Sidequest.cool

It has been some time since I wrote here. So let’s get zesty.

Since my layoff in September and subsequent freelancing adventures, I’ve spent a considerable amount of time on LinkedIn. It’s one of the foulest, most rancid social media platforms to exist and is effectively a conglomeration of some of the worst posts around.

I hate it, and one thing that’s starting to grate is the number of AI bods who genuinely don’t understand creativity. They think art, filmmaking and every other aspect of the creative field is something to be commodified and churned out in aid of lining pockets.

This is obvious. The C-suite would love to ensure that they had not only full control over the output – which they already do – but not have to really pay for it. AI provides that in spades, but it’s also built on theft and using it makes you quite untrustworthy.

I don’t think that a lot of those promoting generative artificial intelligence truly understand what they’re working with. It’s not been well explained and the industry has gravitated towards masking its massive problems behind cute words and hyped up marketing.

The worst

Generative AI is the worst AI technology. Most AI you’d see out in professional fields like medical and surveillance industries are often rebadged machine learning projects. It’s what an “AI Agent”, that companies like OpenAI are now working towards, will presumably be.

A piece of software trained on reams of data to do a task. I’m currently building an “AI” CCTV with a Raspberry Pi and the Hailo-8L NPU, but it’s not “artificial intelligence”, it’s a piece of software (Frigate) using a data set to track similar points of data (humans, birds).

Generative AI is similar, except, as confessed by Sam Altman (CEO of OpenAI) and effectively confessed by teams at Meta, is trained on stolen works. It doesn’t stop at harvesting the human work on Stack Overflow to make programming easier, it has eaten and provably stolen large swaths of media, art and everything in between. Entire libraries consumed in the name of… levelling the playing field? I think?

The latest offenders, OpenAI, have taken the great art of Studio Ghibli, whose top director Hayao Miyazaki has previously called a demo using an early form of generative tech “an insult to life”. This was accomplished because in a bizarre move for a copyright friendly country like Japan, has allowed almost any works to be stolen and turned into greasy mulch for fun.

And like the accused, its defenders, users and profiteers are quick to promote how good this actually is for the world. A system that is actively killing the planet for capitalism isn’t something that I’d want to be working with. A system that is stealing works from your peers, legends and so many more is not something I’d use in a creative company.

Generative AI is theft

The Ghibli “filter” had sprawled itself across my LinkedIn feed. A tonne of people have used it to show off the new OpenAI tool. One example was a lifted video from another OpenAI user – they’re nothing more – that “reimagined” Lord of the Rings as a Ghibli movie.

It’s a grotesquely ugly sequence of data, mushed together in the vague hope that it can recreate the artistry of Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings. It doesn’t even hold a candle to the rough-and-tumble rotoscoped Ralph Bakshi directed 1970s epic. It would disgust Tolkien, someone whose entire trilogy urges the saving and preservation of nature.

Now his works have been pushed through the slop machine, malformed and grotesque. Fraudulent claims of artistry, as cries of levelling a playing field are made. A playing field that people in tech don’t fucking understand, because art doesn’t need to be perfect to be perfect.

There is, from each perspective, bad art. There are bad ideas. It doesn’t mean that it’s inherently bad, it just means tastes differ. Art is an expression of the self, how that’s expressed and created is fundamentally human. Even if it’s not technically sound.

Without the human behind it, there’s no art. There’s nothing. Just lines of code based off another’s work for you to convert into the same thing you can already watch, but with a new look.

Another found the “improvements” between versions of OpenAI’s image generator and showed them off. The comments are filled with faceless brands all celebrating it as if a first-born baby took its first shit in the potty.

It’s nothing. Again, it’s literally nothing. There’s no expression, no point, nothing to it. It’s a falsehood disguised as tech improvement. Oh, so now it can actually “draw” a skeleton in the style of a dozen artists the AI was trained on? Nothing was learnt in the process, no one takes anything from it. It’s not art.

Business AI fools

I found that post because a director at a company I used to work for, which sells and promotes equipment to creatives in the world. Clearly, on the face of it then, I wouldn’t regard them as a place I’d buy my next lens or piece of hardware from, if they actively promote artistry theft.

Then, we come to LinkedIn’s main user: the business bod. The person who, most likely, doesn’t understand and just wants their life to be easier. One example I’ve seen pointed out that the fingers were right in their post. Do you know how embarrassing that it is for you?

That you, as someone in charge of a creative ad campaign, couldn’t find a person to hold a candle from a brand you represent? Do you know how little I’d trust your creatives behind the scenes if I knew that they couldn’t organise and make a – fairly basic – set for taking pictures on.

LinkedIn is already a puddle of shit, with people having to traipse through it to ensure they have work. Now, it’s riddled with the pathetic. This limp attempt at trying to be creative, instead of hiring the people who know exactly what to do. The people who have dedicated themselves to crafting in the aid of promotion.

Generative AI cannot replace a human being. It cannot do anything but steal the likeness and use the skin as a disguise to trick people into thinking that it’s the way forward.

If that doesn’t sink in for the LinkedIn AI crowd, it’s bad for business.

Featured image: Microsoft