The AI Wars Have Begun

As you know, there is a writer’s strike in the US at the moment. Writers are worried about Artificial Intelligence (AI) taking over their jobs. Instead of a creative human being writing a compelling story about other humans, now you can put a basic idea into ChapGT, and boom, it will put something together for you. Sure, it’ll need a bit of tidying, but it saves a lot of time and hard work while getting you going.

The writers of America are very angry, and fearful of AI. So now would be a good time to showcase a new Disney show and tell everyone that the opening credits were all designed by AI… right? If this was a sitcom, the audience would all go “Ohhhhhhhh!” right now. Secret Invasion starts streaming this week and Disney has been boasting about the new opening credits. Instead of using hard-working and talented digital artists, who need paying, the opening sequence has been designed by AI.

In the opening sequence, there are characters that morph into each other, which is what the Skrulls in the series are doing. Then they added a watercolor effect over the top, and you’re done. It would have taken a long time for digital artists to do this, but with AI, now it takes no time at all. The best thing about an AI computer is, to quote from Short Circuit:

‘It doesn’t get happy, it doesn’t get sad, it just runs programmes.’

It doesn’t need paying either and it won’t go on strike when it thinks it’s been treated unfairly. Well, not yet anyway.

The other main problem with AI-generated stuff is also that of style. If you ask it to make an image in the style of DaVinci, it will. This means there’s no real issue with copyright since it’s been ‘inspired’, not stolen. This also means no consent or compensation.

Some people are seeing the use of AI as the start of an era. Others see it as the end of one. What do you think?