I just read 👤 Rhys Wynne ’s post Your Crap is More Memorable Than Your Slop about how AI design, even physical posters, are convergent & forgettable. He makes the point that human, imperfect design is what stands out, and holds meaning.

whilst your kid’s art isn’t Rembrandt, you still hang it on the fridge

I enjoyed the post, which reminded me of some thoughts I had when generative AI entered public consciousness, on related lines.

Convergence is a property of AI, of course. The objective function is designed to meet expectations, not exceed them. Most of all, they are trained to make the user happy with the result. They learn, by pattern-matching, to manipulate.

The age of the social media algorithm brought us the influencer. Corporations could speak to us directly, but instead individual creators garnered our attention. We rejected corporate manipulation in (ostensibly) connective spaces. Corporate capture of the influencer economy proves that being a human is about the most valuable marketing asset there is.

We are sensitive and resistant to corporate manipulation of the human spaces we engage with. And I see this rejection extending to AI-generated content too.

I don’t want to read AI’s novels any more than I want to read a corporation’s life updates. They are coldly calculated. The infinite capacity to manipulate our emotions is a frightening prospect. I don’t want to watch a film that was engineered by super-parameters to make me cry.

Image and story are uniquely human creations, for all time. Vehicles to express & share the condition of living, to help us understand one another. It feels perverse that AI would participate in this act. Like the description of coffee from someone who has only read a Nescafe label. Slop of the purest kind.

We surely are already consuming such content without knowing (which I quote because it is content in the most literal sense of occupying space, our time & attention, while being ultimately empty, void). But, like Rhys, I expect it to become convergent and forgettable, and recognisably vapid.

Though we are likely stuck with generated output, I don’t believe it overlaps artistic creation. I also expect the distinction of AI-generated content to become more important and apparent. The label “Human Made” will hold a premium.

Real humanity differentiated influencers on social platforms. An imperfect design differentiates you from conformist bots, as Rhys points out.

And a beating heart is what differentiates art from even the neatest slop.