Enshittification has been a topic in this thread. The guy who coined the term has a new podcast about this vis a vis the internet, but tech in general.
Well he works for ILM further showing how itās a tool in the hands of subject matter experts.
This one does aces 4K!
Go back to the beginning of this thread for a good chuckle at what was āunbelievableā 18 months ago.
It still looks lowrez af. The type on the uniforms changes constantly. Itās cool and getting better, but still slop. Maybe in 2 years when Nvidia has GPUs with 1 TB of VRAM and weāve fired a couple more trillion dollars into it, itāll finally be able to replace us and people will have the Blade Runner future theyāve been clamoring for.
Im not sure. I think its pretty much game over for alot of us now. Companies are clearly showing, despite all the years of pain they put us through with changes and notes, that if the cost is low they will compromise alot more
Its genuinely sad to see how disposable and little care these people have for us, not just us but entire production crews.
Yeah itāll be transformative and disruptive. But it wonāt be creative. Thereās an interesting story on BBC recently about how all term papers are sounding alike, and how all grades to those papers are sounding alike ā because theyāre both made by simple word generators.
AI doesnāt create ideas.
But, it may put a lot of us out of a job.
Maybe someone has already said this, but the real gauge to me is to see if audio mixers, sound designers, and composers are currently being replaced. If video is advancing at this pace, Iād assume audio has long been there.
I still get mixes from an audio house, VO talent is still being hired, and music is still composed. And it all goes through the endless iterations as creatives direct the process. Thatās not to say itās never going away. Just saying that Iāve got my eye on audio before applying to the local car wash. Assuming AI doesnāt come for that.
This is untested water though. The idea that big tech can just force something onto people that they donāt want or fundamentally are not comfortable with for reasons that to most people are hard to explain has become brutally prevalent (see all the privacy agreements we all have to check and agree to that say all our data can and will be collected and sold). but on wider release, weāll see how the public feels about this media as more than just internet junk to geek out to or just scroll past. I have no real idea how that will play out, I donāt want to watch it because itās uncanny and uninteresting to me, but weāll have to see how other people feel, which like it or not, IS important- and something big tech is generally not interested in anymore, the same way theyāre not interested in making products FOR you anymore, but making products that take FROM you, and by hell or high water just jamming things down our throats (see the stupid Apple goggles). But letās see. Nothing is inevitable. Inevitability just springs from lack of imagination.
This was shared with me todayāand now Iām side-eyeing the internal scriptwriter whoās been running unchecked in my brain. Time to audit the prompts driving my personal narrative.
Starting to feel like losing my job to AI isnāt going to matter anyway.
Jesus. This is just so stupid. What a problem weāve managed to create for ourselves just so there can be future trillionaires
Iāll take a slightly different take.
Let me start with a math observation. Iām sure many of us have grown up with parents encouraging us to be āabove averageā, right? We went to schools, we chase jobs. Heck, the idea of being a Flame artist embodies working on the above average problems.
The thing though is - for that average to be defined, exactly 50% of everything out there has to be below average. You always need to appreciate the stuff and the people that volunteer to provide a point of comparison. They serve a very valuable purpose. AI Slop included.
Everyone is talking about Veo 3 right now. This article in The Verge had a good take - itās perfect for generating the AI Slop thatās been flooding all the social media platforms that have some monetization scheme - be it Medium, Quora, IG, etc. and any social media platform that can be used for misinformation someone will pay you for producing.
But blandness, and that sameness actually will only strengthen the demand for the above average stuff that still has a human touch.
My reaction to the Veo 3 videos was - this is so void of any human element (not even a video editor that slaved at 10pm at night to push this out), that is has very little appeal. While people will tolerate it, and maybe be entertained by it, I doubt the audience segments where the money is, will be moved by it.
So in some way, maybe the line where the average sits has shifted, but itās still a line, and there is still stuff above it. And there will still be demand for high quality material made by humans.
When it used to be Made in USA vs. Made in China, or organic / non-GMO produce. now it will be Made By Humans. We already see films and other content stating clearly that no GenAI was used.
So human made content will prevail. But this pile will be smaller. There may have been lucrative spots that traditionally was bread and butter for us, that sits below the line. There will likely be fewer chairs at the table. But there will be chairs.
The best concrete example I have - still photography has gone through this with the availability of digital cameras and then phones, along with royalty free stock libraries, some like Pexels and Unsplash, that are totally free of cost.
Yet, I do know a photographer who has specialized in packaging photography. Sheās been doing that for 35+ years for some well known brands you see in every grocery store. Sheās still beyond busy. Because these kinds of jobs still require a human touch thatās beyond the stuff thatās become self-service of some kind. Having seen how much those clients care just about every piece of onion and cheese on a burger shot thatās on the packaging - digital cameras, didnāt kill it. AI is the next threat for these - and it may be coming after the menu boards at your favorite fast food restaurant. Whether it conquers packaing imagery is yet to be seen.
There will be waves and waves of innovation and everything will evolve. But itās not a full dooms day scenario quiet yet.