UPPER TIERS: A.I.N'T MISBEHAVING (ANYMORE)

Oh-oh! I wanted to address something that I’ve had a bit of grief for in the comments on the latest video.

I suspect this post might prod a few hackles, and I apologise in advance - it's not my intention, but I felt I needed to hold up my hand and confess. We've a lot of brilliant creative people in our community, and I don't want you thinking that anything I do or say in any way devalues your skills or talent. We've often enlisted your help - from the brilliant Jerden Cooke to the brilliant AJ Jeffries - and I'm certain we will again in the future.

Nevertheless... deep breath...

Yes, I’ve been using AI here and there in Digi videos, in fairly small ways, and to help me with some of the thumbnails.

Admitting that openly feels like I’m admitting to having a predilection of donkey-fondling or that I've been found out for plagiarising an academic paper or something; that's how much of an INCREDIBLY emotive subject it has become. And now that I've written it down, I actually feel a weird flush of shame.

Sorry.

That makes it sound like I'm doing everything with AI - and, certainly, from some of the reaction I've had you would think so - but it's really just a tiny dusting here and there. But even that is too much apparently.

Like everything these days it seems to have become a really polarised issue, where you’re either for or against, and there’s no nuance. It even seems to be split down political lines in some cases, which just seems insane to me. People get very, very angry over it, and I don't like making people angry. I'm all for a good debate, but it isn't a debate, just the usual entrenched opinions.

We even had someone cancel their Patreon this month because they felt they could no longer support me over the issue. Clearly, we don't want that, but I don't think I'm ready to swear off ever using AI in anything I do, so I think it's important to kind of outline where I stand on it, why I've used it.

And whether or not I'll use it as much (ie; not a lot) in the future.

WHAT I'LL SAY IS THIS

In terms of my job, I feel threatened by AI. The speed at which it is advancing... I fear for the future. It’s why I tackled UBI in that video – because I don’t think there’s anything any of us can do to stop it from completely and profoundly changing and threatening our jobs. All of us, pretty much, are going to see the landscape shift radically.

I'm resigned to the fact that we're facing an existential, inescapable, utterly alien force.

I’ve been trying to understand how it’s going to change the world – how it’s already changing the world – and it’s clear that nobody knows… just that it’s going to be an upheaval larger and more sudden than anybody seems prepared for.

It's ANOTHER reason we’re working so hard to grow Digi on YouTube, because in my Fiverr work so much of it comes from writers sending me scripts that they’ve tried to write in ChatGPT, and asking me to fix them. What happens when ChatGPT can spit out perfect scripts? What happens to my income then? I'm seeing first-hand how people are using it already, I'm just fortunate it's not quite there yet.

I can hope that there’ll always be a place for humans in the process – whether it’s scripts, or CGI, or film-making – but the role IS going to change, it IS going to evolve, and I need to know I don’t get left behind. It’s here, now, already – and it isn’t going away. It's going to keep getting better at what it is.

Human nature means most people will not turn away from something that is going to make their life easier in some way. Companies will not shy away from embracing a technology that can save them money by replacing human staff. Hello, capitalism!

To say the AI bubble has burst – as someone did to me on YT – is doing the full ostrich. AI isn’t going away any more than the Internet did after the dotcom bubble imploded.

I saw a short war film on Twitter the other day that somebody had made with Midjourney and Runway. It wasn’t perfect, but we’re terrifyingly close to the day people at home can generate their own versions of Saving Private Ryan. 

What happens then?

MORAL

 It has become an understandable issue of morality and ethics for many, because generative AI is trained on existing material that has been created by others, whether it’s writing or art or programming or music. There are huge battles looming around copyright, but I think - in the long run - AI is going to win.

Now… I’ve had people ripping me off for years. I remember seeing a Digi joke appear on an episode of TFI Friday back in the day, I had stuff I’d pitched to other shows be used after I’d been told my material was no good, a fairly high profile writer and producer wrote something that was very clearly influenced by something I’d written… I’m even pretty sure that Viz has borrowed the Man’s Daddy format in recent years (replete with parentheses).

Heck, Peter Serafinowicz admitted to me that Look Around You was heavily influenced by Digi, and his joke book from a few years back was very Man’s Daddy. 

