Is AI the greatest art heist in history?

New technologies of reproduction are plundering the art world – and getting away with it

The cinematograph, the "noematograph," and the future of AI art

From the cinematograph to the "noematograph," the Hugh-winning author explores how technology has, and may still, breed new artistic forms.

The Omg Lol Times · We have to talk about AI “art”

Note: In this post I’m going to use the term “AI” as a lazy shorthand for “generative content creation via large-scale pre-trained models” because time is tight and I’ve got arthritis. I know it’s not really “AI”, but please, let me give my typing fingers a break here.

A defense of AI art

It's not just slop, it's not stolen, it's not bad for the environment, and we should want art to be easy to make

An Elegant Solution to AI Slop: Tax It, and Use the Resulting Billions of Dollars to Fund Cultural Institutions, Artists, and Researchers

A technologist proposes slapping a "slop tax" on companies that use or create generative AI content.

choosing friction

In 2018, legal scholar Tim Wu wrote in the New York Times that: Today’s cult of convenience fails to acknowledge that difficulty is a constitutive feature of human experience. Convenience is all destination and no journey. This piece well predates the current AI boom, but “all destination and no journey” is a pretty good explanation for why using AI to create art is mainly compelling to people who think about creativity in terms of producing content and generating intellectual property. They just want the thing they can market and sell for money or clout; they don’t care how they got there. I know you’re sick of talking about AI. I am too. This is only a little bit about AI, I promise. Like all my writing about technology, it’s mostly about people.

AI Slop is Killing Online Communities

Like a young child coming home from kindergarten with their latest crayon scrawls, the internet is currently awash with people sharing their AI-generated work. And just like the young child’s drawings, much of that work should be proudly put up on the walls within the artist’s house—and no further.

AI, Artifice, And Authenticity

The era of badly-automated homogenized engagement slop is upon us. I desperately want to believe there's a renaissance for authenticity on the other end.

AI video is moving beyond clip slop

AI companies don’t just want Hollywood using AI for video, but for everything.

The Age of Wonders and Terrors

Twenty years ago, when the idea of AI taking over the world in our lifetimes still struck most of us as the unconstrained fantasy of those who knew too much science fiction and too little science, …

AI is Creating Peak Software, Media is the Best Analogy

Let's learn more about the world's most important manufactured product. Meaningful insight, timely analysis, and an occasional investment idea.

Where does the rigor go? Research software and the future of trustworthy science.

Generative AI now makes it dramatically easier to produce something that looks like research: analysis code, figures, literature reviews, even whole pap…

I Will Fucking Piledrive You If You Mention AI Again — Ludicity

The recent innovations in the AI space, most notably those such as GPT-4, obviously have far-reaching implications for society, ranging from the utopian eliminating of drudgery, to the dystopian damage to the livelihood of artists in a capitalist society, to existential threats to humanity itself.

I Will Fucking Piledrive You If You Mention AI Again — Ludicity

The recent innovations in the AI space, most notably those such as GPT-4, obviously have far-reaching implications for society, ranging from the utopian eliminating of drudgery, to the dystopian damage to the livelihood of artists in a capitalist society, to existential threats to humanity itself.

The Myth of the Instant Cake Mix

How to think about creative tooling in the new world of generative AI