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>You can already see this with YouTube: AI-generated videos are a mild amusement, not a replacement for video creators, because made by AI is becoming a negativ

>You can already see this with YouTube: AI-generated videos are a mild amusement, not a replacement for video creators, because made by AI is becoming a negative label in a world where the presence of AI video is widely known. But that's because, at present, AI generated video isn't very good. Consider the history of CGI. In the 1990s and early 2000s, it was common to complain about how the move away from practical sets in favor of CGI was making movies worse. And it was! You had backgrounds and monsters that looked like they escaped from a video game. But that complaint has pretty much died out these days as the tech got better (although Nolan's Oppenheimer did weirdly hype the fact that its simulated Trinity blast was done by practical effects).

__MatrixMan__ 1y ago
Do you get the feeling that AI generated content is lacking something that can be incrementally improved on? Seems to me that it's already quite good in any dimension that it knows how to improve on (e.g. photorealism) and completely devoid of the other things we'd want from it (e.g. meaning).
- keiferski 1y ago
  Yeah if you look at many of the top content creators, their appeal often has very little to do with production value, and is deliberately low tech and informal. I guess AI tools can eventually become more human-like in terms of demeanor, mood, facial expressions, personality, etc. but this is a long long way from a photorealistic video.
- tomrod 1y ago
  It's missing random flaws. Often the noise has patternd as a result of the diffusion or generation process.
  - arcane23 1y ago
    Yeah, I was thinking about this. Humans vary depending on a lot of factors. Today they're happy, tomorrow they're a bit down. This makes for some variation which can be useful. LLMs are made to be reliable/repeatable, as general experience. You know what you get. Humans are a bit more ... -ish, depending on ... things.
keiferski 1y ago
CGI is a good analogy because I think AI and creators will probably go in the same direction: You can make a compelling argument that CGI operators outcompeted practical effects operators. But CGI didn’t somehow replace the need for a filmmaker, scriptwriter, cinematographers, etc. entirely – it just changed the skillset. AI will probably be the same thing. It’s not going to replace the actual job of YouTuber in a meaningful sense; but it might redefine that job to include being proficient at AI tools that improve the process.
- tomrod 1y ago
  I think they are evolving differently. Some very old cgi holds up because they invested a lot of money to make it so. Then they tried to make it cheaper and people started complaining because the output was worse than all prior options.
  - Melatonic 1y ago
    Jurassic Park is a great example - they also had excellent compositing to hide any flaws (compositing never gets mentioned in casual CGI talk but is one of the most important steps) The dinosaurs were also animated by oldschool stop motion animators who were very, very good at their jobs. Another very underrated part of the VFX pipeline. Doesnt matter how nice your 3D modelling and texturing are if the above two are skimped on !
djtango 1y ago
That's a Nolan thing like how Dunkirk used no green screen. I think Harry Potter and Lord of the Rings embody the transition from old school camera tricks to CGI as they leaned very heavily into set and prop design and as a result have aged very gracefully as movies
- silvestrov 1y ago
  I think the first HP movie was more magical than the latter ones as they felt too "Marvel CGI" for me. Marvel movies have become tiresome for me, too much CGI that does not tell any interesting story. Old animated Disney movies are more rewatchable.
  - djtango 1y ago
    I like to see marvel as the state of the art/tech demo for CGI - this is what is achievable with near limitless budget I still find Infinity War and Endgame visually satisfying spectacles but I am a forgiving viewer for those movies
  - player1234 1y ago
    And they cost 300 million to make be cause of the CGI fest they are, hence need close to a billion in profits when considering marketing and the theater cut. So the cost of CGI and the enshittification of movies seems to be a good analogy to the usefuleness of LLM/AI. Not a flex.
danielbln 1y ago
Ironically, while the non-CGI SFX in e.g. Interstellar looked amazing, that sad fizzle of a practical explosion in Oppenheimer did not do the real thing justice and would've been better served by proper CGI VFX.
- danny_codes 1y ago
  Totally agree. Nolan is a perfectionists though, so I don’t think he could let himself go for broke on the actual boom boom
Barrin92 1y ago
>But that's because, at present, AI generated video isn't very good. It isn't good, but that's not the reason. There's a paper about 10 years ago where people used some computer system to generate Bach-like music that even Bach experts couldn't reliably tell apart, but nobody listens to bot music. (or nobody except for engine programmers watches computer chess, despite superiority. Chess is thriving more now including commercially than it ever did) In any creative field what people are after is the interaction between the creator and the content, which is why compelling personalities thrive more, not less in a sea of commodified slop (be that by AI or just churned out manually). It's why we're in an age where twitch content creators or musicians are increasingly skilled at presenting themselves as authentic and personal. These people haven't suffered from the fact that mass production of media is cheap, they've benefited from it.
