Speaker A
A couple of days ago, I stumbled across a video on TikTok that started like this.
Paul Platt explores the real issues with AI art, focusing on its impact on creativity, entertainment, and human engagement rather than just quality.
Key Takeaways
- AI art is not just about quality but about its impact on creativity and culture.
- The algorithm-driven content landscape favors quantity over meaningful artistic expression.
- Human creativity and the 'human fingerprint' remain essential in art and storytelling.
- AI tools can be powerful if used thoughtfully but pose risks if they replace human effort.
- Consumers' attention shapes the future of content, often favoring entertainment over art.
Summary
- Paul Platt discusses discovering an AI-generated analog horror series called Angel Engine and its implications.
- He highlights the growing presence of AI in creative industries like TV, movies, voice acting, and graphic design.
- The video examines how AI-generated content is becoming more common and questions what happens when AI art improves.
- Platt contrasts AI content with traditional art and entertainment, noting a growing divide between the two.
- He explains how the algorithm era has drastically lowered distribution costs, leading to an influx of low-effort content.
- The video argues that AI art discussions should shift focus from quality to broader cultural and economic impacts.
- Platt reflects on human consumption habits shifting towards entertainment with less artistic depth.
- He warns about the loss of human creativity and the risks of over-reliance on AI-generated content.
- The video touches on the philosophical and societal consequences of AI replacing human artistic expression.
- Platt calls for thoughtful use of AI as a tool rather than letting it replace human creativity entirely.
Chapters
- 00:00Introduction and discovery of AI analog horror series
- 00:57AI's impact on creative industries and job displacement
- 02:32AI content in everyday media and its perceived quality
- 04:43Algorithm era and the democratization of content distribution
- 06:52Critique of AI art discussions focusing on quality
- 09:12Human creativity versus AI-generated content
- 13:38Societal and philosophical implications of AI in art
- 23:01Conclusion and call for responsible AI use
Full Transcript — Download SRT & Markdown
Speaker B
How bad's the pain from 1 to 10? [Music]
Speaker C
10.
Speaker D
Good.
Speaker E
It's a good hook. It's got sort of an analog horror vibe, and it stuck with me. So much so that I actually scrolled past and then I returned. I wanted to know more.
Speaker F
I think this one's good to go. What do you say? This is an episode of the TikTok series Angel Engine, an analog horror series about an angel who descends from heaven to come to the earth, who's captured, and whose energy
Speaker F
is harnessed to power the world, ushering in an era of prosperity. And here's the thing, it's AI. Not the writing, not the memorable part, but the voices and art isn't made by the human hand, it's generated. As AI continues to sweep through industries, decimating white-collar entry-level jobs everywhere, it seems like every group is waiting with bated breath asking,
Speaker F
"Well, they can't possibly replace me, can they? Can it?" It was announced a couple of weeks ago that Amazon was investing in a studio dedicated to making AI TV and movies. And as the film and television industry still hasn't fully recovered from the strike, and more and more voice acting and graphic design jobs are slowly being outsourced to AI, there's been at least one
Speaker F
recurring saving grace. Well, it can't make anything good.
Speaker A
Bye-bye. [Music]
Speaker B
If you see her walking alone at night, don't stop. Don't speak. Just run. She is Rokur Kubi.
Speaker B
I mean, it's clearly just a lot of garbage, you know, like a whole lot of nothing. But as I watched Angel Engine, I began to ask myself a question for the first time. What if it figures out how
Speaker B
to make something that's not completely terrible? What happens? What will happen when AI art is good? There's clearly no AI Citizen Kane yet. If you look up best AI art, basically everything that comes up is just advertisements for products that create AI art. As much as I've enjoyed Angel Engine, while the art is AI generated, the actual story is written and produced
Speaker B
by an account called Unearly Guy, presumably a human. But he got his start in the game by producing lots and lots of AI content. Stuff like what your favorite character would look like as Studio Ghibli art. The sort of stuff that if you scroll long enough, eventually you'll stumble upon. Ever so slowly, AI content is beginning to creep into our lives. A couple of weeks ago, a
Speaker B
bunch of people got tricked by that video of a bunch of bunnies jumping on a trampoline. And in a way, that doesn't seem that bad. It's not like everything else the average person scrolls through is such high caliber. Take the environmental concerns away, and is this video of a lady jumping into a pool really that much worse than all the other crap we consume every day? Videos
Speaker B
of bottles rolling down the stairs, and guess which one of us is the drummer? Or these couples shooting each other with Nerf guns? Or did baby Gronk rip up Livy Dune? I don't think there's any depth to an AI kitten skydiving, but is there any depth to this?
