The Real Death of Us

I've been thinking a lot about what the world has been going through these days. I guess we all do. I think about where it's heading, and the children I might bring one day to this terrifying future we're creating for ourselves. Most of the time it feels like a bad dream. A nightmare. A collection of dystopian movies haunting me, but instead of me being asleep, I'm here, wide awake, for some reason.

A few days ago, while going through another deep existential crisis, this funny yet disturbing mini web game I stumbled upon somewhere in 2013 came back to my memory. It's called "Fashion or porn?". Surprisingly enough, I immediately found out it still exists, and how its difficulty still hasn't changed a tiny bit. Basically - the game shows you exaggerated croppings of photos from fashion and porn magazines, and you have to try to guess which are from where. Not sure if that's necessarily the reason for its creation, but it felt to me like they wanted to demonstrate how what was a thin line between these two giant industries back then, is now downright non-existent. Sometimes you'd even get a cropped image of just a few pixels of an intimate part, and you'd confidently think the answer is obvious - but then the game would end on you.

The game crossed my mind because while I was fearfully thinking about the future in general, I also pondered about the future of photography, and if my passion for it can survive the AI storm; the threat of it becoming an irrelevant hobby, with every new day. And so I immediately went looking for a web game that does the same thing, but with Human vs. AI photography, and I found a bunch of them. Not to delve too much into it (because its a well known fact, from what I've gathered) - AI is currently really bad at creating human faces and hands, and what not, and so at least for now human portaits are still free from danger (I finished writing this post yesterday, and then immediately found new evidence that says otherwise). But zooming out : landscape, street and architecture photography - there's no way of telling between them. The wider the shot, and the less details it has - the easier is it for AI to fart it out. It might not be 100 percent accurate in some cases right now - but it will be, probably, in a year or so.

Now - what do I mean by irrelevant? It's a good and difficult question. I'm still trying to figure that myself.

It's obviously not irrelevant in the sense that there's no point or need in taking pictures anymore, the same way that the invention of cameras - although it did create some panic - didn't stop painters from painting. In an individual case - AI has no power over art. It means nothing. It's a tiny speck. Creativity and craftsmanship will stay relevant forever, as it always has. It's a part of our DNA. It's what makes us human, since our first cave painting, and so as long as we don't eradicate our own humanity - art is here to stay. So to be very clear... this is not about art being dead and gone.

What I'm referring to, when I'm frustratingly and incorrectly using the word "irrelevant", is the last stage of every (or most) art piece - the sharing one. The part where you proudly show it to people, either it be a family or friends gathering, a gallery, or a photography community like here on HIVE. The part where you get compliments or critiques on your work, and it changes you (in some cases). It creates inner and outer dialogues. It makes you better. It gets you motivated. It connects people in a way that languages sometimes utterly fail.

As I see it, AI's ability to create a thousand similar variants from one picture makes it impossible to appreciate people's art online. It gets in our way, between you and me, the folks who actually make art; who spend hours upon hours developing their style and learning new techniques and reviewing their results. When you write at the end of your post that it's AI-free, it means nothing to me. I'm glad that it's still important to you people, to make it clear - yet it still means nothing, and the more AI gets better at its disgusting job, the more meaningless these clarifications become. It's like saying "I'm not crazy". Can you actually prove it? Should we start documenting our process, every movment of every pencil, a software screenshot before every export - so we'd have proof of it being real? Isn't it just as easy to fake these proofs the same way?

For each and every one of us, art - as a human experience - will stay internal forever. But as a collective?

I met a guy here in Cyprus. A true painter. I've never seen anyone so devoted to his art in my life. We're both staying at a co-living hostel here in Paramytha, and this guy never leaves his room. He's been painting upstairs for days now, from morning till late afternoon. We've had a few interesting conversations over the past few evenings, whenever he managed to pull himself out for a break, and to be honest - I'm still processing the things he shared with me, about people's reactions to his endless devotion to his work. He told me that on several occasions, folks genuinely asked him "why do you even bother, when you have AI to do it for you in a manner of seconds?".

Can you even imagine the audacity of these people, to ask something like that? Could you imagine a question like that being asked a few years ago? To question someone's willingness to invest so much time in their skills? On their craft? To question its value?

What the hell happened to us? Why are we doing this? Do we really want, in a few years, to be able to write a simple prompt and instantly receive our own unique three-hour long Scorsese-like movie? Do we really need an endless stream of Bowie-like songs, at a blink of an eye, years after his death? Do we really want to demolish the last few remaining photography communities? Are we truly okay with doubting each and every artist we meet, from here on out?

I'm going to continue doing my best regarding my own art. It's not even a question. It's in my blood. It's what I think about most of the time. It's what truly gives me joy about this planet. But it's the death of "us" - in this equation - that makes me sick to my stomach. It's the uncertainty that drives me crazy. It's the fact that there're no billboard-size headlines about this shit every day. It's as if no one really cares, or sees any problem in it - and It's a weird feeling to have - of me already acting like a stuck-in-the-past grampa at the age of 29.

(Text and photos were created by me. This post is AI-free)
(Or is it...?)
It is.