AI threatens creativity across all artistic mediums music... painting... writing... Why people are choosing to use AI to write their books or make their music instead of doing the dishes is beyond me. Why get rid of the fun stuff in life that can be true expressions of what it means to be human?
Now, if you're not a creative in a creative field or indulge in creative hobbies, you might be thinking who cares? With AI you can take that story idea that you don't have the discipline or patience to try and write yourself and turn it into a novel in less than a day. But for the rest of humanity who has spent decades and countless hours working on a creative pursuit, be it drawing big-breasted women or crafting meticulous lines of doomsday poetry, the idea of a robot coming along and sweeping all that way, plus having people fawn over it, sucks SO hard.
Where does my negative attitude come from? We've all been aware of the rise of AI art and chatbots for a while now. But sadly AI is winning awards for writing now. Something I have worked on learning how to do since I was a child, is now winning awards. Okay... so AI itself didn't win an award, it played a small part in the book. Tokyo To Dojo To (Tokyo’s Tower of Sympathy) by Rie Kudan has won the Akutagawa Prize, this is THE TOP lit award in Japan. She wrote a work that is 5% AI generated. In the book, there is a conversation with a chatbot. The author says she used AI to help pen it. UGH. Seriously? You're a writer you can't just make that stuff up?
The sad thing is she goes on to praise AI: 'If you think carefully about how to use it and face your own weaknesses, AI helps you compensate for them.' Really???? To have a weakness is to be a human. It's not a bad thing. My weakness is using too many commas. Writing, like any skill, is an endless task that you can always get better at, which is why so many love to do it. You can fill years with just writing and never reach the end. Instead, now we're having AI bots help us become 'flawless.' Gross. Flawless is fucking boring and overrated. Tell me this, what's better: a) a lineup of women who all went to the same plastic surgeon for the same narrow nose, inflated lips, and high cheekbones? Then got all dressed up in athleisure wear? b) a lineup of naturally beautiful women with assorted imperfections who all look intriguing or good in their own way because they haven't been sculpted to fantastic plastic perfection?
Do we want our writing to be surgically enhanced and devoid of humanity? Is it even art by that point?
Do we really want perfectionism in our art? Using AI to write creative fiction is a slippery slope because we know someone who is a total slacker who loves to cite famous examples of something to justify their laziness. They will cite a book like Kudan's and say it's okay to use AI to iron out their own wrinkles, expand on their potential, and create a book that is 20% AI-generated, 50%, or 100% artificial based on three lines of an idea they threaded into the machine. Now everyone can be an artist in under 5 minutes. We really are living in the gold age... of retardation.
So how do actual creative people push back against the juggernaut that is AI? Become unpredictable, stop obsessing over 'genre rules', and make writing human again. One of the (many) reasons modern writing is so bland now is that people are bland and they like to follow rules that were laid down decades ago. This seems especially true for genre fiction where people seem to go down a checklist to ensure their book fits the market. Fantasy or Sci-fi: Chosen One character? Check! An evil family member like a brother or stepfather? Check! The rest of the family murdered in a brutal way? Check. Revenge? Double check. A title that is a rip-off of a George R.R. Martin Book? Oh, you bet...
Or modern horror? Hm. Let's see, we need a character with a traumatic backstory. They had an insanely bloody dramatic miscarriage after a robber broke in and their boyfriend wasn't there to save her because he was having an affair with the MC's best friend! Now she has no baby, trust issues, and lots of trauma to paralyze her from being an interesting person. But the MC also has PAST trauma from watching the same thing happen to her mother when she was a little girl! .... then in the aftermath of all this, there's a phone call.... her abusive estranged father has just died leaving her the run-down family estate. She has to go home to face her past demons... Is the house haunted? Is a killer coming back to finish the job he started all those years ago? Or maybe it's all a metaphor for the MC to face her fears and overcome her past with (of course) MORE TRAUMA. Because a negative + a negative = a positive, right? In the end, the MC is fine and has a love affair with the town sheriff who had the hots for her back in high school.... the story could end there or they could leave it open for a sequel like the killer's body goes missing or the MC becomes pregnant and it's a demon baby, etc.
Then there are all the vapid stories written by nepo-babies and rich assholes about how awesome (or how hard it is) to be a rich dick, while the average working-class student on a scholarship (or poor MC who won a prize to a fancy island, or whatever) meets the rich dick and then briefly fantasizes about also being a wealthy asshole but they never will be because they are just poor and have morals.... how boring it is to be poor and a good person... yawn
What creatives like writers need to do is stop this nonsense. AI is going to be able to clock you and write an even better campground slasher novel when this tired storyline remains the same and is written over and over and over again (please stop writing these).
Back in the day (the 90s) cool people used to be on the search for weird, unique, different stuff. Whether it was a creepy underground grindcore bad or a weird paperback that got passed around between friends from an unknown author who only ever wrote one book and then disappeared. People looked for these things not to be popular and show everyone how unique they were (most of the time. You always got posers and tourists) but most people were pretty cool. Creative people sought out other creative people to do weird projects and enjoy other undiscovered stuff. What do we have now? People obsessing over Metallica (they aren't cool! Doesn't anyone remember what assholes they were to their fans during the whole Napster shit? Fuck them. They will never get one cent from me. And their music is lame. Just listen to Slayer instead kids.) and rewriting the same storylines for their book over and over and over again and slapping 'nostalgic' 80s covers on it. The 80s were LAME everyone looked like a jerk and yuppies were constantly getting high on cocaine and running people over in their ugly beamers! Get over it. Let it go. Stop watching fucking horrible remakes and sequels to classic movies that no one asked for. (Has any seen the trailer for the remake of The Crow? WTF!?! Spoiler: He's a wigger now. How depressing is that?) and for chrissake stop watching or buying shit from Disney.
We need to grow up let go of things from the past and move forward to create new original things. If human expressions like writing, filmmaking, and drawing are going to survive AI then creatives have to get creative and stop trying to imitate the past. People need to get weird again and make weird off-the-wall shit instead of trying to copy old shit. Stop creating to get attention and praise and make something worthy of it, otherwise AI will just do it.