Come slop away - Shawn's Sense with Shawn Loughlin

Anyone who has been on social media recently or grabbed their mail from the post office has seen a version of the same flyer. Its cartoony version of dynamic text, combined with pictures that look a little too good to be cartoonish, but rather that their airbrushes have been airbrushed. There are often mistakes. There are often many little boxes of bullet points for dates, locations, times and other points of interest and pop-outs designed to insist that you pay attention. It could be a service club, a restaurant, a sports league or just someone looking for work on the side or a business in search of new employees, but they all look the same, created by the same artificial intelligence programs. A.I. slop, as it’s come to be known by many creatives.

 

One of its biggest proponents is Donald Trump, who will often go on late-night binges, posting dozens of images that could generously be described as A.I. slop. There’s him connecting the Keystone pipeline. His walk and talk with George Washington through the yet-to-be-constructed ballroom at the White House. Him as the Pope. Him as a doctor Jesus Christ. Him menacingly peering into Canada and Greenland. Then again, we’re all familiar with his relationship to reality.

 

Jess has always had this restaurant theory about its washrooms. It’s held in the wider world as well, but, she always figures that if the bathrooms in a restaurant - rooms meant for guests - aren’t well kept, that you can only imagine the state of the kitchen, a part of the establishment the public is not meant to see.

 

I can’t help but apply that logic to the flyers we’re all seeing. I get it - people are busy, there isn’t a ton of money flying around to pay artists and professionals - but the level of effort and sense of pride one puts into something like a flyer for their business, service club, etc. is kind of its first volley to the public; its first impression, if you will. Too many people are lazy and sloppy with that first impression. If you’re willing to cut corners with how you communicate with the world, where else are you willing to go to cut some more?

 

Lately I’ve even seen some organizations that aim to encourage young people to be creative using it. Dashing off a quick prompt so a machine can make it for you doesn’t really set the greatest example if you’re trying to get the area’s children to be creative. Then there are the more subtle indicators of A.I. use. Many analyses have come out recently about the extent to which A.I. usage has infiltrated school assignments and student projects. How long until The Citizen publishes a handful of very, very similar Valedictorian’s speeches, all produced with a helping hand from A.I.?

 

Especially with the younger generations, who will now have grown up with the internet, social media and now A.I. as an extension of their bodies, I’m sure to sound like an old man yelling at kids to get off of his lawn, but I can only be me. Seeing the extent to which this awful, uninspired, lazy trash has proliferated our society in just a few short months has been something to behold. Everyone says that the technology is moving so fast, and that seems to be true, but how quick so many have been to hand themselves over to it has been shocking. 

 

A quick Google search will yield all kinds of think-pieces from artists and writers about how A.I. makes them a better artist or writer in sharp contrast to the prevailing sentiment that A.I. is a direct threat to artistic creativity. But just remember that what you create and put out into the world is how people see you and how they will remember what you accomplished. 

 

What will your legacy be?