4 ms·

Haven’t seen too much discussion about how AI will democratize media production. Celebrity is a pretty significant form of inequality that weirdly spills over i

Haven’t seen too much discussion about how AI will democratize media production. Celebrity is a pretty significant form of inequality that weirdly spills over into things like political and social influence. If the phenomenon of media celebrity disappears, isn’t that a good thing?

loloquwowndueo 3y ago
“ EVERYONE will be Super! And when everyone is Super (chuckle) no one is.”
TheBigSalad 3y ago
Why is AI going to cause celebrities to disappear?
- tansan 3y ago
  Brand dilution
  - endisneigh 3y ago
    Nonsensical. AI won’t stop the existence of popular individuals.
- bratbag 3y ago
  Personalised entertainment where every element of it is generated specifically to your personal preferences, is going to make the scaling required for celebrity status for a mear human performer, quite challenging. It won't be too long before enough talented nobodies sell everything about themselves for personally life changing amounts, that we can create anything from scratch on the fly. But there will always be other types of celebrities.
- pfannkuchen 3y ago
  Media celebrities exist because in order to produce entertainment content with convincingly human characters, you need to plug real humans into the image and sound replication machine. I imagine that it won’t be too long until you don’t need a real human anymore, and we can generate realistic human characters at will. At that point, why would we still plug real humans into the replication machine? It will be considered old fashioned very quickly.
  - TheBigSalad 3y ago
    Why would people accept that? It seems like the point where people accepted that, they'd accept their entire lives being virtualized. It seems weird to think celebrities are some kind of special case compared to.. everything else in the world. We are humans, we look up to and admire other people. For example: I think people would accept a completely virtual vacation or friends before giving up on the idea of even looking up to other people.
spinach 3y ago
I can't see AI getting rid of celebrities because one of the reasons people like them is that it's a form of human connection (even if it's parasocial). Also, there will still be inequality - same as it is now, in that people/companies with the most computing power will be the ones on top.
- HPsquared 3y ago
  If anything, "parasocial" things are on a steep upward trajectory. There is a larger number of smaller "celebrities" than before, though. Going from low channel count (cinema, TV, analogue radio, major publishers) to wideband (millions of YouTube channels, etc etc). It probably follows a Pareto-esque power law distribution.
  - SketchySeaBeast 3y ago
    A while back I emailed a podcast about an issue with my account. I got a reply back from one of those hosts. It was a bizarre moment as I was starstruck to be communicating with someone I'd been listening to for years, but for them it was nothing. I'm sure they don't feel famous, they seem to live a very average life, but they felt famous to ME.
bawolff 3y ago
There is much more to being a celebrity than just the person's image and voice - even if currently that is a big part.
WesternWind 3y ago
It's not going to disappear, instead people who work to build a reputation, media celebrities but also scientists and researchers and reporters and politicians will have their reputation and image appropriated and used by others without their consent, for speech, for pornography, for propaganda, etc. That's not to say that celebrity isn't a form of inequality or some perfect meritocracy, but your face and voice being used by others isn't inherently democratizing, but instead advantages bad actors.
ska 3y ago
Celebrities exist primarily because people want them too. They aren’t celebrities because they are rich, they are rich because celebrity is easily monetizable. This predates modern media, so it’s hard to see why technology shifts would change it fundamentally.

loloquwowndueo 3y ago

“ EVERYONE will be Super! And when everyone is Super (chuckle) no one is.”

TheBigSalad 3y ago

Why is AI going to cause celebrities to disappear?

tansan 3y ago
Brand dilution
- endisneigh 3y ago
  Nonsensical. AI won’t stop the existence of popular individuals.
bratbag 3y ago
Personalised entertainment where every element of it is generated specifically to your personal preferences, is going to make the scaling required for celebrity status for a mear human performer, quite challenging. It won't be too long before enough talented nobodies sell everything about themselves for personally life changing amounts, that we can create anything from scratch on the fly. But there will always be other types of celebrities.
pfannkuchen 3y ago
Media celebrities exist because in order to produce entertainment content with convincingly human characters, you need to plug real humans into the image and sound replication machine. I imagine that it won’t be too long until you don’t need a real human anymore, and we can generate realistic human characters at will. At that point, why would we still plug real humans into the replication machine? It will be considered old fashioned very quickly.
- TheBigSalad 3y ago
  Why would people accept that? It seems like the point where people accepted that, they'd accept their entire lives being virtualized. It seems weird to think celebrities are some kind of special case compared to.. everything else in the world. We are humans, we look up to and admire other people. For example: I think people would accept a completely virtual vacation or friends before giving up on the idea of even looking up to other people.

spinach 3y ago

I can't see AI getting rid of celebrities because one of the reasons people like them is that it's a form of human connection (even if it's parasocial). Also, there will still be inequality - same as it is now, in that people/companies with the most computing power will be the ones on top.

HPsquared 3y ago
If anything, "parasocial" things are on a steep upward trajectory. There is a larger number of smaller "celebrities" than before, though. Going from low channel count (cinema, TV, analogue radio, major publishers) to wideband (millions of YouTube channels, etc etc). It probably follows a Pareto-esque power law distribution.
- SketchySeaBeast 3y ago
  A while back I emailed a podcast about an issue with my account. I got a reply back from one of those hosts. It was a bizarre moment as I was starstruck to be communicating with someone I'd been listening to for years, but for them it was nothing. I'm sure they don't feel famous, they seem to live a very average life, but they felt famous to ME.

bawolff 3y ago

There is much more to being a celebrity than just the person's image and voice - even if currently that is a big part.

WesternWind 3y ago

It's not going to disappear, instead people who work to build a reputation, media celebrities but also scientists and researchers and reporters and politicians will have their reputation and image appropriated and used by others without their consent, for speech, for pornography, for propaganda, etc. That's not to say that celebrity isn't a form of inequality or some perfect meritocracy, but your face and voice being used by others isn't inherently democratizing, but instead advantages bad actors.

ska 3y ago

Celebrities exist primarily because people want them too. They aren’t celebrities because they are rich, they are rich because celebrity is easily monetizable. This predates modern media, so it’s hard to see why technology shifts would change it fundamentally.