I wonder if we're headed for a future where it is almost completely impossible to make money off human-made "authentic" art because it simply can't compete with the effort-to-dollar ratio of slop.
The trends weren't all that good prior to AI even; economics nearly killed the 2D animation and traditional still art, though what remained still had some semblance of an intersection between "authentic art" and "viable career".
More and more I feel like the only things that will ever be taken as authentic and meaningful are the things that are released for free, as they prove definitively to the audience that there was no motive to produce the sort of meaningless, pseudo-wireheading, shapes-and-colours slop that AI creators are greatly incentivised to do so.
Economic trends meant we were moving towards patronage models anyway, whether singular or distributed. It seems like mass one-shot payment for media is almost dead. The exception might be video games, thanks in part to console lock-in.
I don't think "produced for free" is a salve to this, completely, at least.
People spending time/effort/resources on Authentic Stuff have to eat, and there's no shortage of people who have some other income source posting slop for the social standing/clout/attention of being an artist/a recomp dev/an emulator dev/etc.
Someone close to me is a folk musician who’s done surprisingly well, at least getting by as a full-time performer. A lot of what people are paying for when they get tickets to see her is the feeling of proximity to non-artificial, unalienated human culture. The slop tsunami may well be the end for many artists, but for her and others already trading on the idea of authenticity, I think it might prove to be a boon!
I've paid to see writers speak many times over the years. There's some kind of business model there, though I haven't tried to analyze the sustainability.
Automation (software and mass-production equipment) has transformed our world and our lives.
I'm just some guy watching what's happened over the past 50 years. But this trend is only accelerating. There will be many more industries that are "transformed" by technology.
> I wonder if we're headed for a future where it is almost completely impossible to make money off human-made "authentic" art because it simply can't compete with the effort-to-dollar ratio of slop
I disagree. It will create a subculture of people that appreciate human arts like never before.
The vast majority will consume slop, sure, but there is a growing cohort, especially from younger people, that explicitly seek man-made art. An example: YouTube has been inundated by AI mixes by talentless hacks, and when you happen upon a mix by a real human, the majority of comments are along the lines of “thank you for keeping the arts alive. I have had enough of that AI shit” - none of them care if it tastes or sounds good enough, they reject AI slop on pure principle, and so do I. I don’t give a shit how good the machine fakes are nowadays, I just avoid it altogether, and find in appreciation of human ingenuity and creativity like never before in my life.
But yes, as I said, the vast majority will consume slop, but then again the vast majority have no taste whatsoever and would consume “manmade slop” like pop music and superhero blockbusters, and there is no hope for redemption for them. (I am being shamelessly elitist here). The masses will not have cared about the arts anyway. All AI has done is for artists to take their craft more seriously, and to more clearly separate the wheat from the philosophical zombies with a Suno subscription that still don’t get why humans create and appreciate art.
I read a lot and I’m not that scared about AI books because I seek the interesting ones (in my subjective opinion) and don’t buy the cheapest at the airport shop to pass the time, which is the niche that’s getting disrupted here.
The influx of AI into the creative industries should be considered and responded to as an attack, because it is one. It's malicious actors trying to undermine and destructively extract value.
It's still painfully obvious when a novel was written by AI--the quality is nowhere near good enough--but that's not actually the point; the point is the sheer volume of spam which clogs up search results and harms discovery.
the blatant theft and re-appropriation has to be the largest scale attack on the human psyche/soul/whatever you want to call it this world has ever seen.
at this point, the only solution i can see is wholesale rejection of all technologically produced novelty.
we need harder lines drawn in the sand, person by person
I don't think that is right. There is always a commercial and non commercial duality to art. Artists need money. Many artists hone their craft and make their money by producing commercial products, corporate music or web ads or whatever. I think your prediction is naive; this will take a huge, irreversible toll on art.
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[ 4.2 ms ] story [ 29.0 ms ] threadThe trends weren't all that good prior to AI even; economics nearly killed the 2D animation and traditional still art, though what remained still had some semblance of an intersection between "authentic art" and "viable career".
More and more I feel like the only things that will ever be taken as authentic and meaningful are the things that are released for free, as they prove definitively to the audience that there was no motive to produce the sort of meaningless, pseudo-wireheading, shapes-and-colours slop that AI creators are greatly incentivised to do so.
People spending time/effort/resources on Authentic Stuff have to eat, and there's no shortage of people who have some other income source posting slop for the social standing/clout/attention of being an artist/a recomp dev/an emulator dev/etc.
(I had seen "slopocalipse" - tsunami feels more material.-
Automation (software and mass-production equipment) has transformed our world and our lives.
I'm just some guy watching what's happened over the past 50 years. But this trend is only accelerating. There will be many more industries that are "transformed" by technology.
I disagree. It will create a subculture of people that appreciate human arts like never before.
The vast majority will consume slop, sure, but there is a growing cohort, especially from younger people, that explicitly seek man-made art. An example: YouTube has been inundated by AI mixes by talentless hacks, and when you happen upon a mix by a real human, the majority of comments are along the lines of “thank you for keeping the arts alive. I have had enough of that AI shit” - none of them care if it tastes or sounds good enough, they reject AI slop on pure principle, and so do I. I don’t give a shit how good the machine fakes are nowadays, I just avoid it altogether, and find in appreciation of human ingenuity and creativity like never before in my life.
But yes, as I said, the vast majority will consume slop, but then again the vast majority have no taste whatsoever and would consume “manmade slop” like pop music and superhero blockbusters, and there is no hope for redemption for them. (I am being shamelessly elitist here). The masses will not have cared about the arts anyway. All AI has done is for artists to take their craft more seriously, and to more clearly separate the wheat from the philosophical zombies with a Suno subscription that still don’t get why humans create and appreciate art.
I read a lot and I’m not that scared about AI books because I seek the interesting ones (in my subjective opinion) and don’t buy the cheapest at the airport shop to pass the time, which is the niche that’s getting disrupted here.
It's still painfully obvious when a novel was written by AI--the quality is nowhere near good enough--but that's not actually the point; the point is the sheer volume of spam which clogs up search results and harms discovery.
at this point, the only solution i can see is wholesale rejection of all technologically produced novelty.
we need harder lines drawn in the sand, person by person
the issue is the review processes from publishers cant scale