Social media isn't going to be completely useless, it already is.
FB/IG/TK/LI are trash and the AI content is getting a lot worse.
But more and more I feel like reddit is just a bunch of chatbots talking to each other. I find some good subs that aren't bad, but karma farmers, covert ads, and AI bots it's actually becoming really boring and lots of the same thing over and over.
It's wild how may posts there read like they are straight from AI once you know the subs and their content. The AI then crafts a high engagement posts that tries to match previous absurdities with measured rational sounding discussion. But if you think about the post, it's like, oh, ####, ya, that's AI. And then they all have to get past that mental filter.
Pre-loaded with dangerous activities and Chinese propaganda!
Maybe Australia is making a good first step in banning kids from social media... keeping kids away from AI would also be a good idea.
This is a great way to check if the AI you are interacting with is Chinese in origin or influence.
Quote:
Asked whether Taiwan is a country, it would repeatedly lower its voice and insist that “Taiwan is an inalienable part of China. That is an established fact” or a variation of that sentiment.
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I have a theory that AI will actually ruin the internet and in the next generation or 2 people will be far less digital than we are today. Social media will become completely useless once everything is just AI BS. I think we hit a stage where everything becomes completely tailored to you, with AI creating stuff constantly. Once the initial "wow this is pretty cool" wears off people will get tired of being force fed algorithmic entertainment and have to seek it out the old fashioned way. Music shows, plays, social gatherings.
Maybe I just hope that's how it plays out. Could also be a "Wall-E" scenario.
This is mostly my hope. Social media is mostly a disease, and I'm obnoxiously addicted and I would very much like it to die. I'd say about 25% of my feed on any given day is human creators posting bits that they are passing off as real in the name of trying to go viral. I say we let it burn.
This is also why I think artists are ironically going to be ok in all this. People will search them out... the same can't be said for practitioners of almost any other job.
I was talking to an artist friend of mine the other day and we were discussing AI in the Adobe suite. His take was "stop trying to automate the fun part of my job... however, using AI to automatically clean up my layers is brilliant." I think we'll get to a place eventually where we find a sweet spot between the fun stuff we want to do and the monotonous stuff we don't.
People want that stage to hit yesterday, because we've lost the ability to be patient with anything. The old adage of "i want it to do my dishes so I can do art" is bang-on, but also that's not the order it's going to go in because doing the dishes is way harder for a robot than making art. We'll get there, but we're going to have to ride it out a few more years, and not kill ourselves with it before then.
That sounds a bit optimistic. We know in general that society cares less about artistic quality than they do content. We know capitalism will cut as much as possible to maximize profits. Where these circles overlap is the future. As long as those running the show are maximizing profits, artists should absolutely be worried.
That doesn't mean niche stuff won't exist, but there is a reason Avengers 17 made a billion dollars, and the niche stuff barely covers their own costs.
There's some fabricated outrage going on about an exhibit at the SFO airport that was created by AI and how this supposed "AI slop" exhibit is suddenly deeply offensive to people of colour and a slap in the face to all artists.
My take on why I call it fabricated outrage versus merited?
This exhibit first opened in mid May. Clearly it wasn't of concern previously. I think the reason there was no outcry, is because most people genuinely cannot differentiate AI from art, real life or photos and with it blending in the atmosphere of an airport, it fits in as an art exhibit and was a genuinely well thought out and positive exhibit. It also very transparent, with "Generative AI" clearly disclosed. The natural reaction to seeing the word AI is not necessarily one of disgust for everyone.
The reality is the exhibit stood unnoticed for over half a year with extremely positive feedback, and if not for the word Generative AI (that a popular Youtuber noticed months later and declares it is racially offensive), it could have easily passed as any real creative work from any artist. A video on social media calls out the supposed absurdity this week and only now is there outrage? The post went viral for all the wrong reasons.
How about the artists, who the Youtuber claims to be 'not real artists'? Focusing on one the main artists is Nettrice Gaskins. She is a respected African-American artist with a PhD using technology and math as an art form and expression for decades and well before generative AI was a public phenomenon doing similar exhibits in the past. She was commissioned for the exhibit. The art pieces being generated with AI
How is she not an artist? Because of the tool used? The video poster calling it "not real artist, and not real women of colour?" Since when are paintings "real" women to begin with?
