AI can frustrate if it pretends to be us
Recently, I had a conversation with someone in which we challenged each other on some AI points but also found many areas we agreed on.
While I myself am neither a raging supporter of “everything AI”, I am also not against it. But in general, it frustrates me.
We spoke about an example of Spotify which allows AI artists and even gives them a blue checkmark verified artist
.
One view on that is to treat AI music generation as an instrument. Someone learned a guitar and made a track, someone learned Ableton and made a track and someone used some prompts and made a track. Theoretically, all of these are just instruments producing “same” result. Practically - very different paths to this “same” result.
Same with other media - a photographer who got a camera, figured out the settings, found a good spot, interesting perspective, was there at the right time and produced a shot, versus creative prompting that would produce, possibly very similar shot.
So we started debating about “who is the true artist”, who is the true creative. The one who puts in time and effort into a more complicated process (classic intstruments/tools) or the one who solely uses AI, or even just digital (music DAW, Photoshop, 3D, etc.).
And then it sort of dawned on me that I have no issue with, for example, musicians who either learned and played a real piano their whole life, versus someone using Logic/Ableton/etc. with even sample packs, loops, etc. I see them both as musicians. Though “AI musician” gives me “emotional rash”. Why?
Pretence! That’s why.
AI tools and their use have not yet fully settled into a normal slot. It is still “pretending” to be someone else. It still “hides” its identity and “pretends” that the results were created by the “old process”, the human process.
And I realized that, for me, if I am browsing the offerings (music, images, videos, etc.) with a clear differentiator of what’s the classical guitar, what’s the electro mix, and what is AI gen, I actually wouldn’t mind that. I would see this indeed as a new form of creative tooling that helps people create more. And if I want to listen to some classical music because I want to hear how, back in time, composers created their masterpieces - I would filter for them, and when I want to consume volumes of AI-generated content and explore that - I would also filter for that.
But in today’s state, we have not yet fully designated a spot for AI tools. They are there, but everyone uses them to basically “pretend” to still be of human, manual origin.
I can imagine AI music festivals, AI photo exhibitions, AI books and poems, AI cooking shows, and so on. I just want to be able to filter it out or in, depending on what I need at this very moment.
This line of thinking started to excite me; it relieved my frustration, and I thought that, yes, I could even watch an AI movie if one came, if that’s what I wanted to watch at that moment. If I have the choice of choosing which content I consume, instead of being force-fed something pretending to be something else.