If a robot paints a robot, is that an infinity loop?
From the beginning, computer graphics has been about persuading viewers into believing in something that’s not real. Something made of pixels instead of molecules. The suggestions made by CG are used to invoke the viewer’s memory and imagination such that the appropriate image is what we see — most of the time.
The creation of computer graphics can be, and often is, a beautiful ballet among hardware, software, and art, as humans reach for the ineffable — creating another reality. And when the images, movement, or colors don’t quite match our expectations, we get revolted and sometimes physically sick. Despite the fancy names, disappointment lies at the heart of the uncanny valley. And what’s known as VR sickness. It’s just not good enough.
Since the 1960s, CG has improved every year to the point that simulations, be it movies, adventure games, or pilot training, are so good and so fast on consumer PCs that we accept the experience even though we know it’s not real. Conversely, we’ve become even more impatient with effects that are not top-notch.
User sophistication has driven the industry to build faster processors, add more (and faster) memory, create ingenious algorithms and libraries, produce large ultra-high-resolution screens and projectors, employ high-dynamic rage, ultra-fast refresh rates, and blindingly bright yet affordable displays. The lag in progress, if there is any, has been the human factor, the content creators — the artist and the director. Graphics artists and scriptwriters are in high demand and strangely underpaid. Creative directors are also in demand and seem able to demand a higher salary.
And then the machine arrived.
Jensen Huang, CEO of Nvidia, in his March 2024 introduction speech for the company’s latest amazing GPU, summed up the evolution of the arrival of the machine. First (circa 2018), he said we fed the machine a picture, and it produced the word — for example, cat. Now, we feed the machine the word cat, and it produces an image of a feline. Next, we will give it motion: A cat running — and it will produce that. I’m paraphrasing, but the point is his forecast was conservative, and we can indeed command our cloud-backed PC to create a video with sound, in seconds, of a cat running, chasing a mouse, or being chased by a dog.
Machine creativity has arrived.
An acronym will evolve to categorize this capability; maybe it will be MC, AC (artificial creativity), SC (synthetic creativity), or whatever is the most fun to say and write, but such an acronym will enter our vocabulary very soon.
Some will welcome this new capability, but many will hate it. It will (already has in LA) replace humans. It will (already has in the news) create fake evidence. It will beguile and mislead and be a tool of the people — volkscreativity. Anyone who can use a keyboard and has access to the web will become a creator.
It may or may not come with training wheels — probably not, so we will get some pretty awful stuff, as we did when PC word processing first became available (remember all the crazy fonts, sizes, and colors?). So, there will be lots of experimentation. And if it is really to be used as a creative tool, or at the very least as an augmentation, the experimentation will never stop — that’s what creativity is all about, isn’t it?
We (JPR) were never big enough to have an art department. We were fortunate enough to have a couple of artists on our team and a few wannabe artists. So, we’ve been able to get well-composed photos and other art. Today, a duffer like me can do it with OpenArt.ai, Google, and Meta — for free.
Is it award-winning stuff? Not likely. Hell, it isn’t even HDR, or ray-traced, but it is pretty high resolution and has interesting shadows and often surprising backgrounds. It’s good enough, and people don’t come to our website or reports for the eye candy — we’re not producing coffee table books. It is ironic to think of machine creativity creating the comic book and Marvel using AI to create the movie.
So, I’m the art director, and my workstation and elves in the cloud are the artists.
Pandora, Cassandra, and the toothpaste are all unleashed, and they ain’t ever ever going back.
Another irony of the emergence of machine creativity is what it does to the human creatives who have been taking the photos, creating the artwork, and doing the layout work. Creativity was supposed to be a safe haven from AI. Sure, AI and robots would take repetitive and robotic jobs; we expected and welcomed that (unless we were one of those human robots doing a mind-numbing repetitive task). But now, machine creativity is taking away even those jobs. Already, major greeting card companies are reducing staff and using machine creativity. Poster art is being done using machine creativity. That not only eliminates jobs but flatlines companies that sell graphics art software. And to add insult to injury, the free online machine creativity gets better every day, never sleeps or takes a lunch or bio-break, never asks for a raise (although a little more memory and bandwidth would be appreciated), and never ever criticizes the boss. What’s not to like?
I have used a few machine creativity images in a book (on CG, of course) that I am just wrapping up. My publisher demanded I put “AI generated” in the images.
No plagiarism.
The lawyers will have a wonderful time defending and debasing machine creativity. I long for the day when AI will replace lawyers. It will happen. George Lucas envisioned this in his 1971 breakout film, “THX 1138.”
So, no profession will be safe and not a candidate for the more efficient, indefatigable machine creative and its AI administrators and distributors. And just as we have been trained to watch and even enjoy adverts (especially those half-time extravaganzas), we will also learn to not only enjoy machine creativity content but prefer it.
Another fantasy forecast is one where the hallucination aspects of GenAI are used to make an artificial video podcast. We’ll have the moderator ask the famous guest what the future of AI holds. It should go viral in a day, websites will quote it, and companies will build business plans based on it. Same as usual, just no paper napkins or envelopes used.
Oh, and in case you didn’t notice it, all the images in this blog were made using machine creativity.
May the AI be with you (and not against you).