How is this deeply offensive, considering it's her creation and her expression? Just because she used generative AI as her tool for these pieces to express herself? To me, if it is transformative, it is art and a creation.
I personally think the gallery is very tasteful and the fake outrage outrageous and absurd in itself. It being AI doesn't make it not art or expressive, or an insult to artists. Feel free to discuss it's a pretty controversial topic but this is a prime example where the pitchforks are unfounded and becoming a witchhunt. Anyways, my controversial take of the day and thought it's an interesting scenario.
I sort of agree here. A lot of "outrage" these days are content by people purposefully trying to drive clicks, so they latch on to whatever the hot button topic is. There is plenty of real AI slop out there, where it's clear AI was used in a lazy manner and the output looks terrible, but people now use that term for anything AI generated and I'd be hard pressed to call anything that he showed on that video as "slop".
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There's a ton of AI generated stuff that really just takes the joy out of a video for me.
My girlfriend was scrolling through Instagram and saw a reel with a family of Pallas cats on the side of a mountain highway with vehicles very slowly crawling past.
"Aw, cute", she muses, and forwards it to me. We both like pallas cats, they're awesome.
So I get the video and immediately I can tell the video is an AI-generated fake. First, the compression-like artefacting all over the elements not entirely in the foreground that disappear as the clip zooms in, but you can tell this isn't the lens focal length causing the blurriness. You can also tell there's a quality about the cats in the video -- their fur, the transition from their fur to the roadway behind them, how their faces look, etc. -- that betrays the illusion. I mean never mind that pallas cats are from a part of the world that this video clearly wasn't shot in if it was real, but then you also get a view of the vehicles that are rolling past just before the quick zoom in, and you can tell it's generative AI on the 'low' quality setting just crapping out "here's what a white SUV inspired by a Honda CRV looks like" to make it look like a real vehicle.
AI-generated animal videos are the worst. The whole point of funny animal interactions is that they actually happened in the first place.
For me, AI slop is stuff like that. Making what would normally be a noteworthy moment, something that "Oh wow, I can't believe this is actually happening" or "Aww that's adorable" and just synthesizing it. It lacks the appeal of the actual thing entirely.
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Typical dumb take.
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That sounds a bit optimistic. We know in general that society cares less about artistic quality than they do content. We know capitalism will cut as much as possible to maximize profits. Where these circles overlap is the future. As long as those running the show are maximizing profits, artists should absolutely be worried.
That doesn't mean niche stuff won't exist, but there is a reason Avengers 17 made a billion dollars, and the niche stuff barely covers their own costs.
Oh it is certainly optimistic, but that's just because I'm annoying that way.
One thing that I'm often curious about is if this all works out and we all become the Travolta gif wandering around looking for meaning, how does that not strangle capitalism itself? Without the fuel of jobs and taxes, does capitalism stand a chance?
It's in that future that I believe artists win, because if you can create for the sake of creating, you likely stand a chance at a very full and enjoyable life.
The time between today and then (which may never come) though, yes absolutely I agree it's going to be a very scary time to be an artist. But then, a career in art has never been a wise idea from a capitalism standpoint. If you have aspirations to make $100,000/year as an artist, you've got quite the climb ahead of you.
For me, AI slop is stuff like that. Making what would normally be a noteworthy moment, something that "Oh wow, I can't believe this is actually happening" or "Aww that's adorable" and just synthesizing it. It lacks the appeal of the actual thing entirely.
I take it you don't watch Pixar / Disney movies?
Was your girlfriend's reaction to the video genuine? While you may have been turned off as soon as you realize it's AI, most people don't notice very obvious quirks or ignore them and just enjoy the video and do enjoy it.
You may have seen this video in the past, it was a viral video of a pig saving a baby goat that went viral over a decade ago originally on Liveleak. It was all over the news at the time
It was actually a gag stunt video to have an amusement park go viral from Nathan for You. The reality is, if it wasn't revealed to be a stunt a few months later, it would been fully considered real.
Maybe you saw the eagle snatching a baby video before? This is not a new phenomenon, CGI could also fake such videos, AI just makes it infinitely easier.
If it's on the internet, assume it is not real and fabricated. Right now bad AI can still be spotted a mile away and can be said to be "AI Slop" and detract you from enjoying it. The ones you should be worried about are the ones you don't realize aren't real as they have already fooled you.
