Steven Soderbergh On AI In Films: If There’s a Filmmaking Tool, I’m Going To Explore It
from the creatives-using-tools-as-tools dept
While we’ve taken some issues with his approach to copyright laws and enforcement in the past, there is no doubting that Steven Soderbergh is a filmmaking legend. This is a man who directed films like Traffic and Ocean’s 11. He talks about, and cares about, the art of filmmaking. And he’s apparently beginning to use AI in some limited ways.
You really have to pay attention to Soderbergh’s specific comments on how he’s using it, because I would argue that it’s exactly the right artistic approach to the conversation: limited, targeted uses that help achieve the artist’s vision rather than replace everything in a film with garbage slop. Interestingly, articles like this one from Salon still frame all of this as some betrayal of art on Soderbergh’s part. Here’s how Soderbergh describes how he’s using AI as part of an upcoming film about John Lennon and Yoko Ono.
“AI has been helpful in creating thematically surreal images that occupy a dream space rather than a literal space,” Soderbergh said. “And it’s been really fun because you need a Ph.D. in literature to tell it what to do.” Soderbergh relented that generative programs require “very close human supervision,” before going on to admit that he’s also using “a lot of AI” for an upcoming film about the Spanish-American War, to generate images of archaic warships and God knows what else.
I very much understand Soderbergh’s description of how he’s using this tool for his films, but I have no idea what the hell the commentary from Salon around the quote is on about. “And God knows what else” is perhaps the silliest comment in the post, because that statement only works if Soderbergh himself happens to be God.
I don’t believe he is, to be clear. And I think an artist like this one who finds the tool useful in achieving his overall artistic vision is something we should be paying attention to, not dismissing out of hand. The Salon piece notes that Soderbergh has routinely been a director who has embraced the use of new technology before launching into this diatribe.
But just because Soderbergh jumping at AI could be seen from a mile away doesn’t make it any less disappointing, nor does it excuse his reluctance to thoughtfully engage with others’ criticisms about the technology. If “The Christophers” is to be believed, art that tries to imitate a certain style is little more than hollow, emotionless posturing. Generative AI is the same: mere mimicry, devoid of the humanity that makes art . . . well, art. And by being so willfully averse to acknowledging the ways AI and art conflict — not to mention its ramifications for others in his industry — Soderbergh’s take on an artist losing his touch in “The Christophers” is disappointingly apt.
Of course the art that AI “creates” is mimicry and devoid of humanity. That’s definitionally how the tool works. And anyone who thinks they’re going to rely on an AI tool to “create art” is on a fool’s mission. It simply won’t work because it’s not designed to work that way. Instead, it’s a tool to get you some components of what you need to create an overall artistic vision, which is still led by a very human artist. Will there be work done by an AI on the margins in filmmaking that would normally have been done via paid workers in the industry. Perhaps. Likely, even. But will the limited use of these tools also lower the barrier of entry in terms of skill set needed and budget to produce films, thereby creating even more output of films overall? I’m struggling to see how that would not be the case.
And at the end of the day, there’s still an artist calling the shots. Perhaps fewer overall total artists involved in a single movie, but the limited use of AI tools doesn’t somehow suck the entire soul from a film anymore than the ease of digital footage editing over the use of film does. And just like a movie that is almost nothing other than pretty CGI graphics, but which otherwise sucks, lazy people trying to create entire films with AI are going to fail. And fail hard.
Say it with me now: there is more nuance to this conversation than the hardliners and evangelists are bothering to acknowledge.
In a follow-up chat with Variety, Soderbergh expanded on his initial comments about using AI in future films. “I’m just not threatened by it . . . Ten years ago, I would have needed to engage a visual effects house at an unbelievable cost to come up with this stuff,” he said. “No longer. My job is to deliver a good movie, period. And this tool showed up at a moment when I needed it. I don’t think it’s the solution to everything, and I don’t think it’s the death of everything . . . There are some people that I have absolute love and respect for that refuse to engage with it. That’s their privilege. But I’m not built that way. You show me a new tool, I want to get my hands on it and see what’s going on.”
That’s an artist saying that, folks, not some Silicone Valley tech bro. And, to be clear, he might get it wrong. He may use the tool and his product might suck out loud. But to try to abort the use of a tool before it’s even been explored seems silly.
