this post was submitted on 26 Apr 2025
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Most artists and people who take an interest in the arts agree that this homogenisation was happening before AI and would be still be happening without it. No doubt this new technology is adding automation to the process of producing homogenous art but in my opinion the root cause of it is a deeper cultural problem. It seems to me that human existence has been completely penetrated by the values of business and commodification, which having been established are now in a phase of refinement and consolidation.
My felt experience is that there's an ineffable pressure to conform that is constantly increasing, in both the content of the art and it's context/how it's presented.
I think that what we're likely to see are parallel worlds of art. The first and biggest being the homogenous, public and commercial one which we're seeing now but with more of it produced by machines, and the other a more intimate, private and personal one that we discover by tuning back into our real lives and recognising art that has been made by others who are doing the same. I'm quite excited about that actually. It's an opportunity for a revolution while the rest of the world is looking away.
That is true. Take, for example, movies. Cinema studious with big budgets are usually very risk averse, simply due to the cost of failure being so high. So they have to make sure they can turn a profit. But how can you make sure any given thing will be profitable? Well, that is a prediction, and to predict anything, you need data to base that prediction on. Predictions are based on past events. And so they make sequel after sequel. They make things that have been proven to work. New things, by virtue of being new, don't have tons of data (past examples) for them to make good predictions and so they avoid new things. This results in the homogenization of art. Homogenization induced by Capital, has Capital only sees value in profit, and thus, for Capital, only predictably profitable art is given the resources to flourish.
Machine Learning made images art the epiphany of this. All output is based on previous input. The machine is constructed to not deviate too much from the training data (loss function). And thus struggles to do things it does not have much data on, like original ideas.
That's kind of already a thing. Just without the AI. Like in the example above, Capital wants predictable profit. Therefore only the most widely appealing, proven to be profitable art will get significant budgets. Creative and unique ideas are just too risky, and therefore delegated to the indie space, where, should any ever become successful, Capital is willing to help... Under the condition they get all the money (Think, for example, how Spotify takes most of the revenue made by the songs they distribute).
By "Capital" I mean those who own things necessary to produce value.
When you’re talking about homogenisation of art, do you have any articles/sources? Sounds interesting.