Along with many others in the creative world, I’ve been experimenting with the new image generating Ais that have recently been unleashed upon us; in this case Midjourney. The results are immediately remarkable. Upon entering a text prompt beautiful images emerge almost preternaturally out of the digital ether in less than a minute. It takes roughly the same amount of time for one to realise what a seismic event in the creative arts these tools represent. If anyone with access to this technology can conjure endless professional-looking imagery by simply typing their requests, what now for the artists and designers?
A less immediately obvious but perhaps even more pernicious effect of Midjourney became apparent as I was using it, and that is how utterly addictive the very process of generating these images is. Gone is the suddenly old-fashioned method of careful and laborious work, slowly crafting images over hours or days, replaced instead by near instant gratification. One can almost feel the dopamine hit as your words summon yet another astonishing image into being. Hyper-stimulation for the already over-stimulated. Digital crack for those of a creative bent.
During his recent conversation with Nate Hagens about these new systems, Aza Raskin of the Center for Humane Technology posits the idea that perhaps within this nascent technology lies one possible solution to the Fermi Paradox. Rather than wiping themselves out through war or pollution, perhaps other civilisations in other corners of the cosmos invented systems not dissimilar to these. Systems so effective at pulling the 'metaphorical puppet stings' of their creators' minds it creates a chaotic feedback loop. An ever narrowing spiral of self-manipulation leading to eventually destruction.
I took this idea as a jumping off point in my explorations with Midjourney. A fitting task, perhaps, for unthinking AI to create images of amorphous post-human entities trapped in an infinite feedback loop of dopamine-flooded introspection and torpor.