Which is fine when it’s a tribute like that! It happens. Art builds on art. I'm flattered, mostly. Stuff that’s out there, stuff we like, influences us all – y'know, Found Footage is influenced by Tim and Eric, albeit filtered through my own brain.

But the bottom line is: people having their work used without permission or acknowledgement or payment is not a new thing.

What’s different, of course, is that AI absorbs the work of artists without permission and it’s not human, so people say that what it produces doesn’t have a soul. It doesn't have a filter, or taste; it's just recreating patterns. Companies have fed it this stuff, and never asked if that was okay. Sometimes literally it'll just recreate work wholesale, with the tiniest of changes. That's not good.

Plus AI is potentially incredibly harmful to the environment, because of how much energy it uses.

Yes, the environment thing = bad. Hands down. But a lot of things do the same, and that’s a wider debate about where we get our energy from.

But… and I may be out of step with this… I think it’s misguided to simply see all AI-produced art as slop churned out by a machine.

NOT-SLOP?

When I’ve used it, the thing I’m using it as is a tool to convey an idea. The *idea* is the human part. Usually, Midjourney or whatever, is just part of my process of realising the idea along with Final Cut Pro, Photoshop, and whatever else. Should I stop using those? Go back to shooting our videos on 8mm, and editing them with a razor blade?

Should I delete Photoshop and paint everything by hand? That's not me being facetious - I genuinely don't know. I mean, even Photoshop has AI baked into it now.... there are AI editing tools...

I don't know if it makes a difference to people, but I'm very careful never to ask it to recreate artwork - I always ask my images to be photorealistic, and on the few occasions I've asked for artwork I always ask it to be in a style that is long dead; medieval woodcuttings, that sort of thing. Maybe it's no better, but it's my way of trying not to rip off somebody's art.

Furthermore, when I’ve asked AI to generate something, and ended up using it, what you don’t see is the hours I’ve spent refining what it creates until I get something that's 'me'. I enjoy that process. I actually find it exhilarating. I can’t help that – it doesn’t feel un-creative to me, but liberating. Allowing me to express what’s in my head without spending tens of thousands of pounds that I don't have by hiring someone else. There’s a purity to it, because at the core of it there's still a creative idea that is uniquely mine.

Plus... I'm an ADHD nightmare, and there's something about it that works for me. I've always felt limited by my artistic ability- good, but not good enough - to recreate my imagination. I even mentioned at the Block Party recently that - for all its nostalgia now - I felt limited by teletext graphics. I'd have much rather been working on something more advanced and photorealistic.

Of course there are a lot of people who use AI as the beginning and end of the creative process – and that sort of thing really is just slop. The Internet is indeed getting full of it, but if you use it in a truly creative way, as just another tool, as part of an iterative process of trial and error, of exploring ideas, then surely that’s still creativity? A new form of creativity, yes, but all the same...

I dunno.

I get that people are scared – I know I am. I get that people feel their skills will be less valued if everyone can do what they can do, without the years of toil perfecting their talents.

I’m facing that too. But I’m also trying to learn what this thing is, and experiment with it, and understand it – and how to use it in a way that IS creative. I could rage and scream and throw my toys out of the pram, but if I don’t try to keep pace, I’m going to get left behind. We all are. Just ask the Tolpuddle Martyrs.

SO I DUNNO

Maybe I'm in the wrong. Maybe I've completely got it wrong, and I've done something bad. Certainly, some people are telling me I have. One commenter told me that I'm "poisoning" my work by using AI in it. Like I say, it's an emotive issue. Clearly.

What I will say, is that I've been shaken up enough by some of the backlash I've received to avoid using it as much in the future.. I've started gradually changing our thumbnails away from those that have been done with the help of AI. Not because I necessarily agree 100% with the criticism - though I do acknowledge it - but because I've not got the energy for the additional grief, and because I can't afford for to do anything that threatens Digi's support.

Unfortunately, there is some stuff in the next couple of eps of Digi Level 2 that uses AI videos and music, but I'm not going back and changing it now, because it took ages, so I'll just have to brace myself. There'll likely be nothing like it in any upcoming main channel vids. But I'll be keeping my eye on it anyway, because it really isn't going away.

So anyway. That's that. This post was written by ChatGPT.

Joke.