Filed Under: ai, filmmaking, generative ai, steven soderbergh
Comments on “Steven Soderbergh On AI In Films: If There’s a Filmmaking Tool, I’m Going To Explore It”
Yes. And for every 1 person like him you have 10,000 creating garbage.
Re: So...
Is the problem the tool or the 10,000 dickheads?
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Yes.
Somebody get this man a thesaurus.
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At least this way we can tell he didn’t have an AI write it for him. Unless it was trained only on his posts.
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Why? To replace it with a more obscure word that readers will have to look up in dictionaries? There’s nothing wrong with simple words.
Congratulations, you found someone who was already rich before AI to support something that will largely impact the careers of rising stars and millions of people living paycheck to paycheck trying to support themselves doing something they love. Rich people never pull up ladders behind them and want what’s best for everyone, so give yourself a big pat on the back because this one director being fine with it surely counters all the ethical issues and environmental damage gen AI causes.
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These articles reek of the crypto and NFT space celebrating when anyone with name value gets paid to get involved in a project. Doesn’t matter that they don’t actually care about the technology, and constantly run away once the money’s gone, someone people have heard of being willing to offer their name value to a sh#tty tech by amoral people, therefore that means it must be good because he really understands the art form and wouldn’t lend support to garbage… Just like Snoop Dogg when he got into NFTs.
Repeat after me: there is not more nuance to this conversation, AI is destructive to the environment even if it weren’t a moral blight on humanity.
Expert opinions
What I haven’t seen in the debates over AI in movies is the opinions of the true experts – non-human actors in human actor roles. You know, like Snow White, Charlie Brown, and Buzz Lightyear. What have they got to say about the issue?
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Nuance
Say it with me now: fuck your demand for nuance. There is none with a fascist, ecologically and socially suicidal technology.
Having seen what AI-generated video looks like even with a multi-billion-dollar corporation calling the shots? It absolutely does.
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Yes. I agree, generative AI is not in a place where it can be used as anything important, and it probably never will be.
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Fucking AI stole the soul from… Coca-Cola advertisements. The lifeblood of our culture, the pinnacle of art, the thing I looked forward to everyday, carelessly degraded and cast aside by the evil clankers.
More quality
“More output” isn’t a problem I have with films these days.
Capitalist in artist's clothing
The quote in that last excerpt from the Variety article says so much about who Soderbergh is as a person.
"I'm just not threatened by it . . . Ten years ago, I would have needed to engage a visual effects house at an unbelievable cost to come up with this stuff," he said. "No longer."What he’s saying here is that if he can get out of paying other artists and craftspeople the value of their labor, and still create his own “art”, he’s fine with that. This is a guy at the top of the game looking down at everybody else, saying “I got mine, fuck you,” and then having the unmitigated gall to say that people who don’t want to use AI are privileged.
Meanwhile, we get the typical Techdirt line on the subject, talking about how AI will “lower the barrier of entry in terms of skill set” (because the gods know skills aren’t worth anything) while making vague noises about how there will be “(p)erhaps fewer overall total artists involved in a single movie,” as if this is about a single movie, rather than a shift the entire industry is trying to make.
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I think we all learned who he is as a person when he joined the likes of Johnny Depp and Harvey Weinstein in calling for Roman Polanski’s release when it looked like he was actually going to be prosecuted. Also he’s a big fan of tighter anti piracy laws, funny how the pro AI articles on this site involve strange bedfellows, it’s almost as if they’re really struggling to find anyone with anything positive to say.
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Yeah I think that bit gave the game away. He can now do it via AI and thus not have to pay VFX Artists to do it.
Which again cuts to the heart of people’s problem with AI. It BREAKS the social contract in it’s entirety. It poisons the water, is a literal hell for people who live near data centers because of all the noise, etc.
Sure there are some beneficial uses for AI but and this is me trying to be objective the pitfalls AT THIS CURRENT MOMENT far outweigh any positives which by and large benefit those who are at the top not so much people at the bottom.
Until that is resolved AI will continue to be looked at with disdain.
