelligences to craft these lies and to start spreading fear. 

It’s scarier than just that though. 

With AI art generators and content generators out and free for all we are faced with an era, however long it lasts, where artists and creators will be working against computers for jobs and sales.

Alarmist?

Yes, lord yes, but true. 

Once graphic designers were the ones that made fliers and did work for businesses but the strange notion that, with WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get) programs everyone thought they had the same skills as someone who went to school or has done the work for years. 

Now we’ll have everyone turning to computers to do that same work. 

I get it, it’s less money, but it’s also putting people out of work and when companies either turn to these computers or to people using drag and drop programs to do this work you are eliminating a whole skillset that exists in the working world. 

And I get it, I do, because the world is getting expensive, but it’s hard to feel bad for companies when they will simply dump their saved money back into the top end staff. 

Ugh. 

Don’t ask how many places I see hiring for administrative assistants/graphic designers. 

Good lord. 

We don’t value art or artistic talent, and have’t for a long time. 

It’s like writing, some people say they can’t do it but they still don’t respect the craft because they figure it’s just someone making stuff up and not doing ‘real’ work. 

With the advent of AI that is free for all it is becoming a literal free for all and you’re seeing that now in the digital book realm, where people are suddenly ‘co-authoring’ with ChatGPT, which is basically them giving it prompts and letting it do the heavy lifting. 

A day may come when AI is yet another tool in a creative’s box, helping to do deep research, helping to make the process of creation easier, but right now it’s being leaned on heavily and indeed used to create the art for them. 

This isn’t using a new tool to do better work, it’s using a new tool to do the work. 

And heck, that’s fine, so long as that is revealed immediately that you used this technology to ‘assist’ in the creation of your art. If you do that and folks don’t care then cool. 

Good on ya. 

But people need to be told otherwise you’re misleading them. 

The trouble too is that there is always an art TO making art that comes from one’s experiences and influences. That’s where humanity will turn, as art becomes just another mass produced, robotic thing, similar to fast food, those creators that stick it out, and not many will, will be able to sell the flaws of their human skills and the charm of those flaws. 

It’s not like this is new though. 

You could use machines to make you sound better on a song, to make you sound like you can play better. You can use checks and balances to make your written work better. You can use programs to make your photos prettier or to remove people from them. 

In movies we have celebrated the ‘lies’ that are told because we want that escape. 

The AI will have simply consumed every type and style and will then need to be fine tuned to get the flavor of creation you want. 

It’s scary. 

It’s a scary time to be a creative. 

There’s going to be a learning curve and there will be abuse and it will look, in some ways, like it did when self publishing took off and anyone with a notion to tell a story will just do it without any second thought. Not a bad thing but not necessarily a honed and beautiful thing. 

The abuse that will come with the use of AI is scary and scarier to think that there is nothing that those so-called bad actors won’t use it for in order to misuse it, but reality on the whole is starting to become a concept and not a fact. 

Actors, musicians, writers, and heck, even porn will soon be AI generations and we’ll have to decide if we prefer that or the ‘real thing’. 

The genie is out of the bottle. 

Whether that’s a good thing or not is up to us to decide. 

It’s scary, for me, but it’s already here and already live. 

Sadly, all of this comes at a time when education is faltering, when people prefer bite sized content that echoes their beliefs, and when people would fall for anything. 

The future is here and friend, it’s scary. 

…c…

I write books, WITHOUT AI, for good or ill!