I was recently made aware of someone, through family, who has set up a new podcast; details are irrelevant, however what is is their prodigious use of AI. To put it simply, the podcast is AI generated, possibly tweaked, and then read by the person as posted as a novel idea.

This person is of middle age, and like a lot of those of a certain age, they have adopted AI in every aspect of their lives.

Personally, if we put the economic and environmental concerns to one side, I believe AI is and has amazing uses as a tool, see this recent New Scientist article. My issues arise when it is used as a creative tool, and said results are passed off as the persons original work. This is not a phenomenon unique to the lay person, see this recent article surrounding Ars Technica.

I am not even upset, though I think it is poor taste, with regards to novel writers using AI as an aid, see James Frey.

What does bother me is people using AI and passing the results off as their own work completely. In the case of the person at hand, I simply feel a little sad and sorry for them. Using AI to write books, podcasts and create art as they are doing simply smacks of a lack of knowledge around what can and will be sniffed out as AI generated. And the larger issue, AI models via LLMs do not create unique content as of yet. It is an amalgamation of other peoples work that has been hoovered up by the LLM / AI Company. From books, to music, to Youtube, to the entirety of the internet et al.

The AI revolution is going to, and is changing the world, from math to physics and programming, the list is literally endless; let’s just hope that it doesn’t mean everyone’s Grandma is going to start ‘creating’ as if they are a polymath, using straight from the tap, AI slop.

I believe that at some point in the near future, AI will be the creative force across most areas of art. This is when, like a first edition signed book, certified human created content will be at and demand a premium.