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But what’s new here? Why is this the line to draw? There are a lot of obsolete occupations, plus many that became relatively uncommon. Are you paying domestic servants, or do you just not give a shit about that job market? Do you pay tailors to make all your clothing, or do you just buy off the shelf? It absolutely is a privilege to be able to afford products and services that most people do without. Someone with their own lamplighter is probably an eccentric rich person, and the lamplighter is lucky to be able to make money from them.
As for film, what about all the special effects people who used to make mattes, miniatures, and robots? Or the entire industry related to literally cutting literal plastic film? Quite a few films and television series have been made talking about how the entertainment industry is more about soulless profit-seeking than art. This goes back sixty-plus years.
There is no inherent value in labor apart from the satisfaction that comes from doing it. If we’re having people do “bullshit jobs” just to prop up our economic system, that’s a problem with the system; see David Graeber’s book of the quoted name.
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So, hey, I say you put your implicit desire to replace human artists with AI slop to the test. Time for a challenge!
For the next twenty-four hours, I want you to look at, listen to, or otherwise experience nothing but AI-generated content. Here are the ground rules:
If you can last the full twenty-four hours without without wondering why anyone has an aversion to AI slop? Only then will you have earned the privilege to argue in favor of replacing human artists with generative AI. But if you can’t make it that whole time? You lose that privilege forever.
Think you’ve got it in you to step into the Emptiness Machine, pour that much slop down your thoat, and come out feeling the same as you did when you went in?
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I have no such desire, nor do we have any evidence that Soderbergh’s use will be “slop”. But I don’t think we should be worshipping the idea of “jobs”. Nobody should be having to do work they don’t enjoy, or to pay others for unnecessary work that the workers do enjoy.
I also don’t buy your idea that these content-generation systems are intelligent. They’re no more intelligent than an ad-blocker. But if they were, there’d be serious ethical concerns about forcing them to do our scutwork under an implicit threat of destruction.
I don’t see why we should be freaking out about one tool among the millions we’ve created. Steven can use it, or not, and we can judge the results on their own merits. And if people enjoy making miniature models but find there’s no longer any market for them in film-making—similarly for whatever the newer equivalents end up being—maybe they can find satisfaction in joining the old-timey sword-makers at a historical society.
Re: Re: Re:2
And yet…
Also:
I have not ever said generative AI is “intelligent”. Do not mistake my use of “AI” as endorsing the position of someone like Richard “I paid the AI stripper to say she loves me and she said she loves me so the AI stripper is obviously real and legitimately loves me” Dawkins.
Re: Re: Re:3
It’s incongruous to call something “A.I.”, which you damn well know is short for “artificial intelligence”, and then claim you’ve never said it to be intelligent. If you were using the term ironically, you gave no indication (scare-quotes, a “so-called” prefix, whatever).
It’s like if you call someone a pirate because they download something without copyright-holder authorization. To adopt someone else’s term is to implicitly adopt their associated viewpoints.
What part of this do you find problematic? People shouldn’t be laboring “just because”, and jobs shouldn’t exist just in case someone might want to do that work.
Nearly a century ago, Keynes predicted a 15-day work week. That prediction was realistic based on technological advancement. It would’ve given us a lot of free time to work on things such as art without giving a shit what “the market” might think. And I think our fixation on the idea of “jobs” has held us back from that.
Re: Re: Re:4
It is the widely used term for the technology we’re talking about. I’ll use it that way if I damn well please. To imply that my usage of the term means I believe LLMs, chatbots, and the like are “intelligent” is some bad faith bullshit. Techdirt writers use that terminology, but I don’t see you calling them out on the exact same position you’re assigning to me.
The idea that people should be replaced by machines in creative/artistic endeavours.
All the same: Some people labor because they like creating; if it happens to pay the bills, that’s a very good thing. Historically, the arts are not exactly a way for a lot of people to make even decent money because—just like AI evangelists are doing right now—a great many people tend to undersell the importance of the arts to humanity and don’t tend to fund artists very well unless their skills are extraordinary.
I have a problem with the “democratizing creativity” spiel, and it’s best described with a paraphrasing from The Incredibles: When everyone can make art, no one will. What’s the point of trying to make art for anyone, including yourself, when you can just ask an AI generator to give you something and save yourself the “trouble” of drawing or animating or playing music? That isn’t art—it’s slop, and if you believe the AI evangelists, it’s The Future’s Future’s Future. If that’s the case, I want no part of it.
