#hal / Something in the Way: AI-Generated Images and the Real Killer.

A moving perspective from a successful cover illustrator:

Machine-driven narrative will get better and better as the taste for popular narrative gets more and more watered down. And again, it won’t necessarily be because the AI does better work than working visual artists and writers, but because the audience settles for accepting the mass convenience of “good enough,” drowning out the need for quality of content. Audiences cherish convenience over quality. It’s what drives our ethos, at least here in the U.S. No reason to believe people are suddenly going to wake up and change.

The arrival of AI generated-images (and how industry chooses to use it) goes far beyond what happened upon the advent of photography or even Photoshop. This is NOT the same conversation. AI is a tidal shift from the center of human context that defines meaning. We’re not in Kansas anymore, Toto. Choose your yellow brick road very wisely, folks.

“Good enough” is the perfect description for AI content. Paired with the Internet, you have the right combination to placate a majority of the population—either by personal choice or class discrimination. Which means AI is the Walmartification of the Internet.

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