- vidarh 1y ago
  That's interesting, because after ElevenLabs launched their music generation I decided I really quite want to spent some time to have it generate background tracks for me to have on while working. I don't know the name of any of the artists whose music I listened to over the last week because it does not matter to me. What mattered was that it was unobtrusive and fit my general mood. So I have a handful of starting points that I stream music "similar to". I never care about looking up the tracks, or albums, or artists. I'm sure lots of people think like you, but I also think you underestimate how many contexts there are where people just don't care.
- thefaux 1y ago
  The wonder of Bach goes much deeper than just the aesthetic qualities of his music. His genius almost forces one to reckon with his historical context and wonder, how did he do it? Why did he do it? What made it all possible? Then there is the incredible influence that he had. It is easy to forget that music theory as we know it today was not formalized in his day. The computer programs that simulate the kind of music he made are based on that theory that he understood intuitively and wove into his music and was later revealed through diligent study. Everyone who studies Bach learns something profound and can feel both a kinship for his humanity and also an alienation from his seemingly impossible genius. He is one of the most mysterious figures in human history and one could easily spend their entire life primarily studying just his music (and that of his descendants). From that perspective, computer generated music in his style is just a leaf on the tree, but Bach himself is the seed. > These people haven't suffered from the fact that mass production of media is cheap, they've benefited from it. Maybe? This really depends on your value system. Every moment that you are focused on how you look on camera and trying to optimize an extractive algorithm is a moment you aren't focused on creating the best music that you can in that moment. If the goal is maximizing profit to ensure survival, perhaps they are thriving. Put another way, if these people were free to create music in any context, would they choose content creation on social media? I know I wouldn't, but I also am sympathetic to the economic imperatives.
yoz-y 1y ago
That said, the complaint is coming back. Namely because most new movies use an incredible amount of CGI and due to the time constraints the quality suffers. As such, CGI is once again becoming a negative label. I don’t know if there is an AI equivalent of this. Maybe the fact that as models seem to move away from a big generalist model at launch, towards a multitude of smaller expert models (but retaining the branding, aka GPT-4), the quality goes down.
- not_the_fda 1y ago
  Now they just make the whole scene dark and you can't see anything. Saves money on CGI though.
- player1234 1y ago
  The equivalent is the massive cost of CGI and LLMs in comparison to the lackluster end result.
morsecodist 1y ago
I don't agree that it is because of the "quality" of the video. The issue with AI art is that it lacks intentional content. I think people like art because it is a sort of conversation between the creator and the viewer. It is interesting because it has a consistent perspective. It is possible AI art could one day be indistinguishable but for people to care about it I feel they would need to lie and say it was made by a particular person or create some sort of persona for the AI. But there are a lot of people who want to do the work of making art. People are not the limiting factor, in fact we have way more people who want to make art than there is a market for it. What I think is more likely is that AI becomes a tool in the same way CGI is a tool.
- ninetyninenine 1y ago
  [flagged]
  - morsecodist 1y ago
    I honestly can't tell if you're being facetious. Maybe I suck at writing and don't properly understand sarcasm but unfortunately I'm only human.
  - nprateem 1y ago
    It's obviously not AI written.
- tbrownaw 1y ago
  > The issue with AI art is that it lacks intentional content. I think people like art because it is a sort of conversation between the creator and the viewer. Intent is in the eye of the beholder.
  - nprateem 1y ago
    The trouble with AI shit is it's all contaminated by association. I was looking on YT earlier for info on security cameras. It's easy to spot the AI crap: under 5 minutes and just stock video in the preview or photos. What value could there be in me wasting time to see if the creators bothered to add quality content if they can't be bothered to show themselves in front of the lens? What an individual brings is a unique brand. I'm watching their opinion which carries weight based on social signals and their catalogue etc. Generic AI will always lack that until it can convincingly be bundled into a persona... only then the cycle will repeat: search for other ways to separate the lazy, generic content from the meaningful original stuff.

