Tips & Tricks for negotiating the Metaverse with.................Pooky Amsterdam
The image for this blog comes from a book I authored long ago yet was recently able to fully illustrate with the help of Mr. Gerald Terveen, someone I know from that megalith of our times known as Facebook. His use of the image -generating AI known as Mid-Journey, with prompts inspired by my old drawings with Platos words, produced these adorable pictures for my 18-word book called Plato For Preschoolers, a chunky book attempt made years ago for young people fed up with train-plane-red-yellow-blue. Seeing my own daughter needing something else to wrap her young and formidable brain around brought me to this, but it lay waiting for 27 years, until Mid-Journey delivered what you will see if you click that link. For me, AI provided something great. It made me think, these images are from an entity which will never have children of its own, however these images are it's mind children!
And when I showed it to someone I highly respect, though I have never met her in real life either, her comment was thus: What will happen to artists? Will they be replaced in their jobs by this type of "fast food" in art? I found these questions so interesting and worthy of debate as we can't put the genie back in the bottle. Will AI inspire or discourage? And what better place to have a discussion on this than in the new virtual frontier? Because it's all about what you DO in The Metaverse, and this is interesting content.
Q: Is The Metaverse a good place to have a debate?
Yes for many reasons: It is easy to access; You can speak openly, good ideas are triggered by what others say; You can use media and/or URL's to support your opinions; the debate can take place in real time and it can also be streamed, recorded and broadcast. Right now there is no ongoing debate within the Metaverse, as people are too busy debating The Metaverse itself.
How could this be done?
The Metaverse would need to have communication, in either voice or chat, most of them do.
A place for the speakers to be able to talk without interruption, and for a limited amount of time.
Moderation tools would need to be in place, to move the debate along yes, but also if someone was disruptive; they could be banned instantly for griefing or rudeness.
There would need to be a prize for the winning team, perhaps, though any kind of voting system could record support for the Pros & Cons. Or there could be a judge.
And opening up Zoom, recording the screen where the Metaverse is playing out would be one great way to have film of this. Or livestream with YouTube. It is an exciting possibility, and one I'd be happy to explore with you, if you are interested, because this topic does interest me greatly, and we should ask, is this good or bad? We are human and can and need to talk about issues that concern us.
What if what you are doing can in no way outshine what a machine can do? I am not talking about the power of a Dyson vacuum cleaner, or the washing machine in your basement, but on artistic merit. Are people going to be still interested in creating excellent works of art in these days of Goblin Mode?
(Actually one of Oxford's new words of the year, the other being Metaverse, naturally!)
For everyone who fears that machines will become so talented that they replace the human desire to create, there are those who think AI is a font of inspiration and can help us achieve much more. Where and how can we have a real conversation about the pros and cons that face us in the now, and in the future? In the Metaverse we can express our fears and hopes on this topic in real time, with those who are probably vested in this more than the general population.
It isn't just imagery, but also writing as AI becomes so profoundly capable, humans remain profoundly predictable and increasingly there are more AI news article generators available, because sometimes one wants to do a blog but doesn't have the mental or time bandwidth. AI can come up with seamless articles, movies and even animation made strictly with text to image. Even comedy, witness Botnik's funny bones(?) written about in an article from 2017. How about both? This movie was 100% made with AI. Click here to see how it was done.
The new app which has everyone enthralled is Lensa - we are visual creatures us humans, and somehow take great pleasure in seeing our own faces, and nothing like augmenting those for more beauty. We do it through cosmetic surgery, filters, make-up and a variety of ways. Now we have a new way, an it takes just moments, but the rise of it is sparking issues of creator rights. StableDiffusion seems to have found a happier medium though.(Ah if only we were more concerned with the inside....but to date - there is no magical app for that!)
And check out what AI-Da said in November before The House of Lords...."AI poses a threat and an opportunity for creativity."
We know that AI can beat humans in chess, but we still play chess, we know that DeepMind can beat human Stratego players , we still play Stratego. But those are games, what about ART? And deep in my mind I believe that Van Gogh would still have painted even if he could have prompted a machine to illustrate "Sunflowers" or "A Starry Night" because the human need to create, that is what we see in our minds eye and share it with other humans is too strong, and too much a part of us.
(I just wish someone would ask all this AI how to save the world, but we don't want a machine to tell us that, do we? We would rather figure it out on our own........right? And even as I get ready to post this article, I have to ask myself if an AI could have written this?)
If you have a question, please email info@pookymedia.com with the subject of Metaquette and it will be answered.
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