This reminds me of a case for slop and of the tworebuttals which the post received. I expect that high-level tastes (e.g. related to long-term value of the piece of art, the ideas which it propagates or to meanings unlocked under scrutiny) will not be satisfied by AI-assisted art unless either the AI or the human creator has high-level tastes as well. Alas, training high-level tastes into the AI could end up being difficult due to problems with incentives and with training data (think of GPT-4o’s sycophancy, expected(?) rollout of erotica by OpenAI’s models, AIgirlfriends who don’t need to be smarter than Llama, brainrot), and the art which you describe (e.g. making an impression of your sixteen-year-old self from an iPhone backup and then letting you talk to an LLM roleplaying as them) would be either as hard to value to outsiders as family photos or optimized for virality instead of causing the users to develop high-level tastes...
You could apply the same thing to any new genera of art. The hoi polloi all have horrible taste, and therefore we should expect the new genera to mostly cater to that horrible taste and produce a ton of slop.
On the one hand, that’s true. New artistic media and generas often result in a greater amount of slop produced. But it misses the fact that new artistic media and generas also create artistic innovation, and while only a small minority of people have good taste, often (especially in the long term), the market accommodates that good taste just fine, and we get masterworks of that new media or genera.
I apologise, but there is another aspect which I described in this comment. Before the rise of the Internet pictures or films would have to be reproduced by talented people or expensive equipment before being seen by armies of viewers. Then the reproducers or those who possess the equipment would have to carefully select what they spread[1] across the nation over the years. This, in turn, would imply that a far-reaching meme would be spread for a long time by ~the same reproducers, letting the society react (e.g. by arresting the reproducer for possessing porn) or forget about the old films which weren’t better than the average.
It’s not clear to me this would increase the quality level of what gets spread. First, the few selectors likely have as bad taste as the hoi polloi, being selected for political acumin for what is, essentially, a political job, if they are selected for anything. Second, it is widely agreed that art flourishes on subversion and going “against the pack”, with many (especially of the old guard) hating new art forms when they arrive. Third, such selection will necessarily cater to the lowest common denominator. Compare TV shows of the ’90s to TV shows now.
If we consider AI-generated video not as art but as a realistic depiction of reality—for example, for educational purposes—then its failure is even more dramatic!
A recent experiment by a well-known Russian science communication channel attempted to generate realistic videos demonstrating various chemical reactions:
Pharaoh’s Serpents
Böttger’s Volcano
Golden Rain (also known as the Lead Iodide Precipitation Reaction)
Copper with Nitric Acid
Bromine with Aluminum
The AI proved incapable of realistically rendering the physical world. Failures occurred both when SORA-2 and VEO-3 were provided with an initial frame showing the chemical reaction and when they were given a set of still frames sampled from different parts of a realistic reference video.
I liked Crawford’s defense of slop and think both rebuttals missed the point of his argument.
I expect that high-level tastes… will not be satisfied by AI-assisted art unless either the AI or the human creator has high-level tastes as well
I agree with this; this is the case in all the other mediums (you can’t create a good song, or ballet, or watercolour painting unless you have good taste) so I don’t see why it wouldn’t also be the case for AI assisted art as well.
One direction I think artists can take AI is to just increase the complexity of their pieces. No one is going to spend 5000 weeks creating a single work of art (the average human lifespan is 4000 weeks), but if a good artist can, with AI, create something in 50 weeks that would take them 5000 weeks without it, I would be interested in seeing the result.
This reminds me of a case for slop and of the two rebuttals which the post received. I expect that high-level tastes (e.g. related to long-term value of the piece of art, the ideas which it propagates or to meanings unlocked under scrutiny) will not be satisfied by AI-assisted art unless either the AI or the human creator has high-level tastes as well. Alas, training high-level tastes into the AI could end up being difficult due to problems with incentives and with training data (think of GPT-4o’s sycophancy, expected(?) rollout of erotica by OpenAI’s models, AI girlfriends who don’t need to be smarter than Llama, brainrot), and the art which you describe (e.g. making an impression of your sixteen-year-old self from an iPhone backup and then letting you talk to an LLM roleplaying as them) would be either as hard to value to outsiders as family photos or optimized for virality instead of causing the users to develop high-level tastes...
You could apply the same thing to any new genera of art. The hoi polloi all have horrible taste, and therefore we should expect the new genera to mostly cater to that horrible taste and produce a ton of slop.
On the one hand, that’s true. New artistic media and generas often result in a greater amount of slop produced. But it misses the fact that new artistic media and generas also create artistic innovation, and while only a small minority of people have good taste, often (especially in the long term), the market accommodates that good taste just fine, and we get masterworks of that new media or genera.
I apologise, but there is another aspect which I described in this comment. Before the rise of the Internet pictures or films would have to be reproduced by talented people or expensive equipment before being seen by armies of viewers. Then the reproducers or those who possess the equipment would have to carefully select what they spread[1] across the nation over the years. This, in turn, would imply that a far-reaching meme would be spread for a long time by ~the same reproducers, letting the society react (e.g. by arresting the reproducer for possessing porn) or forget about the old films which weren’t better than the average.
An additional level of friction was the requirement that the commoners come and see the film or see or get the photographs.
It’s not clear to me this would increase the quality level of what gets spread. First, the few selectors likely have as bad taste as the hoi polloi, being selected for political acumin for what is, essentially, a political job, if they are selected for anything. Second, it is widely agreed that art flourishes on subversion and going “against the pack”, with many (especially of the old guard) hating new art forms when they arrive. Third, such selection will necessarily cater to the lowest common denominator. Compare TV shows of the ’90s to TV shows now.
If we consider AI-generated video not as art but as a realistic depiction of reality—for example, for educational purposes—then its failure is even more dramatic!
A recent experiment by a well-known Russian science communication channel attempted to generate realistic videos demonstrating various chemical reactions:
Pharaoh’s Serpents
Böttger’s Volcano
Golden Rain (also known as the Lead Iodide Precipitation Reaction)
Copper with Nitric Acid
Bromine with Aluminum
The AI proved incapable of realistically rendering the physical world. Failures occurred both when SORA-2 and VEO-3 were provided with an initial frame showing the chemical reaction and when they were given a set of still frames sampled from different parts of a realistic reference video.
I liked Crawford’s defense of slop and think both rebuttals missed the point of his argument.
I agree with this; this is the case in all the other mediums (you can’t create a good song, or ballet, or watercolour painting unless you have good taste) so I don’t see why it wouldn’t also be the case for AI assisted art as well.
One direction I think artists can take AI is to just increase the complexity of their pieces. No one is going to spend 5000 weeks creating a single work of art (the average human lifespan is 4000 weeks), but if a good artist can, with AI, create something in 50 weeks that would take them 5000 weeks without it, I would be interested in seeing the result.