GenAI and the revision of history
What will happen when one of the giant production studios decides to stick its decades of creative works inside a GenAI machine to churn out limitless quantities of low cost, trend-driven slop?
Chances are it’s already happening, and this kind of generated propaganda will be a gift to everything the creative arts stand against. You’ve already read the book. You know what happens next. Looking around at all the other things taking place, it’s getting harder not to see the change.
Altered states
Aldous Huxley warned us that “the purpose of propaganda is to make one set of people forget that other sets of people are human.”
George Orwell told us that one of the purposes of propaganda is to extrude fictitious versions of history to manufacture consent for an iniquitous present, “Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past.”
By altering the classics, AI makes it possible to deploy twisted versions of collective memory.
This kind of propaganda is subtle. When it comes to old movies and GenAI you don’t even need to use those films as the basis from which to build new ones, but you can use AI to tweak messaging and scripts in those old films.
You can use them to create a history from which to support false messaging of present day memories.
It’s almost 100 percent certain that this kind of gentle propaganda is already possible and will in future be used. That means older movies will include conversations designed to reflect present day concerns, because the rest of the film is remembers in folk memory as being genuine doing so will create a false historical arc from which to justify today’s manufactured worries.
By distorting the historical narrative, AI altered films will help set the agenda for the future. Think how this kind of activity will take place in conjunction with retrogressive forces such as attempts to ban critical race theory (to keep the white guys in power).
All of this is an inevitable by-product of Gen AI in the movie industry.
The shrinking window
Another impact will be the steady replacement of actors by AI – you may end up with a handful of thespian superstars, but most people won’t make it and an increasing number of supporting roles will be filled by AI.
Those people most likely to make it will, of course, as has been noted by the likes of Noam Chomsky, reflect a certain point of view. That point of view will usually be the same as that held by the people who own the AI. Which is why AI ownership should be overseen and strictly regulated. It isn’t and won’t be, which means that day by day, film by film, AI will exacerbate manufactured inequality – a tremendous abuse of a tech which really should set us all free.Except it won’t do so without tremendous change in wealth inequality.
So, that’s the future we’re being forced into.
It’s not as if governments are putting anything like the right safeguards in place to protect against this dystopia. Of course, they aren’t – we see that every time we see another dead child on social media and recognise the extent to which our political establishment has been hollowed out and corrupted to represent an establishment which wants things this way.
An establishment so deeply cynical it puts up hatred as solutions behind cardboard candidates supported by its money.
How depressing.
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