this post was submitted on 16 Jan 2024
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Why is it that when a human impersonator mimics a voice, it's just fine. But when a computer does it, it becomes a huge ethical issue?
I'm not saying they're not wrong here, I just find it interesting that using an organic method of recreation (an impersonator) is considered fine, but an electronic method (the "AI" in this case) is considered ethically wrong.
Hiring a sound-alike isn't taking a job out of the economy for one. The original voice is able to accept the job at the pay rate the sound-alike took usually.
Not to mention impersonators are usually doing the voice according to parody/fair-use
Nobody wants to end people using AI to make Johnny Cash sing "Barbie Girl", but using it to replace Keanu Reeves in John Wick 8 for instance would be across the line. Recasting the role is one thing, but replacing the human altogether is another.
That is a Luddite approach to the subject I would say. Technology has always displaced jobs and rendered some skills useless. For a long time it has just only occurred to unskilled and/or manual labour, most people have no issue with that. Now we're starting to see skilled and creative labour getting hit by it, but why should that be any different?
Replacing an assembly line worker with a more efficient machine creates jobs as the machines need to be manufactured, serviced, designed, and replaced. Jobs are created in shipping and logistics as factories are able to create more product. Meanwhile the costs of goods go down and benefits the whole economy.
Art is uniquely human. Art is sacred. Art created wholly by a machine with nothing but a human prompt is not art. People using AI to rip off content from existing YouTubers and reupload it with AI generated voice and script rewrites aren't making art. People who use AI to create demented kids videos so they can steal from advertisers are definitely not creating art. Someone who may use an AI narration and AI assisted graphics may be creating something worth calling art but it's going to be seen as lesser by everyone else.
Hollywood executives using AI to replace extras, writers and talent are not causing more jobs to be created else in the economy, they are not causing the costs of entertainment to go down, and they aren't making it more accessible for creatives to make it in mainstream entertainment. It is a net-drag.
I'm not saying your opinion is wrong, just that I disagree with it on the arbitrary standard that art is sacred.
There's plenty of art that I don't value the human element of at all. I don't think any of the Corporate Memphis blob people on tech sites or the designs on a billboard are "sacred," for instance, but they are unambiguously art. If you do these things with generative AI, I won't regret the loss of human involvement.
Art done to express something human will never go away as long as people feel a need to express themselves that way. Companies will hire fewer graphics designers, true, but I don't really give a fuck to be honest.
Ah, but we don't yet see the repercussions of this technology. Automation initially removed far more jobs that it created, and the people it replaced mostly couldn't benefit from this change.
That kind of opens a completely different discussion on what should be considered "art" or worthwhile of consumption, but I get your point.