I watched Yesterday again recently. It was on late on the Beeb, nothing else remotely watchable was on and, besides, it has a charming if slightly unoriginal premise that makes it worth a look - imagine what would happen if the rest of the world collectvely forgot something monumental, and only you could remember. Hence struggling singer-songwriter Jack Malik (Himesh Patel) is the only person who can remember The Beatles after waking up in an alternate reality where they never existed. Cue lots of cameos from Ed Sheeran (the best of which involves Ed comparing Jack to Mozart and himself to Salieri), lots of songs everyone knows to ramp up the feel-good, some good in-jokes (like Oasis not existing either - "Makes sense," says Jack), and even Lily James as the smalltown love interest. And since the whole thing is a Danny Boyle and Richard Curtis creation, you're in safe, if slightly too safe, hands.
But this isn't a film review. There's a scene two thirds of the way through the film where Jack gets to meet John Lennon. Who is in his seventies, living by the sea, quietly creating art, having had a happy, normal life. Well, here it is.
Which is nice, isn't it? Nice to imagine John's life without the events of December 1980.
Did you recognise who was playing John, in that clip, by the way? Behind the de facto round glasses and under the docker's cap? An uncredited cameo from regular Boyle collaborator Robert Carlyle, but I digress. The point is, I guess it was easy to imagine John looking like that: the glasses, the hat, the jeans. It's how I might have drafted him, given the brief. But how, I wondered, would AI imagine him? Like this, it turns out:
My prompt to the AI engine for this was "John Lennon as a pensioner", rather than "...at 78". But you get the idea. Aside from one side of his glasses being on the wonk, it's quite good. Or is it? I mean, it's well rendered. But does it capture the essence, the spirit of the man? Maybe I should ask a real, human artist to draw John as an old man (any volunteers, C?) and see how it compares.
Given the artifice of AI, it feels like there's only one song to end this post with. And for non-Beatles obsessives, that guitar solo from 49s is George.
Hmm, I find this all far too creepy. I look at that image and it makes me feel strange in a way that I can't really describe. Perhaps it's because (aside from the wonky glasses) I'm aware we could so easily be fooled into believing it was a real photo and that alone is enough to have subconsciously, but very deeply, affected my feelings towards it. Weirdly duped, humiliated almost, by the idea that we'll all end up never knowing what's fake and what isn't in a world that's already turning to shit in so many other ways. Plus I reckon John would have changed his glasses style by now (too easy for AI to have gone for the obvious), and nor would he have had had that peculiar, non-descript hairstyle... a comb-over?! Nah!
ReplyDeleteThe thing is, at the moment I think it can be quite easy to spot an AI-generated image, although "photo-realistic" ones like this can be harder. But again, the pace of progress in this field is so rapid, soon it will be nigh-on impossible for the average joe to tell them apart. Some form of legislation may be required too, to protect the rights of actual human creators... but I don't know what form that legislation will take.
DeleteI keep publishing these AI-themed posts to highlight what is coming and, hopefully, to raise some alarm. It's clever stuff, sure, ingenious even ... but it doesn't mean we should be doing it. At least not hurling ourselves headlong down this path. As someone with a technical job, I feel obliged to try to keep up, so I try these things out (so you don't have to). I have conflicting feelings about AI/ML though; I can certainly see some great practical applications (in medicine, especially) but for the life of me I don't see why "creative" AI is needed - it's creating a solution for a problem that didn't exist. If I can paraphrase Jeff Goldblum in Jurassic Park, "developers were so preoccupied with whether or not they could that they didn't stop to think if they should."
Absolutely agree with your second para points too. I heard a chilling (to me, anyway!) example recently though of some current attitude towards 'creative' AI. An older friend of mine (in his 70s) was chatting to his niece's young boyfriend, and the lad was enthusing, "it's brilliant, just put a request in and AI will write a poem for you". My friend said, "but why would I want to? I like writing poems myself". The lad just didn't get it at all, his baffled response being "yes but you don't NEED to with this! It will do it for you!" Back to my friend: "But I enjoy the process, the challenge, the sense of achievement..." And the lad, "but why? when you can just click a few buttons instead and get a poem instantly?" Apparently they could have gone round and round forever, neither understanding the other's view... and that's what worries me, that the very essence of what creativity is and what it means to both individuals and to humans en masse, will no longer even be in anyone's experience... redundant.
DeleteArgh, I need a lie-down now...
What we need is a stiff drink, I think. Sigh...
DeleteYou can always try your "AI or real" skills at https://www.bbc.co.uk/bitesize/articles/z4b6ywx - it gets updated monthly.
DeleteHmm, thanks for that! I scored 7/8 so my AI radar seems to be working ok so far - the one I got wrong was Harry Styles- well, it didn't show his hands, otherwise we'd have known it was AI; he would have had 7 fingers and no thumbs.
Delete7/8 is good. It's getting harder to tell each month though.
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