If a foot pics in the forest...
(But actually mostly about the artistic integrity of AI-generated art)
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Howdy Sternal Journalists,
Exciting career news. I got my first foot pic request from a stranger on Instagram:
I really wish the “exciting career news” part of this was 100% a joke, but I did feel a little jolt of legitimacy that my online presence passed the threshold of “this person is enough of a not-regular-person that I’m okay just sliding into the DMs and asking for foot pics.”1
Which is all a long way of saying, “Wowza! We really have arrived in the future.” Perhaps this is something that everyone feels when they make it to (the very beginning of) mid-life, but I really feel like we’re living in a moment where the time between (a) right now and (b) the moment when things we currently think of as sci-fi become reality, has become more compressed than ever before.
And it’s all because of this guy:
Well, not him exactly but the technology that made him, ~generative AI~. See, he didn’t exist a few seconds ago. But then I typed “An oil painting of a friendly hippo” into the Stable Diffusion Demo, et voila! He existed, along with three other choices, but he’s definitely the cutest.
“But Julian!”, you’re shouting! “We already know about this! That one week where everyone was playing with Dall-E was months ago! This is not news even by Sternal Journal standards!”
Of course it’s not news that these things exist. I come to you not with news, but with a semi-contrarian take.
(“Aaah,” you say now. “These are the Sternal Journal standards we know and love.”)
Okay, so whenever there’s some fuzziness around AI or even computers/robots taking jobs in general, I hear some romantic say “but they’ll never be able to replace writers!” or “they’ll never replace artists!” or “they’ll never be able to create pieces that carry the same emotional weight as the ones that were created by a real human artist!”
And I’m here to say they will, they will, and they already can!
Because I think when Dall-E dropped, we all got too obsessed with making the most outlandish images possible (“Elmo in Al-Qaeda” is the one I saw on Instagram which will be seared in my memory the longest). Everyone wanted to see their crazy image, but nobody in my periphery wanted to really test the outer limits.
So in having one of those “will AI replace artists?” conversations recently, I tried the prompt, “An oil painting that reminds me of my grandmother who passed away.”
Two takeaways:
The AI is smart enough to know that, even though some paintings that remind someone of a grandmother might be of a grandmother, plenty of them could bt about other things. Like pears! Or flowers!
If I saw any of these in a gallery and they were called “Grandmother,” I would fully believe it was a painting that a person painted about or for their grandmother, and I would be appropriately moved by it.
I think the latter takeaway gets to the heart of the problem with the theory behind people who don’t think artists can be replaced by computers. To the people who write the checks that finance the kind of art we’re talking about being replaced, it kinda doesn’t matter whether a piece of art was created with emotional weight. What matters is that the people who experience the art are able to infuse it with their own emotional weight. And it’s hubris to actually think we could detect the difference.
I mean, come on. This “oil painting of a sad wedding” is INCREDIBLE.
Look at the little touches—their muted faces, the just slightly broken eye contact, the way the groom’s hands are in his pockets like “I’m here, but I’m not touching you.”
It’s very competent visual storytelling, it’s gut-wrenching, and it was created by a program in seconds based on six words I typed.
HOWEVER, AI could also be here to help. The whole reason I went down the AI rabbit hole this week was an episode of the New York Times podcast Hard Fork (linked in the recs below).
Among many other things, they talked about how a lot of people are actually using generative AI in their jobs as a tool rather than a portender of professional doom. One example? Story-boarding for filmmaking. In case you don’t remember or hadn’t yet Journ-joined, I’m bad at drawing but working on storyboards for a move I’m making.
And so I thought I’d give it a whirl. There’s one shot of an “ old refrigerator with Playbills and pictures.” Dall-E gave me this:
There’s another of “a family of 12 crowded around two tables in a busy diner:”
Sure, there might not be visible Playbills on the refrigerator, but emotionally, it got what I was going for. The second one totally nails the chaos and electricity of a family gathering in addition to just, you know, placing 12 people around a couple tables in what looks like a diner (Note: I added the words “digital art” to the second one because I learned it was a hack to keep the program from making humans look too uncanny valley).
So I can see this being a really helpful tool as I jump into this creative corner I’m not as experienced with. I can actually see it being a tool that helps those who don’t have as much access or natural talent express themselves. I mean, I can’t draw that beautiful-ass happy hippo, but I’m the one who brought it into the world. Unless you consider all of the pictures of hippos and happiness and oil paintings from all over the internet which fed the program that generated the happy hippo oil painting—like who took those pictures? Who made those paintings? And don’t they deserve credit for their contribution to the happy hippo painting? I think they do! But I also love my painting. And it’s partially because of the artistic and emotional nuance that is completely present, even though it was randomly generated by a computer program!!!
Which is all to say…
I can’t decide whether I think the coming onslaught of generative AI is cool or scary. Which is exactly how I feel about the foot pic request.
Recommendations.
Generative AI: Who Should Control It? Podcast Episode. The episode that inspired this SternJourn, although there’s not much overlap and much more expertise with what I talked about here. Great podcast in general. Highly recommend.
Midnights. Album. I rarely listen to a Taylor Swift album when it comes out, but had a long drive on Friday when it was release. This is a banger and especially appropriate for a midnight drive back from Manhattan Beach.
Welcome to Wrexham. Television Show. I think I’ve already twice recommended this Hulu documentary about Ryan Reynolds and Rob McElhenney buying a bad, but fiercely supported Welsh football team, but I finished it today and it’s one of my favorite things. Won’t say much else for spoilers sake. I laughed, I cried, watch all the way through.
The Library Book. Book. This Susan Orlean book about the LA Central Library Fire of 1986 is the type of book that makes me say “Damn, they should make a tv show of this,” and then immediately remember, “NO THEY SHOULD NOT, PEOPLE SHOULD JUST READ IT.” Any book so good it has me slipping up and thinking adaptations are cool is worth checking out.
The Banshees of Inisherin. Film. Martin McDonough got flack (rightly, I think) for not understanding enough about American racism to make Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri, so he went and made the most Irish movie imaginable ensuring that nobody could tell him he was out of his element. If you liked In Bruges, it’s Colin Farrell and Brendan Gleeson back together. Also, it has the quietest first five minutes of any movie I’ve ever seen and I could hear the disdain from our row neighbors as Chris and I failed to quietly crunch our mozzarella sticks, Impossible nuggets, and pizza. Maybe eat before you see it.
That’s all for now! Be generative this week!
Love,
Julian
P.S. I spend anywhere between two and twelve hours a week on the Sternal Journal. If you enjoy receiving it (and are RICH) consider becoming a paying subscriber. For just a few bucks a month, you can provide me with a bit more time to come up with fun topics, poems, and interviews; and you with probably fewer typos.
Of course, gotta acknowledge that the fact this threshold even exists for me (as a guy) is a double standard!