If you're not on X (twitter, whatever) you may not be familiar with these new AI Influencers. Basically they're porn bots. The photos are created with AI. They have tens, hundreds of thousands of followers. They clearly state in their bios that they are not real - that they're "AI Influencers," and yet the comments are full of thousands of men posting how hot they are, asking for more photos, offering to pay for more, interacting with them like they're real. It's a sad state of affairs for humanity, yes.
How many of the men consumming AI porn are real and how many are bots prompted up to normalize this. I don't think we are past the event horizon of widescale AI porn consumption, yet. There still something about real people providing these services even if everything else about it is fake. But you are probably right, and not just with porn. Ultimatly whats the diffence betweeen real people creating anything only to win favor by the algorithm and taking that last step to simply automate the creators themselves.
The internet is a hall of mirrors and the only way to navigate it is through authenticity
Assuming your prediction is right -- that there will be a point where people are fed up with the 'inauthentic' -- I wonder what that implies for live theater?
Unfortunately right now it's a worse woke sewer than Hollywood. Still, live theater is a lot harder to fake than a movie... Let's see.
Great essay. I’m a drummer in my sixties. When the “drum machines” and drum programming hit the music scene decades ago with the promise of ‘precision’ drumming we all felt a little threatened. It turned out to be way less than stellar and thankfully popular to a limited degree with artists who produced vapid pop music. Today it is prevalent in hip hop, the most popular genre of music. To each his own but to a person who appreciates the actual music of a band or artist I find hip hop unlistenable. “But the lyrics...”Okay, but are these artists really musicians? Sure the lyrics might be good or catchy, but the music is rarely inspiring. There is no substitute for a flesh and blood drummer. And good lyrics aren’t a substitute for good music. The onset of the programmed drums era also coincided with the horribly overused synthesizers that were so prevalent in music at the time, and the advent of MTV music videos. It seemed that musicianship and musical creativity became less important than the short film accompanying it. The quality of music has reached such a stage of blandness for this and the reasons you mentioned and I thank my lucky stars to have grown up in an era preceding MTV that produced so much fantastic music still widely played on classic music stations. There are a lot of great creative ‘starving’ artists and musicians today, you’ll just never hear them unless you seek them out on your own.
All this is to say that what we’ve seen in popular music’s trend toward mediocrity I’ll bet AI will go down a similar road. Like drum machine backed music, the boring sterility of it will be too much to bear for a lot of us. I hope so anyway.
Great article! I think you're right, many people are desperate for authentic voices these days -- but there's no doubt a large chunk of people who will be happy with their make-believe lives of fake relationships with fake women.
More handwringing in the tradition of Livy and Cicero about the degradation of society and the general lousiness of the next generation. The losers of today paying e-thots cash to look at naughty videos are the dorks of yesterday getting all excited over raunchy comic books and Hustler magazine. Normal people still interact in the real 3D meat world.
Dorks have always existed and frankly if the two-sided transaction of sex for cash is to continue, I think it is wonderful that now only one side of that soul-destroying trade exists. The dork being drained of his, er, cash, is still sacrificing his soul and sense of self-worth to do so, but now there is no real human female subjecting herself to degradation by fulfilling video requests from kinky weirdos with mommy issues.
This A.I. prostitution is a step in the right direction to limiting the damage done to girls and women who enter "sex work," as if that is not some horribly denigrating violation and just one more "job."
Bring on the bots to improve women's lives! May the dorks run out of cash and credit and be forced to go get a job in the real world, where they may form real relationships.
Get outside the grand casino where they endlessly play shadows on the cave wall for our entertainment - and theirs. There is a new sucker born every minute.
How many of the men consumming AI porn are real and how many are bots prompted up to normalize this. I don't think we are past the event horizon of widescale AI porn consumption, yet. There still something about real people providing these services even if everything else about it is fake. But you are probably right, and not just with porn. Ultimatly whats the diffence betweeen real people creating anything only to win favor by the algorithm and taking that last step to simply automate the creators themselves.
The internet is a hall of mirrors and the only way to navigate it is through authenticity
Great piece Keri. A good take on this new all consuming culture tool as well.🙂👌
“You like these moire artifacts? Yeah? My strangely drawn fingers making you shiver? Take these pixels. Take ‘em all.”
A side thought:
Assuming your prediction is right -- that there will be a point where people are fed up with the 'inauthentic' -- I wonder what that implies for live theater?
Unfortunately right now it's a worse woke sewer than Hollywood. Still, live theater is a lot harder to fake than a movie... Let's see.
That's just weird and creepy. It's like those dudes who have RealDolls.
They dress them and tote them around from place to place. People like that are nuts.
There's no way I would let some fruitcake with a giant doll watch my kids. 🤣😂
When will people stop making excuses for mental illness -- and just call it what it is?
Great essay. I’m a drummer in my sixties. When the “drum machines” and drum programming hit the music scene decades ago with the promise of ‘precision’ drumming we all felt a little threatened. It turned out to be way less than stellar and thankfully popular to a limited degree with artists who produced vapid pop music. Today it is prevalent in hip hop, the most popular genre of music. To each his own but to a person who appreciates the actual music of a band or artist I find hip hop unlistenable. “But the lyrics...”Okay, but are these artists really musicians? Sure the lyrics might be good or catchy, but the music is rarely inspiring. There is no substitute for a flesh and blood drummer. And good lyrics aren’t a substitute for good music. The onset of the programmed drums era also coincided with the horribly overused synthesizers that were so prevalent in music at the time, and the advent of MTV music videos. It seemed that musicianship and musical creativity became less important than the short film accompanying it. The quality of music has reached such a stage of blandness for this and the reasons you mentioned and I thank my lucky stars to have grown up in an era preceding MTV that produced so much fantastic music still widely played on classic music stations. There are a lot of great creative ‘starving’ artists and musicians today, you’ll just never hear them unless you seek them out on your own.
All this is to say that what we’ve seen in popular music’s trend toward mediocrity I’ll bet AI will go down a similar road. Like drum machine backed music, the boring sterility of it will be too much to bear for a lot of us. I hope so anyway.
Great article! I think you're right, many people are desperate for authentic voices these days -- but there's no doubt a large chunk of people who will be happy with their make-believe lives of fake relationships with fake women.
More handwringing in the tradition of Livy and Cicero about the degradation of society and the general lousiness of the next generation. The losers of today paying e-thots cash to look at naughty videos are the dorks of yesterday getting all excited over raunchy comic books and Hustler magazine. Normal people still interact in the real 3D meat world.
Dorks have always existed and frankly if the two-sided transaction of sex for cash is to continue, I think it is wonderful that now only one side of that soul-destroying trade exists. The dork being drained of his, er, cash, is still sacrificing his soul and sense of self-worth to do so, but now there is no real human female subjecting herself to degradation by fulfilling video requests from kinky weirdos with mommy issues.
This A.I. prostitution is a step in the right direction to limiting the damage done to girls and women who enter "sex work," as if that is not some horribly denigrating violation and just one more "job."
Bring on the bots to improve women's lives! May the dorks run out of cash and credit and be forced to go get a job in the real world, where they may form real relationships.
Win-Win-Win!
Get outside the grand casino where they endlessly play shadows on the cave wall for our entertainment - and theirs. There is a new sucker born every minute.
Very well written essay. Thank you for outlining an issue I was unfamiliar with previously. And also the Bradbury and Berry quotes at the end.
“You like these moire artifacts? Yeah? My strangely drawn fingers making you shiver? Take these pixels. Take ‘em all.”