AI'VE GOT SOMETHING TO SAY

Hello, all. Thanks for all the lovely comments so far on the finale. Below is something I just shared on Kickstarter, which I thought you might fancy reading:

I want to address something which I feared might be controversial, and which we got a comment about last night saying it was "ruining" Digi Level 2, and kind of try to explain where I'm coming from.

I'm obviously very aware that AI divides people, and I completely get why. I've wrestled with my own conscience around it over the past year or so. I've weighed up the pros and cons, and looked at where it's heading. I mean, at one point last year I swore off ever using it again... 

Yeah, it sucks balls that the AIs have been trained on people's work without permission. People have a right to be pissed off over that. It sucks that voiceover people are losing work, that artists are losing work. At the same time... how many blacksmiths do you see now? We're going through a time of upheaval - a new industrial revolution - and it's terrifying that it's happening so quickly.

That said, aren't we all 'trained' on other people's work? Years ago I made a spoof cover of 2000AD, and drew a version of a drunk Judge Dredd that was based upon the artwork of Carlos Ezquerra. Am I bad for doing that?

For something like Found Footage, it's meant to evoke other things. It's meant to be a warped version of the familiar. We're closer with these final eps of Digi Level 2 to what I wanted the original Found Footage to be. 

I'm not trying to justify it, I've just tried to rationalise it in my own brain, and put it into perspective. Partly, this is because three years ago, my entire career of 25-years crashed to a halt, because the BBC entirely shifted the way it makes shows. We'd been commissioned for a new series of one of my shows, and suddenly the BBC told the production company they needed to find an international production partner to put in 70% of the budget - which had previously come from the BBC. 

Broadcasters in the UK can no longer afford to make everything in-house, and need international partners - which is why I later found myself in a writer's room as a writer-for-hire with three Canadians, instead of leading a writing team of British writers. And it has only gotten worse from there. I've mostly turned my back on TV now, because there are so many voices in the mix these days, everything takes so long, everything has to fit into a very restrictive box... 

That all happened because of YouTube, because of streaming, because the TV market has been fragmented and there's less money floating around. Because of the tectonic shift of progress. As devastating as it was, I learned to adapt. I had to change to find ways to work within this new environment, and still make a living.

INSTINCT, BASICALLY

By stopping using AI... I soon realised that I was ignoring my own instincts, doing it to keep people happy, and to avoid the grief that inevitably comes with using it. I was burying my head in the sand, and maybe if I'd not ignored the signs of where the BBC was headed... I would have acted and adapted sooner to protect my income.

Plus, I've accepted that it is, frankly, stupid, speaking as a creative professional, to say you won't use it. I now once again mostly earn a living as a writer - with our Patreon also helping - but that is also being threatened by AI. It's changing.

I'm seeing two things: 1) Sooner or later there's no way that AI isn't going to be used by studios and producers to write movies, and 2) I often now get asked to fix scripts that have been written by AI. That's the key thing: AI is becoming a tool in the creative process, but creativity - at least for now - still needs human input to drive it and shape it. It needs that individuality. That uniqueness of a mind.

I was working as a graphic designer when Photoshop first came out, and I learned to use it because it was clearly going to be ubiquitous. It changed everything. People had to adapt. It's like when CGI became the go-to animation tool; traditional animators either had to learn to work with it, or they were out of work. 

I mean, Sanja's grandad was one of the most successful traditional animators in the UK - he worked on Yellow Submarine! - but he lost his business when he failed to keep step with the times. 

What's doubly frustrating is that AI has become one of those hot-button issues that we have these days where it's all-or-nothing. There's no nuance; if you use AI you're evil. In certain quarters there's no attempt at looking at how it's being used, at how it can aid in a creative process. Yes, in part that's because most people are using it in an incredibly lazy way. Type in a prompt. End of story. Job done. The internet is flooded with AI slop.

But... I've tried so hard to use it in a completely different way, that at least tries to circumvent some of the issues people have with it.

BAKED

If people don't see that AI isn't going anywhere then they're not paying attention to what's happening. Things are changing - fast - and capitalism will, unfortunately, win out. That might sound defeatist, but I'm trying to be realistic. AI is baked into Final Cut, Photoshop, and every other piece of software I use pretty much, our governments are investing in it, every company is using it, it's in my phone... I've accepted there's no escaping it, and I'm not going to be the last Luddite at the party out of principle. 

Plus... in all honesty... I find it incredibly exciting. It's a new frontier. It finally allows me to create things that were previously stuck in my weird brain. Things I could never have afforded to create before. 

