Yuli-Ban t1_ja1rpsq wrote on February 26, 2023 at 4:53 AM

Reply to comment by Surur in AI is accelerating the loss of individuality in the same way that mass production and consumerism replaced craftsmanship and originality in the 20th century. But perhaps there’s a silver lining. by SpinCharm

> AI media will not be mass produced

Actually, it will be mass-produced. But put a pin in that.

> It will be as individualized and addictive as your Facebook and tiktok feed.

And I suppose the issue there is that a lot of people actively reject such addiction. I, for example, almost never use Facebook and can't even remember ever using TikTok. I will almost certainly be the exact opposite when it comes to synthetic media, but if reactions to AI art are any indication (and I mean on places like DeviantArt, YouTube, and Pixiv, not the Twitter pro-human artist protests), there's little chance that synthetic media will replace all media. Some people are just contrarians, while others have anthropocentric bias.

However, there is one other issue, and this is where I say to pull out the pin.

Media that is individualized is great and all, and we'll indulge in it without question. But that's certainly not all there'll ever be.

See, I agree wholeheartedly that AI is going to generate media very soon, and has even already started doing so. I even agree that most people will use synthetic media to generate media individualized to them. Where I disagree strongly is in the idea that humans stop sharing media and instead lose ourselves in our own fantasy worlds.

The cold fact is, humans are social apes. If we create something or like something, we're going to share it with others. Hence why I tend to think that synthetic media is being severely overhyped by some people, even as I say "we're going to create multimedia franchises in our bedrooms and could live in synthetic media bubbles within the better part of a decade."

Even if we become transhuman, I don't see social interaction being something we'll elect to take away. If anything, transcending our basic humanity towards higher levels of cognition only seems to make it more likely we'll engage in social interaction, but on levels we can't fathom. Not to mention I strongly doubt most people will become transhuman anyway.

If you value social interaction (and most people do as humans are hardwired for it), even if you spend a lot of time generating synthetic media, you're not going to completely lose yourself in your own fantasies.

The kneejerk reaction to synthetic media, and the Singularitarian hype for it, often acts as if the human need for social interaction doesn't exist. But I present the theory that, provided nothing bad happens, there will still be people attending live concerts and going to movie theaters and viewing live theatrical performances and seeing live sports performances in 30 years. That if YouTube is still around by then, a majority of videos will have some aspect of synthetic media to them— V-tubers and AI personalities playing fully AI-generated games for example, or AI personalities of historical figures discussing history to synthesized images and videos and simulations— but you could also still find humans giving their own thoughts and creations, and indeed, "human-created" might even be a lucrative tag.

I know it's easy to say "You probably would have predicted that the Internet was a fad in 1995" to any criticism of the dominant narratives of synthetic media. I'm not saying the Internet is a fad and that no one will ever download music because they will always value vinyl and CDs; if anything, I was predicting that before most people here even thought it was possible in their lifetimes. I'm saying that the opposite argument, that no one will ever buy music or attend live concerts because they can simply download mp3s or stream music, is just as fallacious.

I'm not saying that no one will ever use synthetic media to do anything because human-created art will always matter more; I'm saying that the arguments that we'll only ever consume media tailor-made for us and our preferences is one day going to be seen as just as outrageously silly of a prediction.

And that's why I agree with OP. Especially considering another angle to this: I think most people will utilize synthetic media to some extent, such as to edit existing media or create memes or something to that level, but very few will actually create whole movies, video games, and franchises, at least regularly. This is more likely with older generations and the hipsters of younger generations. It's easy to forget that most people alive today were born before the year 2000, and that in America, more than 2/3s of the population is older than 30. Maybe I'm not seeing something that others can, but thinking about this from the laziest and most consumeristic perspective combined with technophobia, I can absolutely see the majority of Boomers and Gen Xers just barely using synthetic media, such as to "make the fourth movie of the Dollars Trilogy" or "give me another season of Firefly" or "give us the fourth main Nirvana album" but otherwise stopping there and, for the most part, sharing whatever's created before moving on.

blueSGL t1_ja1vmoa wrote on February 26, 2023 at 5:32 AM

What about this, with the same prompt/model/seed/...'settings'... combination you can pull the same image out of an image model as someone else

I can easily see there be a time where people generate [music/tvshows/movies/etc] themselves but share the created media and have other people vote and rank it.

e.g. head over to a website that hosts ratings for... AI generated Simpsons episodes and share all the 'settings' needed to load into your own system to recreate it.

Then you can brows by popular generated content, circa whatever month you happen to be in, or by all time, or whatever other metrics you can think of.

Everyone has the capability to generate new stuff and then has the ability to share it. Good stuff gets popular and becomes zeitgeist-y for a while, bad stuff just exists.

Yuli-Ban t1_ja1x0ql wrote on February 26, 2023 at 5:47 AM

NAIL ON THE HEAD

That's exactly what I predict.

> Everyone has the capability to generate new stuff and then has the ability to share it. Good stuff gets popular and becomes zeitgeist-y for a while, bad stuff just exists.

Indeed, this is essentially already the case on some websites, like Newgrounds, Soundcloud, and Reddit, except the capabilities are expanded even further.

Though again, I still predict that the "human-created" tag will exist and there will be some segregation between that which is created by humans and that which is created by machines, among other metrics (i.e. human prompted/AI-generated; human-created/AI-assisted, etc.)

Ideally, there will be as few bad actors as possible trying to corrupt such a tag. There might also exist the issue of copyright. Despite some predictions, I don't see copyright dying immediately. Indeed, if anything, I view copyright as being the last chokehold of "canonicity." You, or an AI, may generate the best-ever episodes of a certain TV show, but if the rightsholders say it's non-canon, then it's non-canon, period. Some may disregard their statement, but enough won't.

One other thing I predict is the demographics of all this.

Despite the democratization of media creation being imminent, I actually don't see the vast majority of people joining in on creation, even if the majority do join in on curation. The claims that this will be the case feel eerily reminiscent of the claims by the cyberdelic movement in the 1990s that the Internet will lead to direct democracy and total enlightenment, with every man an artist and every website an enlightened forum.

I predict 60% to 70% of people will stick to AI-generated memes, purely personal creations, edits to existing media, and other small things. Only about 10% to 20% of the population will be responsible for this massive explosion of content creation (and the remaining will stick with human-created media).