Or - AI is not the future of art - it's the end of it!
A month or so ago, I wrote a post about AI. It was a humorous take on the mild panic that was skipping across the land. Although, most definitely standing in the front garden trying to prise the window open, it still felt as though it would be quite some time until AI was inside, stealing my TV and signed first editions.
But today I was listening to a song by Nick Cave. A beautiful song. Thoughtful, heart-wrenching, complicated, multi-layered, sung in Nick Cave’s unique and gut-wrenching style.
The desperate words and the attitude and the unpredictable nuance of his musical choices make the hairs stand up all over me and a sheen of shiver tremor across my back.
It’s the sort of song that no sooner does it end, than I want to hear it again. Genius wrapped in simplicity. And not everyone’s cup of tea, I get that. But that doesn’t mean I’m not right.
As an aside, Nick Cave was once nominated for an award by MTV after he and Kylie Minogue collaborated on a song. It was a recording that was about as far removed from a traditional Kylie pop song, without her getting a Mohican and learning to pogo with Sid Vicious, as it’s possible to get. The video, which I had never seen until three minutes ago, is pretty much, horrible - both in its creepiness and also in the failed GCSE drama acting skills of Mr. Cave, but I digress.
He turned down the MTV award, and all others he might ever be nominated for, because he said he was in competition with no one! Wow. Here’s his refusal in full…
Some people might think that’s a load of 'old wanky shite', as Shakespeare once said, but those people probably think music ended when Cheryl Baker left Bucks Fizz and embarked on a TV career ‘Watching you, watching us, watching you…’ God bless her.
But all music, (boy and girl bands aside, of course. Oh, and anyone who got a career after a shoe up from Simon Cowell. And most 80s ‘soft rock’. And nearly all rap music, except maybe Macklemore’s work with Ryan Lewis (everything before and after – meh). And jazz, which to my ears sort of eats everything in the music larder, masticates it into pulp then vomits the pulp into its own porkpie hat, before replacing said hat back on its head, without ever noticing the warm, carroty dandruff dribbling down its cheeks), apart from them, music is original and unique and poetic and heartfelt and straight from the very soul of the musician.
Like The Balcony Man by Nick Cave.
I have my own understanding of the song, but, as I am sometimes wont to do, I was intrigued to see what others thought. So I Googled and immediately found a site which did nothing but interpret song lyrics. How marvellous!
I read the site’s thinking. Something wasn’t right. It was overly thesaurus-y. And the tone of sycophancy made my mouth go dry and wonder if there was wine in the fridge. Then it hit me. This wasn’t a person. This wasn’t a fucking person!!
And sure enough, at the end, like a boy’s un-wiped dribble on a toilet seat (OK, or a grown man, I can only apologise on behalf of my personal hygiene-less gender). There it was:
I was utterly incensed. The people running the site hadn’t even listened to the track! They’d just let AI waffle any old nonsense as an excuse to cover the web pages with ads for crap no one would look at while trying to discover a song meaning.
Oh, says random Googler, here’s a page interpreting the mysterious virtuosity of Nick Cave, I must dive in and unwrap the layers of creative alchemy – but not until I’ve looked into a robot cleaner that rolls around the floor while I’m out and actually 'stops' when I’m home. Or shall I buy Charlotte Tilbury face cream for ‘everyone on (my) list?’ Heavens I don’t know where to start!
(Don’t advertisers realise that there is no one on earth anymore who stops looking for what they were looking for because an ad for something completely unrelated pops up? No one. NO ONE.)
And adding insult to injury – anticipating their AI writer to be ‘a bit shit’ (Chaucer) they want me, an actual writer, to help them out. That’s a request they’re going to regret…
They want ‘as detailed and clear as possible’ feedback, do they? Oh, pass me that keyboard…
So I give them feedback. I tell them they’re pathetic and the fact they haven’t listened to the songs themselves is a disgrace and quite frankly, they should be ashamed of themselves. I tell them they are lazy and childish. And I used the word ‘pathetic’ again. Sadly my comment doesn’t appear under the AI rubbish for others to see, but hopefully a human will engage with it and that human will feel bad, maybe even cry a little and wonder whether they can look their partner in the eye when they get home this evening.
And if not, I hope they get piles.
This cannot be the future of creativity, of interpretation, of opinion. It can’t. I won’t allow it.
