Generative AI content has been pervasive in the cultural zeitgeist. Yes, this has been the case for a few years now, but it’s gotten worse. I’ve had an instance where I was looking up directions somewhere, and before I could even find bus routes, I was bombarded by an AI summary telling me how to search for directions. You have to agree that is pretty needless, and wasteful in the grand scheme of things. (It’s a somewhat small fix but if you’re tired of those summaries, just add -ai to the end of your search prompt!)
As starkly against using generative AI as I am, I acknowledge that it is hard not to use, especially because society—finding pleasure in the convenience it promises—has built such a reliance on it, in every sector. It effectively McDonaldized many of our social processes, and that’s something that excites many large conglomerates looking for quick profit. For context, McDonaldization refers to the adaptation of principles like efficiency, calculability, predictability, control and non-human technologies in varying sectors.
Now, there is a lot to be concerned about, and if you’ve been online recently, you have heard varying perspectives on it by now. I want to focus on entertainment and human art, and how AI has infiltrated those spheres. This is coming from a place of passion for the human ability to create.
It’s an issue, as is, that the humanities, social sciences, and the arts are looked down upon—even though these are all intrinsic to us as people. We preserve our stories in our art, we understand society and our actions a lot better through these disciplines, and we understand our history, and the cycles we are prone to fall into. There are abstract feelings and experiences we cannot articulate in plain words, so we bend those things to our will to convey them powerfully. For someone who has amassed a number of playlists that I cycle through depending on my mood, it disheartens me seeing how I’ll open TikTok or Instagram, confronted with AI-generated music. Over and over. Pushed with the intent of making profit.
In addition to the prominence of AI-generated music, last November, we saw an AI “Artist” make the billboard under the name of “Xania Monet”. The woman behind the project stated she isn’t a singer and used an AI program to produce music. This spurred an ongoing debate. Even if the woman behind the project inputted her experiences to generate the music, can it be considered art? Is it fair that compared to the amount of work Indie artists put into their craft—composing songs, writing music, arranging them—someone who generated the work using a prompt made the Billboard list? Is it justifiable that she’s getting that exposure artists are struggling to attain? And is it not contradictory, calling this art, when art refers to the human application of creative skill and imagination for the sake of creating subjective pieces to represent oneself?
Aside from music, other mediums in which we share our stories have been jeopardised. Before Sora AI was shut down, AI videos had become normalized parts of our feeds—unfortunately. Recently, there has been this influx of videos with AI-generated, anthropomorphic fruits in relationships. Cheating on each other. Yikes.
While I can dissect why this content sucks narratively, I actually want to put focus foremost on how this content has, ever since its initial production, been pushed towards the feeds of young children on social media. It is hard to fully monitor a child’s internet access and the content they consume. This has been the case for years. It’s a bit of a slippery slope ethically as is, marketing towards a demographic of young children who should not even be on social media apps—but the algorithm is built on analyzing user patterns. Children—as you may remember with the Italian Brainrot trend—are drawn to the colours and characters. Unfortunately, a lot of inappropriate content, often depicting gory scenarios roping in cartoonish cats, has infiltrated platforms such as YouTube kids. Perusing through forums, I found several instances of distressed parents who have realized the extent of horrific content that is produced quickly and has infested the feeds of children. For many, however, this isn’t cause for concern—given how we are in the midst of a huge paradigm shift anyway.
This content, the fruits, the cats—all of it, also are underpinned by misogynistic sentiments. The aforesaid cheating stories follow the same formula (the predictability works well with the algorithm). A female character cheating on her partner, a child being born out of wedlock, and it ends with her being punished in bizarre and concerning ways. For one, these stories also affirm very restrictive norms placed upon women and their femininity—barring the cheating, there is a weird amount of content punishing women for acting unladylike. Then, they incentivize violence against women. We as people are influenced by the content we consume. Given that this is pushed to children, alongside a growing anti-feminist/establishment of regressive rhetoric, this is very alarming.
Children are not solely privy to this content, either. You might have seen “Fruit Love Island” on your social media feeds, and if you were fortunate enough not to see it, like I was for a while, you might’ve heard about it. It takes from the plot of famous reality TV show Love Island, and depicts oddly sexualized, anthropomorphic fruits. Not only has it taken the plot, but people have pointed out how the music is the same, as are stories from real people on the show. The biggest change, aside from the fruits, is how the violence between the women on this series is rather exaggerated. Without constraints of norms, and intervention of the people on reality TV, we get this constant and casual viewing of harmful contention, brewing between women.
It’s ironic. Social media functions off of packaging videos into short-form, pushing out information at an efficient, digestible rate. It has impacted people’s ability to stay attuned to longer forms of content. Artists are struggling to work around the algorithm unless they abide by what’s working in favour of producing what they can for exposure—which, in itself, inhibits creativity. The creator behind “Fruit Love Island” has amassed a large following; over 3 million people, tuned in to entirely AI-generated, longer videos. This is becoming normalized. People are enjoying this.
I understand a lot of this can read as reductionist, and that I am echoing the rallying outcry against AI ever since it entered the cultural zeitgeist. With every technological paradigm shift, there is a subsequent panic—since change, for us as people, has always been a scary thing. I also understand that there may be sectors in which AI can be beneficial. There are consequences to every change made, but this is the first time we’re seeing a large divide—elicited by people who are questioning if the costs outweigh the benefits. I argue that we are losing a lot with AI entering our every sphere. Jobs have been jeopardized, our environment has been direly affected, and AI has been gaining more exposure than art that was put together in the name of passion. The other end of it is scary too. The bubble popping which we may be seeing signs of—through the aforementioned shut-down of Sora AI—has its ramifications alongside its benefits. As a social media user, the best thing you can do at this point in time is continue being critical of what you’re consuming.