I recently learned Netflix and other streaming providers now create content with the assumption of being a “second screen”. They repeat plot points and dumb it down so that people scrolling on their phones and only halfway paying attention can still follow along. We’re down a bad path in general and AI sure isn’t helping. Maybe the next step is AI summaries so people don’t even have to watch the AI slop content in the first place?
AI was sold as a tool to liberate humans from boring work. Somehow we got the opposite: humans lose creative jobs while machines mass produce disposable content nobody asked for. What an inspiring future: fewer artists, fewer writers, fewer careers, and an infinite ocean of algorithmic sludge.
My boss constantly says, “Use AI,” and after a whole day of prompting I have a large body of work that basically isn’t mine and I receive zero satisfaction from it.
That’s “zero or negative value algorithmic sludge.” Nobody wants to pay for it, often having it around devalues the experience, the platform you’re trying to sell it through and devalues all other products on that platform. There is some small minority able to squeeze money out of this I guess so they keep doing it.
I feel like the more I use AI at work, the more I feel like it’s replacing the things I actually enjoy doing, leaving me with the leftovers.
As someone who plays live music, the live gig scene is on the up, I think because people are sick of the slop and want assured human connection.
I can see mixed medium performances like Cloud Cult becoming more popular as we move into the AI future.
Yeah, no one is going to go out of their way to buy an album by suno. No one is going to buy tickets to see two server racks on stage. Just sitting there with AI hallucinations flickering on a screen behind them. Even if I happen to find some of the sounds they produce appealing.
Every time I discover a seemingly new artist with an intriguing sound. The moment I find out that it’s some dumbasses “solo” project realized through AI. They’re blacklisted forever. Go download a DAW and at least put in the basic effort.
Anything generated, no matter how appealing it might seem in the moment. Is ultimately disposable trash. If it wasn’t authored and crafted with deep intentionality by someone you might identity or connect with. It won’t last and no one will care about it. People don’t listen to groups like joy division just for the sound of it. But because of the explicit creativity and brutal emotion. 50 years on and they are still relevant at least to other artists. Could even the same be said of Britney Spears, who hasn’t been around as long and is still alive where Ian is long dead? What chance does a parroting simulacrum have?
Honestly I think the real takeaway is how much media was already just slop used to sell ads to begin with.
Yeah, I’d wager many of the people losing the jobs over this weren’t producing much of value in the first place.
One year later… “Why doesn’t anyone want to pay for our slop tv show/movie/book/song/videogame? I wonder if our company can get a bailout from the government?”
One of the worst stretches so far!
Creative industry was already creatively bankrupt by pandering to all these weird fetishists online