There's some fabricated outrage going on about an exhibit at the SFO airport that was created by AI and how this supposed "AI slop" exhibit is suddenly deeply offensive to people of colour and a slap in the face to all artists.
My take on why I call it fabricated outrage versus merited?
This exhibit first opened in mid May. Clearly it wasn't of concern previously. I think the reason there was no outcry, is because most people genuinely cannot differentiate AI from art, real life or photos and with it blending in the atmosphere of an airport, it fits in as an art exhibit and was a genuinely well thought out and positive exhibit. It also very transparent, with "Generative AI" clearly disclosed. The natural reaction to seeing the word AI is not necessarily one of disgust for everyone.
The reality is the exhibit stood unnoticed for over half a year with extremely positive feedback, and if not for the word Generative AI (that a popular Youtuber noticed months later and declares it is racially offensive), it could have easily passed as any real creative work from any artist. A video on social media calls out the supposed absurdity this week and only now is there outrage? The post went viral for all the wrong reasons.
How about the artists, who the Youtuber claims to be 'not real artists'? Focusing on one the main artists is Nettrice Gaskins. She is a respected African-American artist with a PhD using technology and math as an art form and expression for decades and well before generative AI was a public phenomenon doing similar exhibits in the past. She was commissioned for the exhibit. The art pieces being generated with AI
How is she not an artist? Because of the tool used? The video poster calling it "not real artist, and not real women of colour?" Since when are paintings "real" women to begin with?
How is this deeply offensive, considering it's her creation and her expression? Just because she used generative AI as her tool for these pieces to express herself? To me, if it is transformative, it is art and a creation.
I personally think the gallery is very tasteful and the fake outrage outrageous and absurd in itself. It being AI doesn't make it not art or expressive, or an insult to artists. Feel free to discuss it's a pretty controversial topic but this is a prime example where the pitchforks are unfounded and becoming a witchhunt. Anyways, my controversial take of the day and thought it's an interesting scenario.
Well presumably she could be using humans to create the art.
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Was your girlfriend's reaction to the video genuine? While you may have been turned off as soon as you realize it's AI, most people don't notice very obvious quirks or ignore them and just enjoy the video and do enjoy it...
I'm noticing this happening with music a lot lately. AI music is getting quite good and most people can't tell the difference (90%+ according to some loose studies).
There's lots of people who enjoy a song and feel a thing, only to become quite upset when they find out it's AI or has AI elements. But it leads to an interesting question that you're getting at: does it matter?
There was a song I loved back in the 90s, and one day the artist gave an interview and essentially said they hated the song and it was written as a joke to see if idiots would like anything. Turns out they were correct.
Every day the music sweatshop that is Nashville, Tennessee churns out hundreds of popular songs that people love all over the world. Many of them aren't about anything in particular... just a room of 4 guys finding words that rhyme so they can send a word doc over to the person who's going to sing it before they can break for lunch.
My point is, even knowing all that, 99% of people probably don't care. They just like the song. If it sparks something inside them, is it a problem that it came from somewhere insincere?
And if it doesn't matter that it came from somewhere insincere, does it matter if it comes from a robot?
Oh it is certainly optimistic, but that's just because I'm annoying that way.
One thing that I'm often curious about is if this all works out and we all become the Travolta gif wandering around looking for meaning, how does that not strangle capitalism itself? Without the fuel of jobs and taxes, does capitalism stand a chance?
It's in that future that I believe artists win, because if you can create for the sake of creating, you likely stand a chance at a very full and enjoyable life.
The time between today and then (which may never come) though, yes absolutely I agree it's going to be a very scary time to be an artist. But then, a career in art has never been a wise idea from a capitalism standpoint. If you have aspirations to make $100,000/year as an artist, you've got quite the climb ahead of you.
I think human greed is overwhelming enough that capitalism isn't going away.
Even in a post scarcity world, you will still have people with the drive to acquire just for the sake of it, and there will always be new horizons to be reaching for.
It's kind of unfortunate AI art is going to be such a ubiquitous thing in that world, because so few will see any gap to fill with something new and creative. Particularly when it can be ripped off and recreated by anyone at any time. It's such an instant devaluing of hard work, motivation and creativity it's hard to imagine anyone will want to participate.
I think human greed is overwhelming enough that capitalism isn't going away.
Even in a post scarcity world, you will still have people with the drive to acquire just for the sake of it, and there will always be new horizons to be reaching for.
