Oh, A.I.!

Introduction

I wasn't even sure how to write the title. AI provokes a lot of anger and is generally seen by almost everyone as something that is going to steal everything that they have.

A few weeks ago my friend Paul created an AI song for me, and then I started to play around with it abd I finally used an AI song with the lyrics of my poem in the piece below:

I have included an alternate take of the song to soundtrack this piece. If you listen through to the end you will hear that the cut-off is not very clean. That's AI for you.

My Attitude And Use Of AI: 1 - Art

Vocal requires, and always has, a basic structure. That is an image or video and then your story. I started using videos but YouTube often pulls them and that leaves your Vocal story with a blank image, so you have to request Vocal to put your story into drafts to replace it, after one or two of these I started using images, and credited the source.

However, I got other creators berating me for plagiarism, as I did not have written permission from the picture's source to use the image. Incidentally, the complainers never included any proof that they had written permission for the images they used just an acknowledgement from Unsplash or Pixabay that they had copied.

Then I saw a piece from an artist about how AI was threatening his livelihood, but when I looked at it, I saw a tool I could use and avoid any accusations of plagiarism. This piece and the links within tell you about how I use AI Art:

I still get criticised for using AI Art, but I use it to avoid accusations of plagiarism, and if I can I use something real like I have with the credited meme that leads this piece.

My Attitude And Use Of AI: 2 - Writing

This is possibly the most contentious part for me, because writing is my art, and I see a lot of AI-generated stories on Vocal and other platforms.

I was once tricked (not maliciously) into sharing an AI-generated poem which you can read here, it's ok, but as someone once said "Why bother reading something someone couldn't be bothered to write?:

With the advent of AI text generators, I had creators saying how great it was, as they could take seconds to generate a story. I also see ads saying you can use AI to generate books (mostly puzzle books) for no effort at all and make a fortune selling them online.

Would you buy a book like that?

While I think AI might help to generate ideas and technical documents, that is about it for me.

AI should be seen as a tool but you need to be very careful with it, like a faulty nuclear chainsaw.

My art is my writing and I will not contaminate that with AI unless you deem spell checkers as AI.

I found the Content Warning and AI Buttons that Vocal have added quite amusing. They could have been served by Vocal tags and the cheats won't use them anyway, so another waste of time.

My Attitude And Use Of AI: 3 - Music

This is the line I have crossed. I have turned some of my poems into songs with my guitar, but the Suno generator sounds professional. I need to see if I can apply fades on it.

I only used this because I could not find an online song for the arrival of my great nephews.

Again AI is just a a backup, though my sister and niece absolutely love the song. Is that any worse than the artists who mime or use autotune for performances, and get others to play their instruments on records?

Conclusion

I see AI as a tool that can be helpful at times, but it must be used with care.