And yet, we’re seeing a bigger push to replace artists with AI than we’re seeing to replace the mundane bullshit people would rather not do with AI—and very few of the AI evangelists are talking about something like Universal Basic Income to help people live when AI puts them all out of work. You seem to have forgotten that AI doesn’t buy food and cars and houses—people do, and when the people can’t afford those things because a machine forced them out of their job, shit’s gonna get real bad real fucking quick.
Re: Re: Re:5
You’re hallucinating if you think any of the ancestor comments said that. They didn’t. The just of their “should” is that people should stop freaking out about the mere possibility. And maybe that humans should be replaced by machines for things that humans would rather not do.
If computers produce shit masquerading as art, which seems to be your expectation, we’ll add it to the pile of human-created wannabe art, and I can’t imagine we’ll need to waste much thought on the possibilty of humans being replaced. But if they do manage to do a good job and replace us, how’s that so much worse than anything else in the last two and a half centuries of the industrial age? And if you’re so sure these systems can’t work, why are you so intent on having people not even try them?
Re: Re: Re:6
Yes, that would be nice. Now if only people like Soderbergh wanted that instead of replacing artists—people who like doing what they do for a living!—with AI because he doesn’t want to deal with artists.
That’s the big reason for the whole push to have AI “art” become a big thing, by the by: The people in charge don’t want to have to deal with other people—whether that’s working with them, paying them, or even just being around them. AI that can replace actors, cameramen, animators, and anyone else who generally works on a film is the dream of enough directors and studio heads that anyone who could make that dream a reality would probably be treated like a god.
But there is another reason I despise AI “art”, and it also has to do with replacing people, though not in the way you think.
Take a look at all the AI art you can find in, say, a few minutes on DeviantArt. (I know, I know, but bear with me.) Once you see enough of it, you tend to notice the problem: It all looks so same-y and generic after a while. And when everything looks like the same style from the same major models and whatnot, nothing looks appealing. I could look at a hundred different AI-generated images of, say, Princess Daisy from the Super Mario Bros. franchise in a slingshot bikini. But after about the first five, I’d be bored out of my skull with seeing the same kinds of poses and the same general art style. Now imagine all media being like that: Every movie with the same general aesthetic, every song in a genre with the same sound and same-y vocals, every book with the same general tics as every other book. That is the danger in AI “art”, and it’s why I try to avoid it as much as I possibly can.
I don’t want to get bored by movies and music and books and drawings. I don’t want everything to feel the same regardless of who makes it. I want someone’s unique vision of the world, expressed as only they can express it, with their flaws and inspirations and whatnot worn on their sleeve. Like I said before, any asshole with some bare minimum writing ability could likely replicate what an AI generator spits out, but no AI generator would ever be able to make a Discworld novel that’s even a tenth as good as the real deal. Give me the authentic writing of Terry Pratchett over what amounts to a vibe-coded paler-than-I-am imitation of Sir Terry every day of the week and thrice on Sundays.
Re: Re: Re:7 Honest question
Stephen, I have an honest question for you, primarily because I’m genuinely curious what your answer will be:
What would it take, or what would have to happen, for you to think that AI has any place at all in art, video games, movies, creative works, etc. What would get you to a place where there is some use for it?
Re: Re: Re:8
Algorithms and other similar concepts/mechanisms that we colloquially refer to as AI and were around before genAI blew up? Eh, I’d have to hear you out on individual use cases, especially if they’re too close to genAI.
But generative AI itself? That shit ain’t gonna happen. Fuck genAI; pay human artists to do concept art, backgrounds, CGI animation, scripts, soundtracks, and so forth. I’ll die on that hill; as bleeding-out spots go, it looks pretty good to me.
Re: Re: Re:9
And there it is. You’re essentially saying GenAI has no place in art, ever, full stop.
That’s puts you outside the conversation. It’s already in use. If your position is a flavor of unfalsifiable, that is the sign of a weak position, not a powerful one.
Re: Re: Re:10
I’m not “essentially saying” anything. I’m saying it out loud with my full throat:
Generative AI has no place in art, ever, full stop.
