AI - best thing since the Atomic Bomb, or what?

Admittedly, that may sound like a clickbaity type thing to say. But it really isn’t. I do actually wonder if AI is going to turn out to be a much better idea than some of us might think.

And when I say, “some of us,” I’m talking about anyone and everyone who has had a chance to interact with AI, to see it walk into their work lives and take a massive metaphorical dump over everything they hold near and dear to their creative hearts.

Some of the pictures I put at the top of these posts have been generated by AI. Sounds innocent enough, right? Unless you’re one of those poor unlucky souls who has spent their careers drawing / painting / photographing away, desperately trying to scrape a living from a world that really doesn’t like paying for pretty things if it doesn’t have to.

Which is why AI is such a threat to the arty lot out there. You see, that artificial intelligence software isn’t actually that intelligent yet. It can’t actually create anything. What it actually does is wonder around the internet, taking a quick look at everything that every human artist has ever drawn / painted / photographed. Then the AI software copies them, rips them off, steals their ideas wholesale.

Not nice, especially if that is how you have been trying to make your living.

All of which might make you wonder why I have been happy to use AI generated pictures from time to time. Well, I can explain. Because it’s not just the arty lot who are looking worried right now. I know someone who ran a really successful company, employing lots of folk, all of them creating copy and content for various internety type clients.