A couple of my favourite comic book artists - who were hugely influential to me growing up, to the point that I painted a mural of one of their characters on my bedroom wall - have also come out saying they find AI interesting and new. One of them, Jamie Hewlett - creator of Tank Girl and Gorillaz - got a bit of stick last year for using AI in an illustration he created for a comicon brochure. But... it was clearly just part of his process; he still painted and drew on top of it. He's clearly excited, as I am, by the technology to help him create. 

So, yes, I've used it in the final couple of eps of Digi Level. I worked very very hard with it as a tool, tried to use it in clever, creative, ways, and not as some lazy fall-back.  I went to enormous pains to ensure that it would clearly be filtered through my own creative efforts - and not just typing words into a prompt. I don't think anyone would watch the latest episode and say it came from anything other than my brain. Additionally, I also paid the brilliant Jerden Cooke to create new music, and got the equally brilliant James Grimes to do voice acting. 

In practical terms, the use of AI here was a result of me building things in Photoshop or by hand before running it through, manipulating public domain footage and images, or using my own photos, and then doing further manipulation with other apps and software afterwards. 

My son even made me a 3D image of a Digitiser bunker door - and then 3D-printed it, along with some barrels! I'd planned to make a miniature set, which I was then going to photograph and work with AI to animate and bring to life! The plan was to greenscreen Gannon and I into it. Sadly, I ran out of time. 

I feed my own images into it, and ask it to remix those. The robots in the kids show sequence, for instance, were a mix of public domain or stock images of bad taxidermy, animals, puppets and images of other robots I found (industrial ones from factories or weird Japanese ones etc.). I'd feed those in - often after I'd already manipulated them in Photoshop. Sometimes I'd do rough sketches of things and feed that in. A lot of the puppets in the episode are extrapolated from images of teletext Digi characters - the Man's Daddy, for instance! 

Here are a couple I didn't use:

Any time you see a Space Gent, it's from a photo of a rubber toy octopus we bought, remixed with photos of real octopuses and squid. A few of them I even included stuff like photos of fish eyes! Basically, I'm trying as hard as possible to build on my own inputs, and not simply copy the work that has been stolen to train the AI. 

I know that's unavoidable to a degree - but it has been done now. I mean, my own scripts for things I've written are probably buried somewhere in ChatGPT's brain. It is what it is. After what I've been through with my own career the last few years, I have my own perspective on it all. I'm afraid that my attitude, after going through what I've been through with my own career, is: "Get over yourself". 

My favourite use of it was Photoshop's generative fill, which I used by digitally extending the bunker sets we built. I also used photos from the location we filmed at from the finale, and got it to generate new scenes - the clips of running through corridors in the end sequence came from photos we'd taken on location. Some of those images I'd then manipulate in Photoshop, before running it through again. 

The 'poison' section used mostly public domain footage, but one sequence of a milk factory I ran through Runway to get it to change the cartons to read "poison" instead of "milk". I could've done that by hand, but it would've taken me a week. 

I also used it in our main channel's UFO video last year; I was trying to find footage of a radio telescope that was dismantled years ago, but could only find one still image of it. It looked a bit static, so I asked Runway to give it some subtle depth - and suddenly I had a dynamic aerial footage of the telescope. 

BAD RAP

In short, AI gets a bad rap because most people simply type in a prompt, and then just see what comes out, instead of experimenting with it. People are angry and scared, I get it. But it's also starting to feel like King Cnut shouting at the sea. 

These last two eps were an IMMENSE amount of work, and it was extremely expensive to do (at least, for someone like me). It wasn't free. So, I confess, it is a bit galling to hear I've "ruined" Digi Level 2 by using it, when I put in some much bloody work to get it looking as good as it did. 

AI is just one part of the look of Digi Level 2 - that's all. We also built practical sets, bought props, we lit it, we used smoke, we hired a spark machine that we ended up not using, because the footage wasn't great, I animated a ton of pixel art by hand. The aesthetics of the show were thought out so, so carefully  The work it has taken is the most massive undertaking I've ever done, and I'm SO proud of it. For everything you see on screen, there was a vast amount of experimentation behind-the-scenes.

I didn't need to spend as much time, money, and effort as I did, but I did it for you lot, mostly, because, frankly, it isn't "YouTube-y" enough to ever break beyond our core audience. It's YOUR show, and I want you to see it as a whole - not distill it down to one aspect of a technology you don't like that is nevertheless changing our world. I urge you to recognised how I've used it here, and keep an open mind. Also, I'm kind of tired of explaining and discussing it now. I'm just sorry that anyone might think I ruined it.

Aaaaand breathe. The comments have been otherwise great. I'm happy so many of you are enjoying it.

Paul