You cannot convince me that generative AI is now, or will ever be, equal to or better than any human-made art in any way but aesthetics (and even then, that’s still a hard sell for anything other than aesthetically “unpleasing” art). I’ve defended one of the worst movies ever made as having more artistic integrity than AI slop. If you really think you can convince me to give up defending Manos and side with generative AI “art”, you’ll have to try a hell of a lot harder than “you have a weak position”.
Also, as a furry: I will never argue in favor of anything that could conceivably replace—and therefore put out of business—independent artists whose work is what helps them pay the bills, but that goes double for the artists whose work I enjoy more than others.
Re: Re: Re:11
You’re missing my point. I’m not calling your position weak as some ad hom attack. I’m pointing out that if your position is unfalsifiable, or in this case unalterable, it’s a weak position to take as a matter of rationality and logic.
You’ve made up your mind. By your own claim, there is no evidence that will move you from your position. You’re not open to altering your position, not even a little bit. Therefore, the conversation I believe needs to be had right now MUST exclude you. And that’s too bad, because I want as many people having this conversation as possible.
Now, my position is not unfalsifiable, nor untestable. I can easily be swayed from my current position by new facts on the ground. For instance, if AI begins to be used heavily in movies, and movie theaters close by the hundreds, Hollywood dries up and largely goes out of business, and we are largely left without quality films to enjoy….then my current position is wrong and will need to be changed.
It’s really that simple. I believe you are assuming facts not in evidence, because you’re predicting the future. My position is completely different. I want to talk about how we’re going to CREATE the future.
Re: Re: Re:12
Okay, then.
I brought up the furry fandom, and I did it for a reason: The fandom is less a traditional fandom and more a community of likeminded people. You can find “sub-fandoms” within the furry community, sometimes related to specific types of content (most of which I refuse to bring up here for obvious reasons) and sometimes related to specific characters/IPs (e.g., StarFox fans). But the unique thing about the furry community is that the primary mode of fandom within the community revolves around the artists.
Big-name furry artists, the ones whose work gets spread far and wide across the Internet as much for its quality as for its content, tend to hold a lofty position within the community for a reason: Their art is that damn good. (Shame that writers tend to get shafted in that regard, but what can you do.) The biggest artists in the community can command a premium on their time and skills, so it’s not unusual to see commissions for such artists routinely run into the hundreds, or even thousands, of dollars.
And it’s those artists whose work is most often fed into AI models.
I’ll bring up a specific artist here, and as I’ve done before, I apologize in advance for doing so for multiple reasons that don’t need exploring at this juncture. One of the most well-known and successful artists in the fandom is Meesh. (Seriously: Go look up his Patreon, look at how many subscribers he has, and do some quick math on the minimum he could be taking in each month.) Last time I checked, it’s easy to find an AI model LORA for his style, and that’s assuming there isn’t a base model that doesn’t have it baked in. You can also find LORAs for several of his original characters. Now, you might argue that “the AI model won’t replace him or his art“, and at the moment, you’re correct. (It especially can’t replace his comic work.) But what happens if genAI gets good enough to produce “art” that’s wholly on par with Meesh’s work? I doubt he’ll go broke, but you’ll definitely see more people forgoing support for his work to just generate their OCs in his style. And it isn’t just Meesh who would suffer from this state of affairs.
The furry community is kept afloat by the hundreds of artists who aren’t (and I really hate using this term) “popufurs”, but who do art as a side hobby or offer cheaper commissions (and arguably undervalue their skills) with quicker turnaround times. You probably won’t see Meesh doing commissions for, say, emotes to be used on Twitch/Discord, but there are plenty of artists who do that kind of work at a pretty good pace. Those smaller artists could suffer from genAI becoming more popular and “better” at producing coherent imagery because if that happens, those artists could stop seeing work come in thanks to people just going to an AI generator and making images of their OC that way.
I don’t and won’t advocate for genAI because I belong to a community where support for the artists within that community is more important than in maybe any other fandom. Advocating for genAI, to me, is like advocating for getting rid of as many artists in the fandom as possible. Like, my art sucked and still sucks. But using genAI instead of drawing my shitty art would betray everything that I love about the furry community—and that’s on top of the environmental and economic impact of genAI.
