AI is Already Destroying Artistic Integrity

by Chris McGinty

Nathan texted me today something to the effect of, “Hey, can’t find nuthin’ on the radio. Yo, look at this thing I did with AI.” Shout out to fans of “Out of Time.” The text directed me to go to my blog post the other night where I fittingly took five minutes of my time at work and wrote a throwaway blog post to “meet the assignment.” This was probably a good choice of a blog post on Nathan’s part, because I might not have been as objective about my response had it been a blog post I spent hours perfecting and required a certain inflection when reading.

What Nathan did was use a text to speech bot to read the text and I’m guessing AI to put together a video behind it using stock photos or generated pictures. I’m basing this on the fact that he said it took him five minutes. It does say .ai in the link, so I’m going with it used some sort of AI. My immediate instinct is to cry to the heavens that there will be none of this, as it is the path of death and destruction. But it’ll make for better content if I break down the pros and cons in a less biased way.

Major Publishers Already Use Speech to Text – As much as I hate it, speech to text is one of the easiest ways to create audio versions of mass-produced written material. I like listening to audio, so sometimes it’s nice that they already have a link to a speech to text reading since it would be cost prohibitive to have the author read their work or to hire professional readers. It’s conceivable that the According To Whim blog already has readers independently using speech to text to consume our work, so it’s out of our hands in that regard. It’s the video part that feels one step too far.

Generated Video Could Represent Something Unintended – Originally, audiobooks were recorded with a flat tone, because there were those who believed that voice acting would diminish the author’s intent if read in anyway other than a neutral tone. Because it’s in a written format, some people may read the more tongue in cheek parts of my blog post as sincere. Speech to text, or an actor who has been given no direction as to my intent, could further the belief that it’s intended as sincere. I think the video portion takes this basic problem and exacerbates it, because it creates so many avenues for misunderstanding the author’s intention.

What If It Was a Human Generated Video – but- you had sex with AI every day. Sorry. Still missing What If… Anyway, for decades now people have been generating videos that visually represent the audio of standup routines and the like. Even criticism of a movie could miss the point of the movie’s intention. Once you release your art to the public, it’s there to be interpreted by other humans. Nathan’s video was actually pretty good for matching images to the text. I’ve seen videos on YouTube that were probably edited by humans that were more cringe worthy in how they used stock images. Yet somehow, I’m still more comfortable with humans doing that work. At the very least, before the rise of AI, humans probably reviewed the work to avoid any major cringe. But if a YouTube channel were to “remix” my blog post, I wouldn’t have the ability to review. I might have the ability to sue or at least call a cease and desist if I thought it was fully misrepresentative, or if they were making money on my art the way that websites used to take our writing from blogspot and use it as content on other webpages that were monetized. But a fan video, or a heavy critique, might not be such a bad thing by itself.

How the Differences Between Me and Nathan Work Together – Nathan and I are idealistically different about some things. I think sometimes that his willingness to embrace time saving apps and to look for easy ways of making money might be good for us. I think it can go too far though and destroy the creative force behind what we do, so I think my unwillingness to sacrifice any artistic integrity at all, ever, might be good for us too. This tug of war might keep us grounded in some ways. The funny part is that I’ve read “The 4-Hour Work Week” three times (audio book, if you must know) and Nathan, who might have been more the target audience for that book, has not read it yet as far as I know.

Hint of a Future Blog Post – I will probably write extensively over the coming months and years about how we’re going to need to protect human created art. At the core of my thought process is that back in my day (Miguel just experienced a heart murmur as I typed that) if you lacked an artistic skill, you either had to learn it, or find someone who could make up for your shortfall. Using AI to make up for a shortfall may not be so bad. I’m still looking at it sideways and saying, “What you talkin’ ’bout, Willis?” but just that isn’t such a bad thing if your strong point is a good strong artistic vision, and you use tools for the parts you fall short on. The thing that I hate is that there will be, and there already is, material being produced that is completely divorced from the creative process, and I think that’s dangerous for art.

My Reference at the Start of This Post – There’s a song by REM call “Radio Song,” and it’s about how the popular music landscape was destroying musical innovation. This was in 1991. I don’t think that the formulaic processes of creating hit machines immediately destroyed innovation, but all the backlash against modern music and modern movies is a result of people using formulas for everything they create, more intent on selling product than creating something with staying power. But at least it was humans making that uninspired drivel. We’re now in a dangerous place where the uninspired drivel is being made at a breakneck pace, and it will eventually break our necks.

Chris McGinty is a blogger who wrote the rough draft of this in less than an hour. It’s not great, but I would venture to say that it’s better than if I had AI write it for me.