You Can't Look In On One Way Eyes

I tried listening to the AI voice the New Yorker provided to read this Ted Chiang essay about why AI can’t make art. I liked the irony of using this tool for this purpose. Plus, the actual text was behind a paywall. Human words? Paywall. AI slop? Free & abundant. Makes me sick. But, again, it was also funny. Gotta laugh while feeling nauseous—the vibe of our times. So, I tried the AI slop.

Just couldn’t do it! It’s not that it was completely unlistenable; I think it had one or two uncommon words it said kinda weird but it was otherwise, like, passable as human speech in a bare minimum sense. For some reason though, my ears just kept slipping right off the words. Couldn’t get a grip on it. I listen to podcasts all the time so I’m good at tuning into that sort of thing. The AI speech got to be very… I don’t know, boring? Very flat, not very… well, it simply wasn’t engaging, I don’t know what else to say lol.

That’s the main thing about AI generations on their own, without further editing by an artist, I just find them completely uninteresting. It’s not an ideological thing, it’s not me confused about how the technology works and becoming a Luddite. I am, and always have been, a snob. I have my standards and the computers aren’t meeting them. Only some humans do, so I’m not expecting the computers to generate a miracle. All the LLM and image models people use are lifeless (I don’t wanna say that word, it’s a little imprecise. It’s better than saying “soulless”, I suppose but...). I know what I like and art made by typing some prompts into Midjourney/whatever is not one of the things I like! I don’t know what else to say about it really.

What I do know is that the New Yorker can afford to hire one or two fucking people to read the articles. I can’t be the only person out here who prefers the sound of a real human’s voice. Obviously, I can’t be and I know for certain that I’m not.

So why does seemingly every company and institution want to deprive us of human voices? Why are we building ghosts in our machines and letting them speak for us? Why don’t they turn them off and let us see night?

Nicky Flowers - Guess what album I listened to today - 11/23/24 - (send any comments/questions to hello at nickyflowers dot com)