Just Being Alive Right Now

 Struggling with what might be existential dread. Or just being alive right now. 

I was watching an episode of the podcast The Rest is Entertainment. You can watch this podcast, it's on YouTube. It features media smarties Marina Hyde and Richard Osman, dissecting whatever it is tickles their clever media antennae. 

I used to like Richard. He's clever. He knows lots of things. He's a great format guy. He's very sharp, very witty. I was, initially, unsure about Marina. Her Guardian columns are always brilliant, but there was a fear that, in person, she might be a bit...Kirsty Allsopp. She is the hero of this show. She's you. The dynamic of the podcast is Marina's hair sticking to her shining forehead as she starts blinking, tugging at her clothes, peppery with frustration, febrile in front of a monolith of pragmatic smugness. Richard is unflappable, he knows best, and he has an answer for everything. She gets more and more annoyed. She's me. She's you.  

This week they're talking about Google Flow, a new AI thing that's now identical to real life. The uncanny valley is now populated with pod persons indistinguishable from ourselves. Well, not ourselves. Movie stars. Proper people. Richard Burton. Natalie Wood. Digby The Biggest Dog in the World. 

  "This is a gamechanger," says Richard, "the war is over, there's no point in fighting. We now just have to deal with all this STUFF." I'm paraphrasing, because I honestly don't have the mental fortitude to go back and watch it again. 

What they're imagining is a re-invention of cinema in which none of the things that traditionally fed into films: story, music, acting, filming, directing in any sort of physical or meaningful sense, are necessary. Before we looked to Aristotle for universalities in drama. Now its Ben from Chester's arm waving, hyper-edited TikTok skits from which we take our lead. I don't even understand the terminology used. Richard keeps talking about "prompts", and they may be what screenwriting courses refer to as "beats", but it might be something as big and loose as an "idea". 

I just checked. It's asking ChatGPT to do something i.e. "write a long blog about how AI is ruining every creative industry but at least it's shiny." And it does. That's the creativity you're now injecting into the process. 

Actors will be able to sell their faces and go on permanent vacation. Not sure how you win an acting Oscar if you didn't even show up to the set - there is no set - but I expect there's a work-around. They'll dig up the dead and put them to work as "heritage faces", and there's nothing queasy or ghoulish about it. About time beloved dead entertainers started earning their keep. Editors will keep their jobs until the AI works out how to copy their hard won experience, which it will. Directors too, maybe, but the role will be rather less romantic. 

Camera operators. Wardrobe. Props. Catering. Electricians. Best boys and chunky grips. Hair and make up. Logistics. Studios. Nah, see yer. 

Writers aren't mentioned at all, but fall under the umbrella of "creative". But they're utterly unnecessary. Richard thinks that films made the old fashioned way, by humans, will instantly be revered and set above newer films. So, why stop making them that way? Who gets paid for films that have already been made? The people who own them, usually a very different set of people than those that made them. 

Richard envisages a future where everything is subject to an eternal remix. There's no author. No finished, polished art, just a constant unfolding story in permanent flux, a creatorless churning chaos. Less the Marvel universe than our own, in fact. We have fan fiction now, of course, but this will be a fan fiction that's indistinguishable from the actual show, shot through with shipping and Mary Sues popping up to become the new lead, a lead who was right all along, until another lead rocks up like another Pringle from the tube. 

What happened to those man-babies who cried when they re-made Ghostbusters with women? "Wah! Childhood ruined." I suppose this means they can just play with the original cast like dollies, with no smelly girls to ruin it, and a shit ton more of Slimer. He's just so cool.

Call me an old fashioned Romantic high Victorian gentleman artist, if you like - you probably don't like to - but what was wrong with authors? What was wrong someone writing a book, someone else reading it, and that was where the relationship ended? Some stories only need telling once. You don't need to keep stretching it out forever. It can be small, perfect, contained. A universe in a grain of sand, to quote William Blake, who was never inundated with fan fiction concerning the further adventures of the sick rose or what the Tyger did once it dropped and rolled and got over the smell of burnt fur.  

But how do you endlessly monetise your intellectual property if it's only one story? Ah, right. 

I don't want to sound like someone who thought the talkies ruined the movies. But neither do I think people who did think that were wrong. Their version, their understanding of what movies were, what they were supposed to be, the grammar of them, was fundamentally changed. Films changed to fit the technology, and became clumsier. The shots became more static. Mid-shots predominated. They were dull, stompy and theatrical. They dumped their existing stars who had weak voices or accents, and brought in stage actors who had no idea about acting for camera. It was a stodgy transition, but eventually the technology became fit for purpose, and the golden years of cinema were ushered in. But something was lost. Cinema was essentially changed. Those sceptics were right, on at least one level. It was a different thing. 

These AI films will be films. And young people will adapt quickly. They'll develop their own grammar. They'll be infinitely sophisticated in terms of what's achievable on screen. But who will they serve? What stories will they tell and why? Will I even understand them? 

I'm a writer. I'm a musician of sorts. I've made films. I've been a journalist and copywriter. I've been an artist. AI has come for me in every one of these disciplines. Like the Terminator as a migrant worker, it hunts me down and outperforms me in front of my boss. I fail to see how AI can be cheaper than me when I never get paid for anything, but it's still apparently preferable. It IS quick, I'll give it that. 

They're writing plays with AI now. The writers were the problem. The greedy writers were the problem  all along. 

I can't afford to be as relaxed as the millionaire, Richard Osman. He's famous and successful. He's made his money. He need never lift a biro again (though like a serial killer, I doubt he'll stop until he's stopped). If he wanted, he could license his name and his authorial tics to AI tomorrow and flood the bookshelves with a cosy tsunami. I don't have that luxury. I have to keep pushing my writer's voice. It's my identity. It's all I have. And, until, AI finds me and replicates me perfectly, and it has tried and failed and will ultimately be able to do me like Joe Longthorne, that's all I have. 

AI would never reference Joe Longthorne in a million years. You'll have to try harder than that. 

I just watched a TV show about the Bronte sisters. But it wasn't a programme about the Bronte sisters, it was about the TV presenter (and novelist) Anita Rani, viewing the Brontes through the prism of her own life. It started with a teenaged Anita Rani on a sofa, reading The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, when the boxy 90's TV sprang into life and the modern Anita was on talking about the connection she felt for the wild, rebellious Brontes, kick arse, dangerous feminists raging against the patriarchy, before burning out and not fading away. Slowly, young Anita lets the paperback slip from her grasp and gives the television her full attention. The implication is clear: the programme Anita Rani has made about the Brontes is more interesting to Anita Rani than the books written by the Brontes. 

Later, she will speculate on the amount of Instagram followers the sisters would have. Lots. 

Anita Rani has written more novels than Emily Bronte. 

Schuster and Schuster have signed Ardal O' Hanlon to write two mystery novels. Of course they have. They'd be fools not to. 

Christ. 

And I've spent an afternoon writing this. There probably IS a better use of my time.