Over on Twitter, there’s been a spate of people – though ‘people’ is a generous term, because they read like bots – praising an awful, uncanny valley ‘trailer’ for a Duck Tales movie. As a huge fan of Duck Tales, I had to voice my objections to this.
The absurdists are issuing their usual statements. ‘Hollywood is cooked!’, they boldly proclaim. It is of course ridiculous, because so far all AI ‘creators’ are doing is plugging in established, copyrighted material and spitting out something that mangles the source. It’s painful to watch, and all anyone gets for their troubles is a few minutes of incoherent chaos.
Of course, there’s an element of hypocrisy on my part that I must admit to. In the past, I’ve used AI to create images for Meerkat Musings. I have aimed to move away from that, and on the occasions where I do use AI, I don’t pretend it’s my work, and nor would I dream of pretending it’s better than something created by human hands. I certainly wouldn’t brag that somehow, ‘Hollywood is cooked’.
It’s not even like these brief AI videos are even close to approximating Hollywood quality. They’re short for a reason. The longer the video, the more unstable and weird they get. The ones using the faces and likenesses of real people are obviously skirting legal and moral frameworks.
There’s also a larger matter at play here, and not just with AI picture and video generators. If studios and the like really are in trouble because of AI (a ridiculous notion, but let’s entertain it for a moment), what happens to all the people who are out of a job because AI is taking over?
If they’re not working, how can they spend money watching the ‘films’ created by AI slop creators? Removing human beings from the creative process also removes their money from the economy, and that is also a problem with AI in general. The more AI displaces human workers, the more the only winners are those at the top, but their short-sighted approach is creating a vulnerable bubble. If no one is working because everyone has been replaced by AI, who is going to have disposable income to afford anything?
AI should help and enhance humanity and human endeavour, but not usurp it.
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