Speaker C
Thanks, bowling ball. Real bowling ball. What? These AI videos feel like to me less of a new thing and more of an extension of a phenomenon that's been on the rise for the last two decades. We as humans are consuming more and more entertainment
Speaker C
and less and less art. Ten years ago, if I was bored or lazy, I would watch an episode of a TV show or like read a comic or something. And now I find myself consuming the oh-so-dreaded
Speaker C
content. And while you and me both still watch good TV shows and movies and read good books, the ratio of time we spend consuming pure entertainment is gaining on art. And it's because the Venn diagram of art and entertainment is growing increasingly distant. For a very long time, most of the entertainment that people consumed was on some level art. While maybe you aren't going to be
Speaker C
profoundly moved by a B-movie horror flick or an episode of All in the Family or Archie comics, each of those was the product of hundreds of hours of deliberate choices and decisions. Even if they were bad, they all represented a specific worldview, a specific point of view. Even the garbage back then would at least have the decency to be embarrassed that it was garbage and try
Speaker C
and defend its quality. So why the change? What happened? Before the algorithm era, distribution was a hugely expensive and time-consuming process. Whether it was getting what you made on TV or getting published in a magazine, it involved logistics in transport and convincing gatekeepers to give you a shot. And if you were going to invest money and time in something, then you
Speaker C
were incentivized to make it good because you didn't have infinite chances. But the almighty algorithm has essentially made the price of distribution so low that it's essentially free. You don't even have to build a fan base. Your stuff will just be shown to people, which you know has its advantages. Thank you to the algorithm for, you know, all of this. So
Speaker C
now everyone is making stuff all day every day. And if you can make hundreds of hours of content on your phone for free, the algorithm incentivizes you to do just that. And the price of that is that we've become inundated with content that lacks complexity, care, or meaning. It's not like things like America's Funniest Home Videos didn't used to exist. But even then the videos were
Speaker C
curated and there were jokes in between and there was a competition format. There was no avenue to watch hot knife versus random object. And now there is and people are watching a lot. As distribution costs reach zero and production costs reach zero too because everybody's got a camera in their pocket now, the only real cost left is time. And as we offload more and more to AI,
Speaker C
that's disappearing too. Soon you won't need to write a sketch or sing a song. Now you don't even need to buy a knife. And the worrying thing is that we as consumers are okay with this. Maybe not consciously, but many of these videos have millions of views. We're voting with our attention. And this is what we want. Art and entertainment have become decoupled to such an insane extent. So
Speaker C
much so that even without the human fingerprint being involved in it, Angel Engine, when I stumble across it, feels much more interesting than a lot of the other stuff that I'm watching. Is the use of AI to make the images really that much worse than all the other garbage that we see out there? The comments on every Angel Engine video seem to think so. Uh, and I do too.
Speaker C
Act two. I'm a big believer in not letting robots dream for us. Robots cannot reflect the human condition for us. Nicholas Cage. Months before I saw Angel Engine, something terrible happened to me. Uh, I stumbled across an AI video that I liked. It was a video of a bunch of AI people responding to the idea that they were prompts.
Speaker D
Honestly, the biggest red flag is when the guy believes in the prompt theory. Like, really? We came from prompts? Wake up, man.