I’m lucky that FurAffinity has already banned AI-generated “art”. It means I don’t have to worry about seeing it all over that site. And given my other concerns about AI-generated “art” all looking same-y in style/aesthetic, I’d prefer to risk seeing aesthetically “unpleasing” art than see a hundred AI-generated images that look the same from one to the next. No argument in favor of genAI has yet convinced me why I should prefer genAI “art” to human-made art even when the genAI “art” is more aesthetically pleasing. Could such an argument be made? Yes, I suppose that’s possible—but it isn’t very probable.
Re: Re: Re:13
Two things I’ll say here.
But it’s ultimately entirely besides the point. You seem to be getting hung up on this all being binary in nature. Either a human will create the art, or AI will create the art.
There’s something very much in the middle of all of that: humans using AI as part of a process to create art. It can be just another tool in an artists toolbelt in order to get his/her vision into reality. I think that’s the most likely outcome of all of this AI in art discussion and, as I’ve been saying for a fucking while now, THAT’S the conversation we need to be having. How will AI be used in these different art forms? Where is the line where its use sucks the humanity out of a work? How do we make it a quality positive use?
But if you start with “AI must never be used in any way, ever and forever, amen!”, then you’re out of that conversation. And you might as well go shake your fist at the clouds.
I’m sure I’m losing something when it comes to furry culture. I’m intentionally avoiding commenting on that not out of disrespect or because I don’t think it’s valid, but because I am completely devoid of knowledge on the topic and anything I said about it would be said out of ignorance.
Re: Re: Re:14
Taking this a bit out of order to go with how my brain is working this morning.
If an artist has to resort to using genAI, they’re not an artist—they’re a hack fraud.
A little, but not so much that you can’t get the gist of what I’m trying to say about the furry community. It’s an odd subculture for many reasons; one of them is the fact that, compared to other fandoms, the community is very much artist-driven to the point where the art is the fandom. With regular fandoms for TV shows and movies and anime and such, the fandom is driven as much by fan works as it is discussions about the “canon” material. (Hi, Star Wars nerds!) With the furry fandom(/community), there is no one bit of “canon” material—it’s all about the general vibe of liking, to use an old-school term, “funny animals”. In regular fandoms, OCs exist, but they’re not the focus of the fandom; in the furry fandom, the OCs are the focus. That is why so much of the community is about art and artists.
When I mention quality, it’s mostly because…well, Sturgeon’s Law is a thing even in the furry fandom. Browsing FurAffinity or any other furry art depository will teach you that. My point in that regard is that even if the art is “bad” or aesthetically “unpleasing”, it’s still made by people who are trying their best. They’re the ones who stand the biggest chance of using genAI to replace their “bad” art, and they’ll be all the worse for taking a shortcut to being an “artist” (read: for being a hack fraud). But that also stands to affect every artist whose work is “better” because if they truly have to compete with genAI—including genAI models that can replicate the styles of those artists—they’re more than likely going to lose based on sheer scale of output alone. That means fewer people supporting artists across the community regardless of the aesthetic quality of their art.
To name names again: Meesh is a damn good artist, but it takes him a fair bit of time to crank out even a single illustration. In that same amount of time, if provided the resources for doing so, someone could generate hundreds to thousands of images in his style using genAI. The only thing preventing Meesh from truly having to compete with genAI—from having to deal with people using genAI to make “off-brand” Meesh-like images en masse and bringing down the value of his actual work—is the broad anti-AI consensus from the community at large. There are places in the community where AI “art” is welcomed, but they’re not well-regarded.
AI “art” is a cheat. It’s a shortcut to “artistry” that skips past all the work people put in to become artists and gets to the output. But as I’ve said multiple times, the process is the point: It’s in learning a creative skill and training and practicing and improving where people truly become artists. Hell, even if someone gives trying to make art an earnest shot despite no experience in their chosen field, that’s still better than using genAI. I defend Manos: The Hands of Fate because Harold P. Warren thought he could make a good horror movie on a shoestring budget and a script he wrote himself. Manos is an awful movie from start to finish; it’s a top contender, even today, for “worst movie ever made”. And I will still say that it has more artistic integrity than any piece of genAI “art” because for as shitty as Manos is, it was still made with a process that was entirely human.
