Art is not Content

The always-entertaining Patrick [H] Willem made two excellent videos about the state of filmmaking and art, in general. The first one discusses what people are calling AI films, focusing on the recent spate of so-called Wes Anderson AI remakes.

There’s not a lot of my own, original writing in this article. Instead, I’ve done the service of transcribing what I found to be the pithiest, hardest-hitting parts of Willem’s two rather long videos, which total more than 90 minutes.

A.I. Filmmaking Is Not The Future. It's a Grift. by Patrick (H) Willems (YouTube)

At 27:00, Patrick says,

“The Curious Refuge guy[1] says that this is the same as artists having influences, that all artists borrow from other artists.

“Curious Refuge Guy: So, I am definitely more in the camp of the whole steal-like-an-artist … uh … realm of thinking about creativity. And that idea is, essentially, that, all of us are pulling our creative ideas from other inspiration in our past. We just don’t, as humans, know, off the top of our heads, where those sources are coming from.[2]

“Patrick: …which I think is a pretty astounding misunderstanding of what artistic influence actually is. Artistic influence is: Wes Anderson taking his love of Hal Ashby, François Truffaut, and Jacques Demy, and processing them into a unique approach that expresses his own view of the world. AI art is just a machine for plagiarizing existing art.

“This guy says that AI is democratizing storytelling and making it possible for anybody to be a filmmaker. No. I’m sorry, but this is an insane take. Democratizing storytelling is what affordable filmmaking equipment did. It’s what, like, iPhones did. It’s what the Internet did. Those things gave people outside the traditional structures, without huge budgets and resources, the tools to create films and a free platform with which to reach a wide audience.

“Arguing for AI-filmmaking is saying that people no longer need talent or skill. Like, by this logic, why would learn to play the violin when you can use AI to create a fake violin recording of the piece of music that you want to play. The Curious Refuge web site says that they are, “empowering non-traditional artists,” which is hilarious to me, because that is just another way of saying “bad artists.” It’s like a steakhouse saying: “we serve non-traditional meals”, and then giving you a plate with a charred, black hockey puck on it.

“AI filmmaking is a grift. It is a way to make something that looks professional without putting in any of the work to learn how to do it for real and without paying an actual cast or crew. Look: I’m not generally one for criticizing other folks on YouTube or starting feuds. And I wouldn’t do it if I didn’t think that this really, truly, genuinely sucks. And, if the Curious Refuge people take offense to my comments, all I have to say is: you shouldn’t. Because you didn’t really make those videos.”

At 34:00,

“These moments of actual innovation, the ones that create something that sticks with people for decades, can only be done by real, human creativity. AI is improving all the time but, at it’s very best, you will only ever get serviceable imitations of mediocre products.

“But the question then is: do the people in charge care about that?

“Not to point fingers, but plenty of successful, mainstream movies are merely mediocre, recycled products. If a piece of software can create that automatically, do the shareholders care about giving up the potential for an amazing masterpiece?”

No. No, they do not. They only care about their rate of return. That’s it. If you get a higher rate of return by making masterpieces, then do that. If you get a higher rate of return by training your audience to like crap because it’s cheaper and easier and more reliable to produce crap? Then do that.

I think we all know which way this is going.

At 39:00,

“The people who seem the most excited about AI are not actually the artists themselves. They are the tech bros […] who view AI art as a win over those pretentious artists and their dream is a future where it can make movies tailored to their exact specifications. Not like the shit Hollywood is making now. [sarcastically delivered]

“They love the idea of using AI for filmmaking because they don’t actually have any talent or skill. For them, AI is like a cheat code that allows them to seem like actual artists without doing any actual work. The moral of this story is, that AI art sucks.

“[…]

“The thing about AI art is that it isn’t really art at all. Art, by its very definition, has to express some kind of human expression. This stuff generated by an AI […] is content, something utterly disposable, something meaningless.”

The second video expands on that last sentence, attacking the notion of “stuff” and “content”, which has replaced everything else with its mediocrity and definitional fungibility.

Everything is Content Now by Patrick [H] Willem (YouTube)

At 19:00,

“The idea here, with YouTube’s autoplay feature, just like Twitter and Facebook’s infinite scroll, is to keep users on the platform forever, consuming an endless feed of content. The content doesn’t need to make a huge impression. We just need to keep people passively consuming it.

“Have you ever tried to take a moment and reflect on something you just watched on Netflix, only to have the end credits instantly minimized, in favor of some obnoxious ad for what to watch next?

“That’s content, baby.

“So, OK. What is my actual issue here? Like, sure, some of the culture around independently producing work for the Internet sucks, but that’s not news. […] Content means literally everything. Which means: it’s essentially meaningless. Content is everything on the Internet. And, so, it flattens everything and says it’s all the same.

“It’s saying this PhilosophyTube video—a deeply personal mixture of essay and performance art—is the same thing as this Tweet I posted about buying a new pair of pants. A short film on video is the same thing as Dwayne Johnson’s Instagram reel shilling for Zoa Energy Drinks.

“If one thing is content, it all is.

“This is like saying: a novel is the same thing as a phone call. Yes, they are both, on their most basic levels, some form of communication. But they are not the same medium and we should not treat them the same way.

“But to the executives, it is all the same. They don’t care what the content on their platforms is, so long as people are clicking, and they’re running ads on it, and it’s generating revenue, and the shareholders are happy.”

Here he makes the same point that I’d noted above on his first video. I’m not saying he’s redundant—I’m saying that we’re on the same wavelength.

At 34:55,

“Lila Byock, a writer who worked on Watchmen and The Leftovers, is quoted saying, “What the streamers want most right now is ‘second-screen content’, where you can be on your phone while it’s on.””