Speaker E
Vote for me and I'll ban the prompt theory from schools. There's no place for that nonsense in our lives. Now, I don't know if the script for this was generated or whether it was directed by a person or what, but I found the video interesting. Probably just because it
Speaker E
was meta in the way that I like. I don't have an answer for why I specifically thought this one was good and not the other ones that I stumbled across. Maybe I'm just falling for this meme, which I
Speaker E
see a lot anytime somebody freaks out about AI. Act like you're a scary robot. I'm a scary robot. No. And Angel Engine, even though the writing is human, the art is made by AI by Midjourney to be specific. And I like what I've seen of Angel Engine. See, when guided correctly, AI is a tool and maybe even a tool that can be wielded well. But everyone's missing the point with the
Speaker E
recent discussions around AI art. Discussions around AI art need to stop focusing on quality. That's not what this is about. There's a much more important route. That being said, here's a really quick discussion about AI art an
Speaker E
It doesn't. It can't make anything new. I mean, what most people consider to be AI isn't even named AI. It's an LLM. What it really is is just the synthesis of billions of words and all of the writing of the internet. And what it's done is it's made an amazing technically impressive autocomplete. A couple of months ago, there was a pretty major paper released by Apple about AI and
Speaker E
about how it's not thinking, it just has the illusion of thinking. When tasked with puzzles, it gave up at a threshold that given enough time, you or I could figure out. I know we all read things all day every day from like the news or Twitter about how AI is going to revolutionize every single industry. I see so many articles quoting like a wild prediction from a guy who would make a
Speaker E
lot of money if that prediction came true. Like, oh, Sam Alman, the CEO of Chat GPT, thinks that ChatGpt is going to be important. Breaking news. Beeper salesman predicts big summer for beepers. What I'm trying to say is that the straits may not be as dire as we think. The best AI art that I've come across has been only in service of good writing. But I think even if that wasn't
Speaker E
the case, it wouldn't matter. Is Angel Engine good because of its use of AI or in spite of its use of AI? Doesn't matter. If I asked an LLM to generate me a movie and it did with a full
Speaker E
beginning, middle, and end and it popped out, wouldn't matter. If I asked AI to make me a crime movie and it popped out the actual Godfather, it wouldn't matter. See, as we cope and frame the problems with AI like it's one of quality, we seed ground to the enemy by allowing them into the arena in the first place. We're giving them something to fix. Because the problem at the core
Speaker E
of AI isn't about quality. It's a spiritual one. Every artistic movement from the beginning of time is an attempt to figure out a way to smuggle more of what the artist thinks is reality into the work of art. David Shields. I think at best art is an invitation for connection. This is what the world looks like to me. Come into my living room and take a look around. Every proper artist
Speaker E
is more or less a realist according to his own eyes. Zola, the problem with AI art is that AI doesn't have eyes. It doesn't have a worldview. It has amalgamated billions of words and millions of pieces of writing into an unimaginably large faceless mass. It takes whatever sharp edges of human experience that we have and it sands it down. It filters it through everybody.
Speaker E
What happens when AI art is good? It can't be. It never will be. It's only capable of making entertainment. It's patently incapable of creating art. All of the best art and even the worst art is a reflection of the individual or individuals. It's why people are obsessed with a cinema. People who have a singular vision from top to bottom. It's why popthe heads make fun of other
Speaker E
pop singers who don't write their own music and venerate their singers for writing it all on their own. It's why every time Jonathan Franson does an interview, all anybody wants to know is what part of his writing is reflection of his real life upbringing. The most interesting part of art has always been and always will be the human fingerprints that are left behind. The
Speaker E
problem with AI art is that every piece of it is written by committee. It can't have a worldview. Angeline's mystique is man-made. Its art is just a rehash, a boring fimile of Evangelian. The Studio Ghibli trend was just a rehash of something real. Just as you can tell that every time a movie has 15 screenwriters that it's going to suck, AI is just millions of screenwriters on
Speaker E
everything that you make. Who cares? The stylistic developments that AI regurgitates back to us, it's patently incapable of developing on its own. So much of art is found in serendipity.
Speaker E
Jaws is one of the greatest films of all time because of its score and the tension generated by a single fin in the water. But that's not what Spielberg wanted to do. Spielberg wanted to show the shark more, but it kept malfunctioning. And because of that, he had to find a different way to generate tension. Instead of showing the shark, they hinted at it, increasing the
Speaker E
tension with that iconic score. And it worked. He went on to say that shark not working was a godsend. That could never happen with AI. A John Williams score can be regurgitated by it, but it can never be originated by it. In my opinion, the best bits, the best jokes are when somebody says something and you think, "Oh, how did I never think of that?" When somebody crystallizes a
Speaker E
universal human experience and puts it into words for the first time. Language models can't do that. They'll never be able to push any mediums forward because what human experience do they have to offer? What insight? They literally can't notice things. So much great art and artistic progress happens through people who push the boundaries forward. And while yes,
Speaker E
humans are beings that create things based off of synthesis, they're all filtered through our unique human experience. If you and I both watch the Super Bowl, we're going to both experience the exact same thing completely differently depending on who we are and what teams we root for. An AI can only make things based off of stuff that other people have already made. It
Speaker E
can't make anything new. It's just like a big game of telephone and so much is lost in the process. When people emphasize that AI can't make quality art, they're moving the goalposts.