__MatrixMan__ 1y ago

Do you get the feeling that AI generated content is lacking something that can be incrementally improved on? Seems to me that it's already quite good in any dimension that it knows how to improve on (e.g. photorealism) and completely devoid of the other things we'd want from it (e.g. meaning).

keiferski 1y ago
Yeah if you look at many of the top content creators, their appeal often has very little to do with production value, and is deliberately low tech and informal. I guess AI tools can eventually become more human-like in terms of demeanor, mood, facial expressions, personality, etc. but this is a long long way from a photorealistic video.
tomrod 1y ago
It's missing random flaws. Often the noise has patternd as a result of the diffusion or generation process.
- arcane23 1y ago
  Yeah, I was thinking about this. Humans vary depending on a lot of factors. Today they're happy, tomorrow they're a bit down. This makes for some variation which can be useful. LLMs are made to be reliable/repeatable, as general experience. You know what you get. Humans are a bit more ... -ish, depending on ... things.

keiferski 1y ago

CGI is a good analogy because I think AI and creators will probably go in the same direction: You can make a compelling argument that CGI operators outcompeted practical effects operators. But CGI didn’t somehow replace the need for a filmmaker, scriptwriter, cinematographers, etc. entirely – it just changed the skillset. AI will probably be the same thing. It’s not going to replace the actual job of YouTuber in a meaningful sense; but it might redefine that job to include being proficient at AI tools that improve the process.

tomrod 1y ago
I think they are evolving differently. Some very old cgi holds up because they invested a lot of money to make it so. Then they tried to make it cheaper and people started complaining because the output was worse than all prior options.
- Melatonic 1y ago
  Jurassic Park is a great example - they also had excellent compositing to hide any flaws (compositing never gets mentioned in casual CGI talk but is one of the most important steps) The dinosaurs were also animated by oldschool stop motion animators who were very, very good at their jobs. Another very underrated part of the VFX pipeline. Doesnt matter how nice your 3D modelling and texturing are if the above two are skimped on !

djtango 1y ago

That's a Nolan thing like how Dunkirk used no green screen. I think Harry Potter and Lord of the Rings embody the transition from old school camera tricks to CGI as they leaned very heavily into set and prop design and as a result have aged very gracefully as movies

silvestrov 1y ago
I think the first HP movie was more magical than the latter ones as they felt too "Marvel CGI" for me. Marvel movies have become tiresome for me, too much CGI that does not tell any interesting story. Old animated Disney movies are more rewatchable.
- djtango 1y ago
  I like to see marvel as the state of the art/tech demo for CGI - this is what is achievable with near limitless budget I still find Infinity War and Endgame visually satisfying spectacles but I am a forgiving viewer for those movies
- player1234 1y ago
  And they cost 300 million to make be cause of the CGI fest they are, hence need close to a billion in profits when considering marketing and the theater cut. So the cost of CGI and the enshittification of movies seems to be a good analogy to the usefuleness of LLM/AI. Not a flex.

danielbln 1y ago

Ironically, while the non-CGI SFX in e.g. Interstellar looked amazing, that sad fizzle of a practical explosion in Oppenheimer did not do the real thing justice and would've been better served by proper CGI VFX.

danny_codes 1y ago
Totally agree. Nolan is a perfectionists though, so I don’t think he could let himself go for broke on the actual boom boom

Barrin92 1y ago

>But that's because, at present, AI generated video isn't very good. It isn't good, but that's not the reason. There's a paper about 10 years ago where people used some computer system to generate Bach-like music that even Bach experts couldn't reliably tell apart, but nobody listens to bot music. (or nobody except for engine programmers watches computer chess, despite superiority. Chess is thriving more now including commercially than it ever did) In any creative field what people are after is the interaction between the creator and the content, which is why compelling personalities thrive more, not less in a sea of commodified slop (be that by AI or just churned out manually). It's why we're in an age where twitch content creators or musicians are increasingly skilled at presenting themselves as authentic and personal. These people haven't suffered from the fact that mass production of media is cheap, they've benefited from it.

