Sloppy McSlopface

'Some people worry that artificial intelligence will make us feel inferior, but then, anybody in his right mind should have an inferiority complex every time he looks at a flower.'

Alan Kay

It seems everyone is writing about our (not-so) old friend and enemy, AI (Artificial Intelligence). Depending on who you ask, it is either humanity's greatest saviour or the very thing that will destroy us. For a long time, I belonged firmly to the latter camp, but I have since come to accept that AI exists as a nebulous entity that encompasses many possibilities, yet only partially fulfils any of them.

At best, AI is an assistant, and one can choose either to embrace it or pass it by. In a remarkably short space of time, AI has become embedded in our everyday lives, so to claim, "I don't use AI," is somewhat redundant. Perhaps it is more accurate to say that we do not intentionally use AI, should that be the decision we make.

As this blog is primarily about photography and art, I'll leave the socio-political verbiage to those far more qualified to comment. Instead, I would rather address the elephant in the room when it comes to photography and image manipulation.

Last night, I watched a video by YouTube luminary Unmesh Dinda, whose channel Piximperfect teaches users the often daunting intricacies of Photoshop. His Jedi-like skills never fail to impress me, but it was his latest video, 10 Photoshop Skills AI Just Made Obsolete, that I found particularly interesting. I was equally intrigued by the title. The phrase suggests that these skills no longer exist, yet as the video demonstrated, the skills themselves have not disappeared; they have simply been replaced by new ones that accelerate the process. There are now new skills to learn, allowing users to work faster and, supposedly, more efficiently. However, this is not the elephant I speak of. At present, many AI companies present their products as a panacea for all our creative woes. Yet, increasingly, it appears that AI and humans operate in symbiosis. AI requires human-generated data to feed its algorithms, while humans seemingly 'need' AI to achieve these new accelerated goals.

Take a look at Spotify's ever-expanding catalogue of AI-generated music, entire books released on Audible and narrated by AI, YouTube video slop, or photographs riddled with endless flaws. Most of these AI productions are merely a text prompt away from completion. Precious little is added to the process beyond the creator cycling through variations, tweaking prompts and refining outputs until, bosh, the slop is complete. There is no craft in this process. No mark-making, no considered approach, nothing that makes the work feel authentic, simply rinse and repeat.

What we need to be aware of is the rapid advance of AI and the speed at which our expectations of quality are being diminished. There are outliers who stand as a firewall against this endless deluge of mediocrity, calling it out for what it is, but slop is slop. Whether encountered on a café menu or an album cover, this acclimatisation to the average is, for me as a creative, the most concerning aspect of contemporary AI. And this can only intensify as AGI (Artificial General Intelligence) continues to develop, released and complete on an totally accepting audience.

My take is simple: Keep Cavē. Stay aware and do not unquestioningly accept what you see. Slop comes in many forms, and images are but one manifestation. We must accept that technological advances bring immense possibility, but that is not to say that technological advancement automatically guarantees improvement.

We should remember that not all that shines is gold, and not all that claims intelligence truly is.