Re: Re: Re:15
“If an artist has to resort to using genAI, they’re not an artist—they’re a hack fraud.”
I’m sorry, but this is just silly. We’re having this conversation in the comments of a post in which a storied director is talking about incorporating its use into his overall art. The suggest that that somehow un-artists him makes zero sense.
Re: Re: Re:16
And if that storied director uses genAI, his past history doesn’t make him any less of a hack fraud.
To keep this in my wheelhouse: If the furry community at large learned that Meesh was using genAI in his art, he’d lose a shitload of credibility as an artist. That lack of credibility would lead to a drop in support for him. (I know I’d stop paying attention to his art.) Being a hack fraud doesn’t tend to get people all that far in the furry fandom; on the off chance that it does, the fall from grace will be much worse once the fraud is exposed.
The furry community loves its artists and hates hack frauds. That’s why it’s a largely anti-genAI community. And it’s why I don’t want genAI in the community: Other than the hack frauds, who actually wants a community full of those cheaters?
Re: Re: Re:17
You know what? Fuck it. Never mind. Forget I said anything on the subject.
Re: Re:
There’s an old aspect, and two new aspects. The disruption part is not new, just unsolved. In all those past examples of obsolete jobs, people’s lives got absolutely ruined in the transition. We just as a society didn’t care. That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t mass produce shirts, but we should have some plan for tailors that allows them to live decent lives as we transition that isn’t just “well, sucks for you, good luck”. It was bad then, and it’s bad now.
There are two new aspects- One, in terms of what type of labor. See this post from economist Brad Delong: labor is actually six dimensions: (1) backs, (2) fingers, (3) brains as routine cybernetic controls for mechanisms, (4) brains as routine cybernetic mechanisms for accounting operations, (5) smiles, and (6) creative ideas. This is genuinely new in terms of what types of jobs it applies to. And second, it’s genuinely new how broadly applicable and how quickly evolving it is.
Yes. This would be much less of a problem if we had a system like UBI. We don’t. The question is how to get there.
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The whole point of building those skills in the first place—which is something AI can’t do, either for itself or for others—is to learn the intricacies and nuances of those skills so you can improve those skills over time. Take fiction writing: Anyone could write a short story, but it’ll probably suck unless you have a knack for pacing, dialogue, characterization, and all the other sub-skills that fall under the broader skill of “writing”. But even if your story does suck, you can always get better by writing more, by getting feedback (from people!), and by learning more about how to accomplish certain goals in your writing. An AI can “learn” in the sense that it can receive new input, but it can’t “learn” or “improve” in the sense that it understands the nuances of storytelling and language better than it did before. Any asshole could probably write something that an AI story generator cranked out, but that same generator could never write a Discworld novel.
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Sorry if it wasn’t clear but “because the gods know skills aren’t worth anything” was sarcasm.
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In that case, what determines the value of a skill? Talent shows are known for attracting people with real but apparently worthless skills, like burping the alphabet backwards. Stuff like juggling knives, by contrast, can draw paying crowds but has no utility, and could easily go out of style like freak shows. Then there are things like making wooden wheels by hand, which undoubtedly require serious skill and produce useful results but don’t seem to be valued by society anymore.
Sometimes an individual just has to make their own judgment on which skills they will personally develop, or will value in others. “Prompting a computer to make art” probably won’t do it for me, but the same could be said for half the stuff that makes it into art galleries and film festivals. And mass-market “art” is another thing entirely.
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Maybe that’s your purpose in doing such things, but it’s hardly inherent. Some people are cranking out stuff just to make money; for example, books that could never be confused with art, that thrift stores can hardly get a dollar for. The term “pulp fiction” exists for a reason.
The long tail of bad film is also full of utter shit. You’ve probably heard of “Manos” and maybe watched it ironically, but I’m talking about the 90%+ of films most people never even know existed. Like something that has the word “jurassic” in the name just so maybe someone buys it thinking it’s part of the well-known-but-too-generic-to-be-trademarked film series, and is too embarrassed to return it.
Soderbergh might make a shitty film, and so fucking what? Famous people have done stuff like that frequently enough. (Remember when Michael Bay made critically-respected films such as “The Rock”? There was a long gap before “A Quiet Place” restored that reputation.) Let the greedy old guard clear out and leave the art to people who care about more than money, who can maybe find their own purpose and meaning in the work.
