Pointless banality and the uncanny valley The folks at TryAI put Fable to the test in directing a music video.
The AI glitches show up from the start and continue. But it’s even more unsettling than this.
When AI tries to create and direct joyous human dancing, it fails. The dancers look like retired accountants at a wedding. The stiff awkwardness jumps out at us… and yet, if aliens were to compare this to footage of actual humans dancing, it probably seems very similar.
Throughout the video, each activity portrayed is directly related to the lyrics, awkward and, to be honest, stupid. Again, those aliens are wondering if celebrating this sort of time-wasting is the best we could do.
As I (re)watched it, I wondered what would happen if actual humans reshot this, frame by frame, move by move, with real people in it. It would probably come across as ironic, insightful and wickedly funny.
I expect two cultural shifts to come out of this era of awkward banality:
- a hip new clunkiness. The same way that beautiful type was elbowed out by grunge lettering on social media, there’s a sort of lowbrow hipness to doing this so poorly.
- a new appreciation for work that embraces and celebrates what humans are capable of. It’s not enough to stuff fast food in a cardboard box and announce you’re done. We can get a robot to do that now. If it’s worth our effort, it’s worth raising our standards.