Speaker E
They're letting it into the arena. And if you're like, "Yeah, okay, whatever. AI can't make art, but it can make entertainment. Isn't that distinction super pretentious?" Uh, and to that I say, yes, it is. But I also think it's important. [Music] Every few months, I see a new study pop up polling American and Chinese children, and it's always like, "The
Speaker E
average Chinese 8-year-old wants to be an astronaut, and the average American child wants to be a movie star, and this is why we're falling behind." W But as somebody who's been paying attention to these for years, I think there's a much more interesting trend in place. In the past decade, American children's dreams of being a rock star or a movie star have been replaced with dreams of being
Speaker E
a YouTuber or an influencer. And while those are similar in some ways, I think it's an important distinction. For a long time, if you were a kid and you dreamed about fame or prestige, it came at the end of a craft or a work. A dream of being a movie star just by byproduct involves a dream of being part of the creation of a movie. A rock star involves being musical. The fame is an
Speaker E
extension of an act. The children, even if not consciously, are still dreaming of being artists. But what is a YouTuber or an influencer? Not that there aren't high quality artistically valuable things happening on those platforms, but I don't think that's most of what it is. And I don't think that's part of the dream. I'm always astounded by the amount of people on the YouTube
Speaker E
subreddits talking about faceless channels and niches. It's like, why are you even doing this? The dreams of our children represent our societal values. Just as presumably the children of Sparta dreamed about glory in combat and the children in medieval England dreamed about being landed gentry, the switch from our kids dreaming about making art to dreaming about making entertainment
Speaker E
or content is indicative of a larger societal trend. We're downstream of something. How much longer until our children stop dreaming of making their own entertainment and start dreaming about asking a robot to make it for them? Act three. But Paul But Paul, you say, "I'm a human. I'm not a robot. I've got a worldview. I can mold and prompt this robot to do
Speaker E
whatever I want it to do. It's just a tool. A hammer can't dream, but does that make the house that it builds count for less?" And to that I say, "Good question." But let me answer with a really long anecdote. A couple of months ago, I was hanging out with this girl and we were both getting some work done on our laptops. I was working on a thumbnail and she was working on some
Speaker E
schoolwork for college. And I looked over and she was like, "Haha, don't judge me." And she was copying and pasting her homework into chat GPT and then posting the answers. And it's like, yeah, she doesn't care about an astronomy 101 class that she's taking just cuz she needs the credit. And her teacher doesn't care about some minor homework assignment for an introlevel
Speaker E
community college course. So, like, why not? Why not use it? I saw a really fascinating graph showing chat GPT use declined dramatically when summer break began. And I've seen so many articles about how both students and teachers are relying on it all day every day. How teachers are using it to create and grade assignments and how students are using it to complete those assignments.
Speaker E
And I've been thinking about that astronomy homework a lot cuz this was a really smart, well- readad woman who I really respected. But here she was telling her prompt, "Write it like a 23-year-old. Make sure not to use any M dashes." just so that she could convince her robot to trick her teacher's robot into thinking it was human. Even if AI is a tool, it costs us something. It
Speaker E
detracts from our humanity. And maybe that's a price you're willing to pay for homework, but for art, for everything. One of the challenges with discussions around AI is that it's so broad and it covers so many bases. So much of what we think about as AI is just an algorithm that's been brushed up for marketing purposes. What does the work gain from you meticulously cutting a guy out of
Speaker E
the background compared to just pressing the remove background button? Probably nothing. But generative AI using it to make something from scratch, skipping to the end result without any of the middle parts. I know this is silly, but I think so much about the movie Click. Adam Sandler gets a remote that lets him pause and skip time. So, he begins to use it to get through fights with his
Speaker E
wife or stressful days at work or boring dance recital. And what ends up happening is his remote picks up on his patterns and begins automatically skipping through those moments. By the end of the movie, Adam Sandler can't stop it and his remote skips through all of his life, the stress, the negative, and the positive. It's a shockingly moving film for a movie that also
Speaker E
includes this scene. If we offload the pinnacle of human experience and wealth, the opportunity to get to express oneself and create something, then what are we doing? Our fathers were soldiers and farmers, so we could be lawyers and doctors, so our children could be artists and poets, John Adams. We're greatly privileged to get to act and write and sing and create things. And if we're willing to skip to
Speaker E
the end of that, too, then what are we here for? generate me a painting and then, you know, let's turn on an AI TV show and let's get a drone to bring us food and, you know, I'll text my chat
Speaker E