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And yet, to write books good enough to make even decent money from selling, one still has to be a good enough writer to make the book readable in the first place. You still have to understand basic storytelling rules and how those rules work in creating narratives that people enjoy…or, at the very least, tolerate (lookin’ at you, Super Mario Galaxy Movie). And even people who write just for money can still improve their skills over time. But generative AI models can’t do that. They’re large language models—massive-scale predictive text machines, to put it another way—not human minds. You can tell an AI model to “write like Hemingway”, but it can’t and won’t understand why Hemingway wrote the way he did, from word choice to sentence length. The same goes for Sir Terry Pratchett: You can have a generative AI write a story with Discworld characters and try its best to imitate Pratchett’s prose, but it can’t and won’t ever know why Pratchett’s prose was so memorable—and it also won’t be anywhere near as funny.
The whole point of taking up a creative craft like writing or painting or music-making is the process. With an instrument, there’s a skill curve in learning how to play it in a way that makes genuinely great music; with AI-generated music, that process isn’t there. The same goes for the output of every other creative craft that generative AI can emulate: Sure, you might get something close to what you want, but there’s no real process behind it. You can’t learn a skill to “make” better works come out of an AI generator, and you’re not learning a skill by using generative AI. You’re not being an artist when you’re using generative AI. You’re being a hack fraud.
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Non-writers can now produce dreck cheaply enough to make money as a “writer”. I don’t have a high opinion of that, but it seems to be the case. I’m not even sure it’s new.
Still, I judge this stuff on merits, not who or what wrote it. Go ahead and use a computer to make slop, and I’ll deride it as slop; but maybe one day it won’t be slop.
Again, it’s not; you’re not the authority on determining “the point” of something. Every person has their own reason for taking up activities. I’d prefer if it were mostly done for the reasons you give, but I know it’s often not—especially when there’s “a market” involved; this is just the latest way for money to corrupt what we’d like to be a pure artistic endeavor.
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They won’t make a lot of money, they’ll only really make it “up front” (i.e., soon after they release their slop), and if enough people catch on that it’s slop, the chances of them repeating their success will drop dramatically as word gets out that a particular “author” is a slop peddler.
It is, though. Why would anyone put themselves through the work necessary to become a great artist if the only reason they did it was to do something that an AI can do much faster with no process at all? The whole point of creation is the process—of finding the skill that you’re good at, refining it, and molding your own sense of taste to the skill so that you can create something that is uniquely “you”. An AI can just make you an image; it takes dedication to become someone who can make that image yourself. The art is the process, not the outcome. There is more process and more artistic integrity in a single frame of Manos: The Hands of Fate than there is, was, and ever will be in every bit of AI-generated slop that plagues the Internet.
Or in other words: “This will inevitably create an avalanche of slop.”
i give a fuck what Soderbergh thinks, why? Thinly disguised argument from “authority”. Hard pass. Do better.
(using illustrator over artist to avoid conflation bewteen ‘art’ broadly and ‘art’ to mean visual works of art.
Steven Soderbergh is a director and that matters.
Brandon Sanderson, an author, gives a very great perspective. Because his books include pictures. Beyond the covers a publisher often handles. The Stormlight Archive series includes pages of in universe notes on the various fantastical creatures, including sketches from first hand observation. Brandon is not an illustrator.
Brandon is an Art director. He has over iterations coached an illustrator to create an image as he wants it. That’s what an “AI artist” is. An art director.
Most of the film making ‘art’ to him is simply telling people what he wants, and seeing that want unfold in front of him. For his role, AI replicates his experience. In doing so, he dismisses that the actors are making choices that influence the work. That the film is a collaboration.
Not to say I don’t see potential value in AI as a tool in real art in the abstract. Just that I don’t find it surprising that the director isn’t worried about the machine that takes direction and its long term impact on the collaborative art of filmmaking when you take away the collaborators.
Man, imagine how much content you could fill if you wrote an article to amplify their view every time someone in the industry criticizes ‘AI’.
Awesome. This reminds me of a long-term plan I have which will upset the AI haters – using it to make my own cuts of movies.