Note: This is purely an opinion piece, not a deep scientific analysis of any kind.
If you’ve been browsing social media and reading news, you’ve likely noticed that AI has been with us for a while now. It’s seeped into our everyday lives, and it continues to be a source of controversy for a wide variety of reasons, especially when it comes to creative fields. An artificial intelligence will write articles, paint pictures, and even make videos of a giant cat fighting Godzilla, if you so desire, all with the click of a button – the sky’s the limit, so to speak, and many are indeed excited by the prospect of this supposedly brave new world, but… do we actually want this? Is this a good thing?
Well, I can only give you my answer, and that answer is no.
Creators and creations
I’m not just talking about the obvious things, mind you – like how it’s disrespectful towards human artists and creators who pour their heart and soul into their craft, or how it impacts the environment, how it potentially puts people out of jobs, and so on. And yes, this is also why you can’t buy new RAM these days without selling your kidney. I could also argue for days about why I don’t consider AI “art” to be art. Imagine if William Shakespeare walked up to a random person on the street and said “My good man, I want you to write me a tragedy about two star-crossed lovers from rival families… Oh, and make the ending really bittersweet, will you?”. And then, X amount of time later, that person comes back and hands him a finished copy of Romeo and Juliet that he “wrote” by copying and paraphrasing the work of others, stitching each phrase together like someone making a ransom note out of letters cut out from newspapers and magazines. Would you still credit Shakespeare with the play? Is the random person an artist worthy of reverence? Is the end product even a work of art? In my opinion: no and no and no. Inputting settings into my air fryer doesn’t make me a gourmet chef, and being able to write a prompt doesn’t make you an artist, either.
Same deal with gaming. Remember that recent story about Unity claiming we’ll soon be able to “prompt full casual games into existence”? Imagine those things flooding the market. Gaming already has an issue with oversaturation – the colossal number of low-effort productions and asset flips drowning out potentially promising releases has been a problem since the Steam Greenlight days, back when Steam Greenlight was still a thing. I’m not sure how being able to prompt thousands of new AI-generated Candy Crush clones is going to make things better for us, but that’s just me.
Yet even putting that aside, much of what makes gaming so exciting to me is how the creative spark and distinct vision of developers and designers is translated into an interactive medium. I want to feel the breath of the poet in every digital nook and cranny of the work, with all its bumps, quirks and potential imperfections – I don’t want something that a machine barfed into my lap based on some instructions.
Artificial reality
In addition to the above, I feel AI has also altered the way we handle online spaces, and how we interact with the world in our increasingly screen-bound lives. One of my most repeated phrases lately has been “is this AI?”, which, I believe, tells you a lot about how the way we exist online has changed. The emergence of artificially generated content has given too many people the ability to deceive and mislead, and it’s become increasingly unclear what’s real and what’s not. The fake Einstein quote “Don’t believe everything you read on the internet” has been a meme for as long as I can remember, but with AI, I feel things have leveled up quite a bit, and not in a funny, “haha, Albert Einstein didn’t actually say that” kind of way. And the worst part is that many people seem to be falling for it. Even I do, from time to time. In fact, I’ve even had times where I initially dismissed legitimate art because I thought it was made by AI, and it frustrates me that we’ve created this climate of doubt and uncertainty that ends up hurting real creators in the process.
Also, consider AI bots like Grok or ChatGPT. From what I’ve seen, we’re already at a point where many people pretty much just turn to these tools for everything instead of actually thinking for themselves. When I see people on X run to Grok for every small thing, and then watch the AI confidently give them a completely wrong answer to their question, it’s… a bit depressing, I’m not gonna lie. Not only are we seemingly losing our drive for critical thinking, it seems to also facilitate this mindset that whatever the AI says is true, because it’s an authority figure of sorts. I mean, it’s a machine – so how could it be wrong?
So, on one end of the spectrum, we have blind belief, while on the other, there’s paranoia and suspicion: AI has conditioned many of us to question everything, to treat every piece of content with potential doubt, because so much of AI is, unfortunately, based on pure deception. There was a recent incident where VideoGamer and its Resident Evil: Requiem review came under suspicion of using AI to create not just the review itself, but the reviewer as well – that’s right, fake people were seemingly being passed off as real humans, which really highlights the entire problem in a borderline dystopian way that almost calls to mind the old Hideo Kojima classic, Snatcher – a game where androids take the place of flesh-and-blood people within society. That’s the gist of the cultural impact I was alluding to in the title of this article: AI has restructured the way we use technology and the internet, making existing issues even more pronounced and harmful.
You could also make the argument that humanity has evolved and invented technology to make life easier for itself – we’re weak little creatures, but we use our minds, and that’s our greatest asset. I’m certainly not against technological advancements. It’s what we’ve done for hundreds of years. Most of our lives are made possible now because of technology, so it would be hypocritical of me to dismiss all forms of AI. I’m sure there are ethical and beneficial ways of using it (medical or scientific, for example), and it’s probably good for speeding up certain organizational tasks, but when it comes to any creative and artistic field? Sorry, but no. I don’t believe it has a place there.
The genie in the bottle
So, in conclusion… uh, AI bad? I mean, yeah, there’s that too, but I suppose I was trying to highlight the whole “why AI bad” part of the equation from my personal perspective. Do I have a solution? Well, some transparency wouldn’t hurt, for starters. As I said in my article about the whole Clair Obscur AI kerfuffle from last year, artificial intelligence is already here and it’s probably not going anywhere. But I do feel it’s a definite slippery slope, and if we let the line between human creations and AI-generated content blur too much, it’s probably going to hurt us in the long run – as it already has.
So how do you feel about this whole topic? Do you agree with the gist of what I said or do you see it in a different light? If you feel like talking about it or telling me why I’m right or wrong, come join us on our Discord server for a chat! Just make sure to bring some good vibes.
