AI and Creatives

In my Media, Culture and Society class today I showed this video to students. I tried to hide the title so that they couldn't see it was fully generated by AI. Before showing the film, I asked the students to register their feelings - what kind of emotions the film evoked in them - and also observe anything they might think would be worthy of discussion.

The initial emotional responses to the film were formulated as "spooky," "confused," "unsettling," and "ominous." When asked why confused, students responded that there was no action or conversation in the movie and even though you could guess that some big battle was looming, it was not clear what the film was really about - lacking a story.

When I asked them if it would help to think of the film as a setup, lay of the land or universe the author was building, they said it could work because it was more or less clear how it was laid out in terms of the battle between the good and evil. One student said it looked much like "Harry Porter," which took me by surprise, because to me it gave clear "Lord of the Rings" vibes. When the other students agreed with me, the student admitted that he'd never seen "Lord of the Rings." I guess there are already Gen Zers like that.

Then I asked the students what made the film spooky and unsettling. They pointed out the music, the dark atmosphere and the creeping fog, and the evil orc-like characters and their leader. One student said that there were other unsettling things like jerky body movements and lack of fluidity in characters what sometimes seemed just frozen. When asked why, someone said "Because it has been generated by AI."

When I asked if everyone realized that this was a film fully generated by AI, one student honestly admitted that he did not, but most said that they could tell. What are the tell signs? - Unfocused eyes, unusual blinking, sometimes poorly rendered hands, "empty gaze" that one student described as "it still has no soul." I latched onto that by asking how long before AI improves on all of that and makes real human actors obsolete? They generously gave it 3-5 years.

To that, I reminded them that when ChatGPT was unleashed onto the world on November 30, 2022 (less than two years ago), all the creatives were like, "We are not threatened by it, it still has no soul and will never be as creative or emotion-evoking as we humans are." In a little over a year, AI drove translation by humans out of business (I have a lot of friends in the professional translation industry and they are losing contracts like crazy). And last year, the Hollywood screenwriters and actors went on strike to make sure they have some protections from being displaced by AI.

AI will get better in terms of creativity. It is already doing so. And in the world where there are lots of people who can't tell the difference between AI- and human-generated content, media content producers will try to ride the wave with the AI. After all, AI will not require a salary or benefits or go on strike. The business logic will always favor one-time-investiment resources that can be exploited in perpetuity.

When I asked my students what should we humans, and especially humans in the creative fields, do, I was glad that most of them agreed that AI needs to be properly and ethically regulated. And hopefully, the media industry will come to this realization as well and by itself. It needs to start self-regulating without waiting for the government to come down on it.

Freedom of expression and entrepreneurship should be allies in this, especially for creatives who need to organize and stand together in the face of modern AI challenges. Because, you know, we cannot ALL rely on using the AI like the person who created this film with good prompts. Many of us have ethics and understand the difference between high-quality original content and AI-generated chum and bubble gum that I'm sure will be flooding our screens and devices more and more and sooner and sooner.