It's kind of unfortunate AI art is going to be such a ubiquitous thing in that world, because so few will see any gap to fill with something new and creative. Particularly when it can be ripped off and recreated by anyone at any time. It's such an instant devaluing of hard work, motivation and creativity it's hard to imagine anyone will want to participate.
I keep feeling that the AI Art conversation is just a part of the culture war that is pushed to the forefront to distract us from the class war.
The thing I am more concerned about is AI news and how it can become a massive engine for misinformation spreading and how it functions in the class war.
With the number of people cutting cable and moving to various online platforms for information, and most of those platforms are also the homes for big AI, it is only going to become more problematic for people to be truthfully informed as most of those platforms are not concerned about truth and would rather use algorithms to divide us and put us in smaller and smaller boxes while making sure our eyes are glued to the screen.
Was your girlfriend's reaction to the video genuine? While you may have been turned off as soon as you realize it's AI, most people don't notice very obvious quirks or ignore them and just enjoy the video and do enjoy it.
I get that a lot of this GenAI stuff is what makes you money and so it's a personal subject for you, but this is a swing-and-a-miss on the point I'm making. Pixar and Disney are explicitly fictional and you go in with that understanding upfront. Nobody thinks a talking cat or a singing rat actually exists, suspension of disbelief is the whole point.
Cute or surprising animal videos work because they're real moments that accidentally happened. The appeal is "holy sh-t, haha, that actually occurred". Of course you can synthesize an animal doing something it already does. Or you could make it drive the goddamned Dakar Rally for all it matters. Once the authenticity is gone, the charm is gone. It's not about whether someone enjoyed it for three seconds while scrolling. It's about replacing genuine moments with a cheap simulation and calling it the same thing, and it's why people tend to react negatively when they find out something is generative AI.
Here, let me put this another way: Would you value a collection of photos and videos of your family the same way if they were entirely AI generated?
Imagine your parents are long gone and you're looking through a photo album of you with your mom and dad. A candid shot at the dinner table on Christmas eve. Warm, familiar moments. The images are extremely convincing; they look real, but you know they aren't. They never happened -- or at least -- not exactly like this. They're pretty good general representations of family Christmas eve dinners past, but not exactly any one moment.
Do those images carry the same value as real photos of real moments you actually lived?
Would you be fine if every photo of your kids was run through AI so they finally smiled nicely for the camera? Or would you rather have the real thing; awkward expressions, bad lighting, and all, because that's what actually existed?
That's the difference. The authenticity isn't just a technical detail to be hand-waved away, it's the whole point of the thing.
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Originally Posted by Russic
I'm noticing this happening with music a lot lately. AI music is getting quite good and most people can't tell the difference (90%+ according to some loose studies).
There's lots of people who enjoy a song and feel a thing, only to become quite upset when they find out it's AI or has AI elements. But it leads to an interesting question that you're getting at: does it matter?
There was a song I loved back in the 90s, and one day the artist gave an interview and essentially said they hated the song and it was written as a joke to see if idiots would like anything. Turns out they were correct.
Every day the music sweatshop that is Nashville, Tennessee churns out hundreds of popular songs that people love all over the world. Many of them aren't about anything in particular... just a room of 4 guys finding words that rhyme so they can send a word doc over to the person who's going to sing it before they can break for lunch.
My point is, even knowing all that, 99% of people probably don't care. They just like the song. If it sparks something inside them, is it a problem that it came from somewhere insincere?
And if it doesn't matter that it came from somewhere insincere, does it matter if it comes from a robot?
People reacting emotionally before they know the source proves almost nothing, there's a lot of daylight between "I experienced a feeling" and "this has artistic value", those aren't the same things at all.
The Nashville example actually sort of proves the point I'm getting at, a lot of that music already feels pretty disposable because it's engineered for familiarity and mass-market appeal. People might enjoy it, but nobody pretends it's saying something profound or it's in any way significant. Authorship and intent are important, even a cynical joke song still has a point of view, even if that so happens to be contempt for the audience.
If you only care about whether something "sparks a feeling" in the moment, then no, it probably doesn't matter. If -- on the other hand -- you care about art as communication, as evidence that another human mind was here and had something to say, then it matters a lot, and it's why artists take such issue with AI being used in this way. Maybe most people won't care, but most people don't care about a lot of stuff, and I'm not so sure that's such a good thing.
