In today’s episode DecoderWe are talking about artificial art and a controversial collision between them – a debate that, to be truthful, is an absolute mess. If you were on the internet last week, you undoubtedly know that the controversy was simply summed up the excision by the Ghibli Memów studio – photos of the legendary Japanese film studio. These images, powered by the fresh OPENAI painting generator, are everywhere; Altman himself, the general director of Opeli, has even published several examples on his personal account. And they have already expanded a fairly clear split between AI amplifiers and critics.
Brian Merchant, a good friend The Verge and author of the newsletter and books Blood in the machinewrote One of the best analyzes of the Ghibli trend last week. So I invited him to the program to discuss this particular situation, and also support me in a broader extent of the ongoing debate of artificial art AI, because he still conflicts with legal framework, such as copyright.
Merchant and I usually agree much more than we disagree when it comes to the technology industry. So I tried to really take the other side and press these ideas as much as I could. Technology and art have always danced with each other; This is part of the founding ethos The Verge. So I think that it is essential to put artificial intelligence in this context – especially because we see the obvious joy that ordinary people find in the exploit of some of these tools to express themselves in a way that they would not be able to.
But he expresses himself and then throws the Slop anime AI, which aims to cause classics like Spilled AND My neighbor Totoro In a way that devals and even steals from real human artists. Add the way Trump’s administration jumped to the tendency of “Ghibli” a photo of the deportation and it is not complex to understand why many people perceive this tool as a completely grotesque and offensive. Or “the insult of life itself”, as the co -founder of Ghibli, Hayao Miyazaki once, once said about the demo of AI, which he witnessed in 2016.
So you will hear how Merchant and I really go there back, kicking what it means – for art and artists and for a innovative economy that has long gone from the world of physical deficiency to an unlimited digital number. And, most importantly, we spent a lot of time talking about how we should feel to exploit these tools at all, when they can pose very real threats to maintaining people and the ongoing climate crisis.
I warn you: there are no basic answers here and I don’t think that Merchant and I came to one conclusion. I don’t even think we want. But I think that this conversation helped me consider how to think about artificial intelligence and art. Let me know what you think.
If you want to read more about what we talked about in this episode, check the links below:
Questions or comments about this episode? Hit us at decoder@theverge.com. We really read every e -mail!