What’s that? Why not? Why not?!!
Half way through the AI interpretation for the Nick Cave song, verse three actually, AI suggests it ‘introduces a conversation with a character named Fred.’
Well, isn’t that nice? And meaningless. Because the Fred is FRED ASTAIRE. How do I know this? Well, because previously in the song, Nick has sung ‘I’m the balcony man, I’m Fred Astaire’. AI can’t make that connection. And even if it could it can’t layer on an understanding of what that means. Fred Astaire at the top of a balcony means dancing beyond the realms of understanding is about to happen. It means dancing talent, fresh and amazing - unseen in its day - is about to open your mouth and have you wondering how a body can do even that.
I mean - it means Fred Astaire, FFS!!!
Here’s another drivelsome line:
The image of dancing and being an octopus under a sheet signifies the ability to adapt and manipulate one’s surroundings, further emphasizing the ever-changing nature of reality.
No. No it doesn’t. I'm really sure it doesn't. I'm pretty sure it’s this –
It’s Fred’s use of his arms and legs windmilling like a tap dancing octopus!
That’s the image we’re supposed to consider. But AI has never marvelled at Fred Astaire. Or Ginger Rogers or Elvis or Dali or Shakespeare or Mozart or any of those magnificent creative human beings.
AI may waffle like it knows what it’s talking about, like a lecturer pushing his over-sized specs up his nose, muttering ‘I think you’ll find…’, but this kind of AI is actually nothing more then a little boy, new to ‘big-boy pants’, standing up to pee for the first time and pushing his trousers all the way to his ankles. Anyone who’s ever parented a little boy knows this picture. And the little boy is endearing because he’s three years old! And he’s not trying to interpret song lyrics or the meaning of life - he's just peeing all over the floor!
There are ‘best selling authors’ all over my social media telling me how to 'write and sell a book' without even actually writing it! It used to work by getting people on Fiverr to prostitute themselves for next to nothing – one would write your book, another would design your cover. Then Amazon would let you self-publish it for 99p and people would buy it because the title was something like ‘You too can be a best-selling author, no matter if you’re a talentless bucket of sick!’.
Now it appears AI can 'do' all of it.
Authors who can’t write are not new, but at least those authors are trying, practising, learning their craft. These gutless, talentless YouTube and social media scumbags are only interested in money. They’re selling snake oil, pyramid schemes and chain letters, and I’m sick of it.
When did we get so lazy? When did we want to short cut everything? When did we become so stupid we would allow art to lower its bar so low it would barely get itself sellotaped to the wall of a primary school classroom in a 1970s prefab?
All this bollocks that AI splatters into the internet dilutes the pool of people who actually know what they’re doing. The story-tellers, the thinkers, the lyricists, the painters, the stay-up-all-nighters, the scalers of heights, the exceptional people who have something to say. This is not a pool we want to lose.
AI is not ‘the future’ of Art. It’s the end of art!
Art and the understanding of art, in all its expressions, creations and forms (except jazz, obviously) leaks from a person. Literally leaks. It cannot be contained. And some idiot robot 'thing' cannot do it.
This is a transcript from a TED Talk by Elizabeth Gilbert. She’s talking about the incredible poet Ruth Stone.
As [Stone] was growing up in rural Virginia, she would be out, working in the fields and she would feel and hear a poem coming at her from over the landscape. It was like a thunderous train of air and it would come barrelling down at her over the landscape. And when she felt it coming . . . ‘cause it would shake the earth under her feet, she knew she had only one thing to do at that point. That was to, in her words, “run like hell” to the house as she would be chased by this poem.
The whole deal was that she had to get to a piece of paper fast enough so that when it thundered through her, she could collect it and grab it on the page. Other times she wouldn’t be fast enough, so she would be running and running, and she wouldn’t get to the house, and the poem would barrel through her and she would miss it, and it would “continue on across the landscape looking for another poet.”
That’s how true art gets created. Not by a computer with its pants round its ankles and it’s dingle dangle scarecrow wafting around, spraying this way and that.
Y’know what makes me really sad is that this is just another sign of our horrible times. We are no longer a 'society' but instead, as the irrepressible Jonathan Pie said, we are an 'economy'.
How awful is that? If AI can cut a few corners for us to make a quick buck or two, who cares what happens along the way, eh?
Well, I do. I fucking care. And so should we all.