vidarh 1y ago
That's interesting, because after ElevenLabs launched their music generation I decided I really quite want to spent some time to have it generate background tracks for me to have on while working. I don't know the name of any of the artists whose music I listened to over the last week because it does not matter to me. What mattered was that it was unobtrusive and fit my general mood. So I have a handful of starting points that I stream music "similar to". I never care about looking up the tracks, or albums, or artists. I'm sure lots of people think like you, but I also think you underestimate how many contexts there are where people just don't care.
thefaux 1y ago
The wonder of Bach goes much deeper than just the aesthetic qualities of his music. His genius almost forces one to reckon with his historical context and wonder, how did he do it? Why did he do it? What made it all possible? Then there is the incredible influence that he had. It is easy to forget that music theory as we know it today was not formalized in his day. The computer programs that simulate the kind of music he made are based on that theory that he understood intuitively and wove into his music and was later revealed through diligent study. Everyone who studies Bach learns something profound and can feel both a kinship for his humanity and also an alienation from his seemingly impossible genius. He is one of the most mysterious figures in human history and one could easily spend their entire life primarily studying just his music (and that of his descendants). From that perspective, computer generated music in his style is just a leaf on the tree, but Bach himself is the seed. > These people haven't suffered from the fact that mass production of media is cheap, they've benefited from it. Maybe? This really depends on your value system. Every moment that you are focused on how you look on camera and trying to optimize an extractive algorithm is a moment you aren't focused on creating the best music that you can in that moment. If the goal is maximizing profit to ensure survival, perhaps they are thriving. Put another way, if these people were free to create music in any context, would they choose content creation on social media? I know I wouldn't, but I also am sympathetic to the economic imperatives.

yoz-y 1y ago

That said, the complaint is coming back. Namely because most new movies use an incredible amount of CGI and due to the time constraints the quality suffers. As such, CGI is once again becoming a negative label. I don’t know if there is an AI equivalent of this. Maybe the fact that as models seem to move away from a big generalist model at launch, towards a multitude of smaller expert models (but retaining the branding, aka GPT-4), the quality goes down.

not_the_fda 1y ago
Now they just make the whole scene dark and you can't see anything. Saves money on CGI though.
player1234 1y ago
The equivalent is the massive cost of CGI and LLMs in comparison to the lackluster end result.

morsecodist 1y ago

I don't agree that it is because of the "quality" of the video. The issue with AI art is that it lacks intentional content. I think people like art because it is a sort of conversation between the creator and the viewer. It is interesting because it has a consistent perspective. It is possible AI art could one day be indistinguishable but for people to care about it I feel they would need to lie and say it was made by a particular person or create some sort of persona for the AI. But there are a lot of people who want to do the work of making art. People are not the limiting factor, in fact we have way more people who want to make art than there is a market for it. What I think is more likely is that AI becomes a tool in the same way CGI is a tool.

ninetyninenine 1y ago
[flagged]
- morsecodist 1y ago
  I honestly can't tell if you're being facetious. Maybe I suck at writing and don't properly understand sarcasm but unfortunately I'm only human.
- nprateem 1y ago
  It's obviously not AI written.
tbrownaw 1y ago
> The issue with AI art is that it lacks intentional content. I think people like art because it is a sort of conversation between the creator and the viewer. Intent is in the eye of the beholder.
- nprateem 1y ago
  The trouble with AI shit is it's all contaminated by association. I was looking on YT earlier for info on security cameras. It's easy to spot the AI crap: under 5 minutes and just stock video in the preview or photos. What value could there be in me wasting time to see if the creators bothered to add quality content if they can't be bothered to show themselves in front of the lens? What an individual brings is a unique brand. I'm watching their opinion which carries weight based on social signals and their catalogue etc. Generic AI will always lack that until it can convincingly be bundled into a persona... only then the cycle will repeat: search for other ways to separate the lazy, generic content from the meaningful original stuff.