Leigh Chalker, a friend of mine, made a facebook post about A.I art today. He’s an artist, the comic book creator, the genius behind Marathon and Battle for Bustle. His post was mostly about resolving to ignore the current proliferation of AI generated imagery and focusing on self improvement,

Bravo!

I couldn’t agree more. If you’re an artist, the suggestion of AI generated art can fill you with depression and dread. Let’s face it – the arts are famous for being nearly impossible to make a living from, but at least what artists do can’t be replaced by machines…. until now.

Fuck!

Except I don’t really think this changes anything for artists. The plight of artists is exactly the same level of shitty it’s mostly always been, no matter what kind of art you do.

At this point in time AI has proven itself able to generate music, visual art, written copy and even comedy. Not all of this is new or recent, either. I was reading about computers composing music when I was an electronic musician.

Music, as Aristotle observed, is most perfect when it aligns with mathematical coherence. Aristotle argued that music is proof that there is something in humans which resonates powerfully with mathematical perfection, something reflected everywhere in nature.

If Aristotla’s argument is as persuasive as it sounds, and Aristotle’s theories about art and music and comedy are still some of the best aroundm, then AI would logically start with music It’s the most mathematical of all the arts. Painting and comedy require a lot more nuance and context than computers are inclined to.

I’m guessing if you made a list of your favourite bands and music artists you’ll give me a lot of humans and not algorithm. Your top ten lists of favourite albums will reflect the kind of passion, emotion, personality and story that resonates with you personally. People love Fleetwood Mac’s “Rumors” album because of the passion, relationships and narratives. If somehow we discovered that it was completely made by a computer program or random dice rolls, we’d feel cheated and the album would feel hollow and pointless.

Don’t get me wrong, unless you’re a total vintage analog junkie, your top ten albums most likely have a lot of algorithmic assistance. AI assists in most recording studios, auto-tuning vocals and optimising the production. But that’s the technical side, not the creative one.

We’re not willingly buying synthetic emotions from vending machines just yet. AI music might write effective advertising jingles but I doubt it’s ever going to penetrate the part of our hearts that real music occupies.

AI art, the visual art, is better than I thought it would be. Like music, I suspect it’s going to best implemented in advertising, making design assets that are fast and cheap. I think AI poses more of a threat to graphic designers as an easy resource for the advertising industry than to real artists selling actual creativity.

If you’re a fan of Jim Lee’s comic book art (as I am,) or as obsessed with the works of Mark Rothko (as I am) you might be inclined to view and collect it. But, even though there’s loads of real and computerized copycats, none of us give a fuck about knockoffs. Art is priceless and forgeries are worth nothing.

Lately I’ve seen ads for AI writing tools, algorithms that’ll generate articles and ad copy with just an idea prompt. These programs apparently scour the whole internet for what’s already been written and synthesize an article that looks like it was written by a human and doesn’t have a single original idea or viewpoint in it.

Apparently the internet is being flooded with blogs and ads all generated from computer programs. They might look like they were intentionally written but it’s all rehashed information that’s already out there. This meaningless filler content that contributes nothing is becoming most of the scenery on the web. Because apparently we need to be inundated with more useless value-free content when we’re looking for something interesting and original.

And yes, now AI plans to tackle comedy. It’s already happening and it’s not as suprising as you might think. See, 50% of joke writing is formulas and algorithms. If you’re a math geek and want to go completely down the rabbit hole, you’ll find interesting reading here. It’s some of the logic that no doubt feeds into the AI comedian program.

It’s no secret to comedians that forulas are 50% of the joke writing and we couldn’t be as funny or prolific without them. But the other 50% is context and point-of-view. That’s the harder bit. When agents and clubs evaluate the quality of a comedian’s work they all assume that they’re familiar with the structural joke formulas. What they’re looking for, what tjhey use to distinguish a hack from a legend, is a unique perspective or point of view. We all share the formulas but our point of view is uniquely our own.

For this reason, I’m not any more threastened by AI taking on this artform than any of the others. AI generates content to fill spaces, but there’s nothing valuable, nutritious or interesting in any of it. It just plagiarizes the works of real human contributors and aggregates it, aiming for average and bringing nothing new to the table.

I don’t know about you, but my internet experience is already full of weak meaningless filler and I hate wading through miles of it to find good stuff. I don’t want an army of robots flooding the web with generic bullshit that makes it hard for real art to be found. Does anyone think there’;s not enough spam online?

Fuck that. I’m not anti-robot at all. But I hate it when other humans jam up the playing field with their spam, their shitty bland music, their generic meaningless art and their lame shitty comedy. If I don’t have the patience or respect for people who crank out lazy volumes of uninspiring crap, why would I feel any different for indifferent spam-bots that do the same thing?

Anyway, if you want to see AI have a go at stand up comedy you can check it out below. AI, don’t quit your day job… You don’t understand the visceral connection of live comedy. Stick to Chess.