AInother GAIwd-DAImned AInti-AI RAInt

AI is already depriving human musicians of revenue.  The labels flood the streaming services with literally thousands of “new” AI generated tracks daily.  They’re mediocre but then again, most creative work by definition is mediocre, exceptional work — also by definition — is exceptional.

As Theodore Sturgeon pointed out, 90% of everything is crap.

But human generated tracks require hours of effort by human beings from composition to rehearsal to performance to final mix to still end up mediocre.  And when released, they are in competition with not only other costly in time and money human efforts, but thousands of AI generated tracks that go from prompt to finished product in a matter of minutes for pennies of amortized costs.

While a human musician may hope for thousands of dollars in streaming revenue to break even, AI tracks are profitable making dimes off pennies in investment because there are no royalties to be shared.

Most of us are satisfied 80% of the time with mediocre entertainment, we just want a pleasant diversion.  AI music supplies that pleasant background noise we want most of the time.

We’re starting to see acceptable mediocre videos now, primarily in fantastic or surreal stories where AI’s flaws are more easily overlooked but also in traditional cartoon-style animation where it’s a lot easier for AI to stay visually consistent.

AI will not flood the field submitting stories to paying markets, it will circumvent them by offering virtually free pulp genre stories tailored to any readers personal preferences. Want to read a version of Poe’s “A Cask Of Amontillado” in which a gorgeous redhead lures a victim to their doom with a promise of Godiva chocolates?  You got it!

We may be on the cusp of a drastic reordering of human creativity, one in which the idea of making a living off our creativity -- indeed, even getting rewarded in some material form for it -- is passe, and the only creators left will be those who must create, who can’t NOT create.

© Buzz Dixon