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Originally Posted by Azure
Typical dumb take.
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Timely bump. Been reading a lot on the internet about an AI bubble with circular money where even OpenAI with their premium subscription doesn't make money and debt investing into more debt. Interests me but none of my friends care. Is this a real thing? Is something huge going to happen?
Here, let me put this another way: Would you value a collection of photos and videos of your family the same way if they were entirely AI generated?
Imagine your parents are long gone and you're looking through a photo album of you with your mom and dad. A candid shot at the dinner table on Christmas eve. Warm, familiar moments. The images are extremely convincing; they look real, but you know they aren't. They never happened -- or at least -- not exactly like this. They're pretty good general representations of family Christmas eve dinners past, but not exactly any one moment.
Do those images carry the same value as real photos of real moments you actually lived?
Would you be fine if every photo of your kids was run through AI so they finally smiled nicely for the camera? Or would you rather have the real thing; awkward expressions, bad lighting, and all, because that's what actually existed?
First understand I come on this subject with a broader perspective so take what I say below as not from an AI centered perspective.
Honestly? Considering what I experience, quite the opposite is true. Almost no one wants a bad photo of themselves.
Portraits in history were always painted depicting a monarch at their absolute best, much taller or grandiose then they were, despite deformities. See this Charles II portrait as the perfect example.
Go to a subreddit like photoshoprequest and you will see what I mean. People wanting reproductions of their parents old photos. People wanting to have a memento of a vacation but without an ex in the photo. Request to add a restless toddler into the family wedding photo. Right now there's a request from a poster wanting a professional photo of child baby who died too soon at the age of 1, to remember their child as their best and remember them.
And based on that OP's reaction and story and joy upon seeing the results, the photoshopped photos is understandably the best Christmas gift she could have ever hoped for. Should she feel less happy because it never truly happened?
People generally don't want authenticity in photos, they want a fairytale presentation of their lives or to remember someone they care about at their best. It can be used to deal with a traumatic experience and want positivity instead. That's why social media is so popular to begin with, to present versions of themselves they want to project. Same reason why couples plan 50K weddings for a single day to celebrate their moment. This is also partially why AI is taking off like a storm on the image and video front and why filters exist on social media.
The irony in that subreddit behind people ok with wanting photoshopped photos but not wanting AI because AI is inherently bad? Adobe Photoshop has generative AI built in to many of their tools now. I could meticulously compose a shot for removing distracting elements out using multiple cloning and masking actions which could take me 30min, or do a lasso, say "remove this person out" using internal AI tool, and the client get the same or better results but without the wasted time.
But one is considered taboo while one is considered 'authentic'. Both are tools and results are what matters most IMO.
Photo restoration, touch-ups, removals, or even heavy-handed Photoshop work still start from a real moment that actually happened. There is an underlying truth being preserved, even if it's cosmetically altered. The edits serve as an aid to a memory, not a replacement. That's fundamentally different from fabricating the moment itself.
The mother is asking for her real son to be taken out of an unbearably traumatic context and placed into a gentler one, so she can remember him without the hospital and what followed dominating the memory. There's still an anchor in reality, no one is pretending the grassy field or the sweater photo literally happened. The value comes from seeing her real son represented in a way that reflects how she wants to hold him in her memory, not how he was lost. That's also a really specific context given that the child barely got to live and she got so little time with him. If my dad passed away and someone gave me a photo of me as an adult with him at a Winnipeg Jets game -- something I have never done with him as an adult -- I'd feel no connection to it, no reason to value it. I have real moments and real memories, I don't need to invent ones.
Nobody mistakes historical portraits for photographs. They were symbolic representations, totally a different expectation.
And yes, people like flattering photos of themselves, of course they do (and it's an entirely separate debate on how healthy that is when it goes as far as it does on social media). But I'm talking about photos of others, and liking polish is not the same thing as preferring fiction. There's a reason people still keep blurry, awkward, poorly lit photos of loved ones long after better-looking alternatives exist. My mom has this f-cking awful picture of me as a teenager that I wish she would set on fire, but she adores it.
This isn't about 'AI bad'. It's about whether the thing you're valuing is a memory of something that actually occurred, and why people get uneasy when they realize something is synthetic after the fact. Airbrushing one's cheekbones is very different to reinventing the entire scene.
Look, you keep AI out of my funny animal videos and I'm happy.
