AI versus Marshy - The AI Backlash Has Started

I’ve been thinking a lot about the implications of generative AI on creatives, and I wanted to share a personal anecdote that got me thinking about this topic. I was talking to my sister, who’s an artist, and I explained to her how theoretically, someone could use generative AI to recreate her art styles. She wasn’t too thrilled about the idea, and I have to admit, I wouldn’t be either. My sister creates a lot of art. Flowers, paintings of nature, and hand drawn pets for people are her most popular styles, and you can find them on her Instagram here . I enjoy talking to my family back in Gippsland - they are well outside anything tech and fast-growth, and I like to sense-check and ground myself by running things past them. As generative AI was gathering steam - I explained to my sister that theoretically it would be possible to siphon all of her art from her Instagram, feed into a generative image generator, and recreate her “styles” for producing more pets, flowers, and nature imagery. My sister didn’t love the idea - which is to be expected and how I would feel about it too. So imagine you’re a world class writer, and had your books compared and contrasted for verbage, semiotics, and eloquence of prose against other titans in literature. That’s what happened in this interesting piece from Wired . Hari Kunzru found his book White Tears to be one of the books within a tiny (now defunct) startup called Prosecraft. The founder of Prosecraft grabbed 25,000 well known books and fed them into an algorithm to grade them. Hari took issue with the way his material was acquired. It seems extremely unlikely that the founder purchased 25,000 books and voiced dissent. A collective of agitated writers agreed, legal processes were followed, and Prosecraft no longer exists. The missive from the article is that the AI backlash has started. People don’t want everything remixed by an artificial intelligence. I find this to be a really interesting angle. I’ve shared about a growing reticence to share on the web because it can be “sucked up” and fed into something. How will this play out? It reminds me a little of Google Glass - a hyped up piece of kit that citizens of San Francisco started openly contesting, stomping on, and stealing. The term “glasshole” was coined like a simile for tech bro. This used to peak technology Tool of the week: Mindpal ​ I try to use and review any of the tools I write about because I want to give you a take on it. Because I’m keeping an eye on newly released apps, sometimes they get overwhelmed with the attention and can’t handle the spike in traffic/downloads/use. Originally appeared in newsletter : AI versus Marshy #9: not everything should be copied, a second brain + webinar slides