I stand on the edge of an eroding cliff. As the cliff approaches me, objects sway cartoonishly before fading into oblivion. Sculptures, paintings, books, buildings, and other works of human creativity are engulfed. The erosion accelerates with dizzying force as the cliff begins to crumble beneath my feet. Storm. Crashing waves. HD. Photorealistic.
“Is that Land's End?” my partner asked, looking blankly at my screen. I clearly need to hone my prompting skills, because the prompts I fed into the generator were supposed to be AI representations of vertigo, but the images they produced weren't the apocalypse I had in mind. They looked more like an advertisement for a holiday destination featuring Caspar David Friedrich's The Wanderer.
I have avoided such tools. I feel they threaten my livelihood. Every day I wake up to a new AI-generated artifact: image-making, writing, music-making, film-making. Give me Stevie Wonder's version of “Big Yellow Taxi” in 5.1 surround sound. Give me a sci-fi romantic comedy starring Timothée Chalamet, Marilyn Monroe and Ye, shot on 16mm. No, it stars Marilyn Monroe and me!
Every day there will be a new AI-generated artifact: Give us a Stevie Wonder version of Big Yellow Taxi!
I don't know if these AI capabilities exist, but would you be surprised if they did? They might seem archaic in five years. One of the symptoms of my vertigo is that I get caught up in speculation. I spend so much time thinking about the future that the present feels primitive. This reminds me of the scene in 2001: A Space Odyssey where a spinning bone thrown by a hominid jump-cuts to a spaceship 100,000 years in the future. Now replace that bone with ChatGPT.
In 1964, Arthur C. Clarke, author of 2001: A Space Odyssey, predicted that AI would be the next evolutionary step: “[Machines]will begin to think, and eventually will become entirely capable of outthinking their creators…. I suspect that organic or biological evolution has nearly come to an end, and that we are now at the beginning of an inorganic or mechanical evolution, which will be many thousand times faster.”
The theme of artists at the mercy of technological advances is perfectly summed up in the Buggles song “Video Killed the Radio Star”: “They took away your Second Symphony, rewritten by machines and new technology.” What makes this technological leap so different from others (from the fountain pen to the typewriter to the word processor) is that these were tools for the artist. But AI is different. Maybe the tools and the artist are the AI.
So where does this impending redundancy leave the human creative impulse? Does it mean we should strive to do our best before AI takes over the field? As a musician and writer, I have always wanted to write one book, one screenplay, one album. But I thought, what is the rush? It's my bucket list. Now, it feels rushed, and even the goals are outdated. AI has ruined all my bucket lists!
I'm depressed. I have so many questions and so few answers. I wasn't surprised that my grandmother didn't like electronic musician Aphex Twin in the 2000s, but I didn't think I, in my early 30s, would be able to keep up. To shake off the blues, I need to talk to artists who are in tune with the cutting edge of technology.
Artists and musicians Holly Herndon and Matt Dryhurst are AI veterans. They've been working with and educating people about AI for over a decade. The Berlin-based co-living partners had an AI baby to help produce Herndon's 2019 album, Proto. I emailed them for help.
When asked if AI will kill human artists, he replied, “No. Human artists will create work with AI, and will create work that rejects AI. Art is always evolving. We need to understand that many things that would have been considered virtuoso by 20th century standards can now be generated in microseconds by AI models. But a media file that sounds like a choir is not a choir. Culture will survive and evolve in unexpected ways.” Human artists will be fine, as long as we don't assume that the cultural and media landscape will never change dramatically.
Is human performance replaceable? Or is AI actually inspiring a more human style of performance? “I like to use the example of DJing as a reason for hope here. In most cases, DJing can be automated very easily. But there are all kinds of reasons why people go to see a DJ perform: to meet other people, to celebrate someone, to take a break from looking at a screen.”
At the same time, Herndon and Dryhurst warn that the creative industries could turn into a popularity contest: “We're already seeing signs that the line between artist and influencer is blurring. Soon the hottest kid in class will have all the tools to choose, with little brazenness, to become the most popular metal artist or crime thriller author.” Plot twist: influencers steal my bucket list.
So what about my discomfort? “As a veteran of AI dizzyness, it gets better. You just get through the uncomfortable parts of the trip. Perhaps the best analogy is the initial feeling of nausea you get when you take magic mushrooms. Once you get used to it, the mind-expanding part follows.” This is certainly relatable. The AI revolution can feel spooky and hallucinatory at times. Fighting a mushroom trip is never a good idea. Is it time to make amends?
They also reached out to artist Rachel MacLean for advice on AI. Her latest work, DUCK, explores themes of paranoia, authenticity and reality through the ciphers of 1960s icons Marilyn Monroe, Sean Connery's James Bond and JFK. MacLean played all the roles and used deepfake technology to replace their faces with her own.
“Apart from the deepfakes, DUCK is in many ways a conventional film that I wrote and directed,” she emphasizes. Meanwhile, the text-to-image generating model is “totally amazing in that the AI has the creativity to do it. It works with the AI like a collaborator,” she says. She is currently using models trained on paintings by masters to create a series of AI-generated paintings on the theme of motherhood. “We're in this sweet spot right now,” she laughs mischievously. “Sometimes mistakes happen. You get people with eight fingers.” But in a few months, I warn, you'll get people with five fingers. MacLean is a circuit bender. “We're looking at capturing the model that generates eight fingers and encouraging it to keep repeating that mistake.”
Her imperfect AI-generated images of mothers and babies hide an unexpected truth: limbs fused together, bodies indistinguishable. “This is more of a sense of motherhood than any traditional depiction of motherhood.” Honestly, it's an inspiring story: working with beings who think differently than humans, innovating not just an art form, but the way we see humanity. But it also heightens my fear that human craft, especially digital media, might disappear. Are we becoming redundant? “The interesting thing about this technology is that people are still trying to figure out what it's for,” MacLean says. “Its use value is revealed by people shaping it.”
A few weeks ago, my partner, a freelance writer, was offered two (two!) jobs by companies that would pay writers to teach AI how to write better. Brazen! I said, why not give her a rope to hang herself with? But it's work, and it could be fun, she said. So is my combative attitude helping anyone?
Interviewing technocultural pioneers like Herndon, Dryhurst, and MacLean has given me some peace. I realized I was clinging to 20th-century notions of artistic practice and cultural landscapes: notions that humans spent months and years writing, painting, recording, and filming works that defined human culture. They provided meaning, diversion, and a sense of well-being. A reason for existence. Maybe making peace means letting go of these historical notions and finding new meaning. For example, while digitally generative media is becoming the domain of AI, will performance and tactile arts like live concerts, theater, and sculpture be revitalized?
“A scream goes across the sky,” Thomas Pynchon writes at the beginning of Gravity's Rainbow. Pirate Captain Prentiss sees the steam trail of a V2 looming on the horizon. Instead of running away or making a phone call, wondering how it would feel to have a bomb fall on his head, he picks some tropical fruits from the greenhouse. There's no point in panicking. The bomb is already approaching. People like AI researcher and decision theorist Elise Yudkowsky liken the threat of AI to nuclear war. This is the new apocalypse. I see a steam trail on the horizon. But what can I do? Flee for shelter or take up arms. Humanity has survived apocalypses before. I'll pick some bananas.
Follow Rudi Zygadlo @rudizyga. His latest single “F*** AI” is on Spotify and the music video is on YouTube.
