Personally, I think a lot depends on your interpretation of the word ’creative’…

I don’t think AI used in the arts is in any way creative. It is essentially software sent out on the internet to copy and learn from already existing work, and then used to create music or illustration ‘in the style of’ any text prompt it gets. And while this is impressive in and of itself, it isn’t really ‘creating’ anything, it is imitating. It’s doing it very quickly and very cheaply, but it’s not creating in the sense of making something never heard or seen before.

The thing is, most commercial application of the arts doesn’t WANT anything new, challenging, different. It wants something comfortable, something familiar, something that appeals to the demographic the user wants. The only way to appeal to a specific demographic is by aping what they already listen to, read, or watch. That is the main need of commercial art.

As great as some have pushed commercial art, it is extremely rare to find anything utterly original. Even things like John Williams doing film scores, it is still, in essence, a distillation of orchestration styles and writing long familiar to classical music listeners. Most of the avant gard would be difficult to meld with say a science fiction soap opera or an adventure potboiler!

That’s not to say it doesn’t happen from time to time (Ligeti with 2001 A Space Odyssey for instance or the electronic soundscape of Forbidden Planet) but by and large, art for anything but its own sake is pretty familiar. Perfect for a technology that copies existing art.

I’d love to hear Russ’s input on this topic, as he is the one closest involved in that aspect of the industry.

We need to be careful though. We are binding together all kinds of different technologies and calling them all ‘AI’, but they don’t all operate the same way. Interactive large language model AI’s used for things like customer service and things like that aren’t exactly the same as video generation tools or music generation.

There’s upsides and downsides to any new technology, but the one thing driving it all is money. Those AI server farms cost billions. In today’s political climate, I honestly don’t expect to see any significant pushback or legislation because primarily they benefit the ultra wealthy, who apparently have a stranglehold on our legislators.

It’s hard to stop a boulder once rolling downhill. Best to get out of its way!