GPT girlfriend on my phone. Let's just let's just get rid of all the human parts of the human experience. Let's just skip right to the end. There's a quote from Marcus Aurelius that I love, and it's a long one, but it's worth it. At dawn, when you have trouble getting out of bed, tell yourself, "I have to go to work as a human being. What do I have to complain
Speaker E
of if I'm going to do what I was born for, the things I was brought into the world to do? Or is this what I was created for, to huddle under the blankets and stay warm? So, you were
Speaker E
born to feel nice instead of doing things and experiencing them. Don't you see the plants, the birds, the ants, and spiders and bees going about their individual tasks, putting the world in order as best they can, and you're not willing to do your job as a human being? Why aren't you running to do what your nature demands? You don't love yourself enough or you'd love your nature too and
Speaker E
what it demands of you. As evidenced by the decline of its use during the summer break, AI is primarily a cheating tool. But it's not just cheating school. It's cheating you out of your ability and your opportunity to be human. The thing with AI art is the only one losing out is you. AI will make art accessible for everyone. It already was. Every time you choose to use AI to skip to the end, the
Speaker E
only one losing out is yourself. If you can't write or sing or act or dance or dream anymore, you're denying your own nature. What are you here for? And I'm torn on Angeline. Unearly Guide the Creator confuses me. His backlog of work prior to Angel Engine is almost all AI slop, Studio Ghibli stuff, and like uh this is what your favorite character would look like in a different art
Speaker E
style. But Angel Engine is good. And even if it's not your cup of tea or you like much more niche, hip analog horror than I do, it's something. It's interesting, and people are connecting with it. Is it the creator's responsibility to not use AI visuals, even if maybe the visual arts aren't something they're passionate about or interested in? If they can't afford to
Speaker E
pay a creator, is it their moral duty to not create anything at all? I don't know. I can't offer an answer that's completely satisfying because it turns out life is complicated. It's not that AI isn't convenient or that it can't be useful, but it's a pact with the devil. How much of your humanity are you willing to outsource, to sell off? Angel Engine is such a fascinating example
Speaker E
because it's about technological overreach. It's about the price that humanity pays to achieve progress. An angel descends from heaven, something that exists beyond our wildest imaginations. And the way humans use it sacrifices our own humanity. Like the kid who can no longer figure out how to complete an assignment without chat GBT, or the lawyer who can't figure out how
Speaker E
to send an email with that one, or the programmer who's lost when he runs out of tokens. Where is the end of the slippery slope? And usually these sorts of videos end with somebody being like, "The world is terrible. Everything's going down the toilet. We can never go back." So rarely do these sorts of videos have like a happy ending, but this one does. Every top comment on
Speaker E
Angel Engine videos are people criticizing the use of AI. Almost all the discussions around it aren't about the series itself, but about its use of artificial intelligence. And now, finally, the creator has commissioned a real artist to make the visuals for the series. The most recent episode is man-made. That's a win generated by us, by cultural pressure, by people
Speaker E
believing in something and believing in the human experience. And look, I've used AI before. Not a ton, but I was fascinated by it. I was curious about it. And I bet you've used it, too. But as I've thought more and more deeply about it, I've decided I'm done with it. I'm swearing off of it. In a world where everyone else is becoming less human, is outsourcing the point of all of this to
Speaker E
something else, there's an actual solution, and it's you and me. You don't need to be perfect, and you don't need to have been. But every time you choose not to use AI, you're making a decision to be more human than the other people who are letting it diminish their own human experience. I can ask AI to generate me a an image of a cave painting and it will be technically
Speaker E
complex. But there is nothing more meaningful to me than images of this cave painting. It's just hands on walls, but it's so powerful. We were here. We were alive. So go make art and write a song and make a puppet and wear a costume. the the poem that you wrote in your notes app 6 months ago will tipsy outside of a bar. That terrible, terrible poem is worth literally 10,000
Speaker E
times more artistically than any poem or piece of anything generated by a robot ever will be. Art is a celebration of your life. So go out there and make something. Go out there and be human.
Speaker E
Special thanks to John Howard, Parker Burgett, and JP King, my patreons. Yes, I started a Patreon account. These videos take a lot of time to make because I do it all by myself. So, if you want to support me being able to keep doing this, go give that a check out. Um, these videos will release a couple days before and there's some extra stuff on there that I think is
Speaker E
fun. Um, but thank you guys so much for watching. Please like and subscribe. Um, and have a great day. Go have fun and have a great day. Go be human.
Topics:AI artanalog horrorAngel Engineartificial intelligencecontent creationalgorithmentertainmentcreativitydigital artmedia industry
