Said Tim Burton, quoted in "Tim Burton hits out at ‘disturbing’ AI, likens it to a robot ‘taking’ your soul" (CNN).
He was referring to a Buzzfeed article that used AI to rework Disney movies — “Frozen,” “The Lion King,” “Sleeping Beauty,” and “The Little Mermaid” — into Tim Burton movies.
"It takes something from your soul or psyche; that is very disturbing, especially if it has to do with you. It’s like a robot taking your humanity, your soul."Presumably, if a human being worked up the same idea — in Mad Magazine, for example — it wouldn't be disturbing. It would be the grand old tradition of satire and parody. But it's just too easy for AI to run with ideas like this and produce a fully realized image.
Here's the Buzzfeed article. Actually, the images are not very good. They get boring very fast. Maybe it hurts Burton's feelings that his style is banal. Why does he feel AI is stealing his "soul"? If he's an artist, he should have way more soul than anything that's reflected in these pictures, which seems to be an idiotic attachment to big-eyed girls.
Posts
24 comments:
Everytime I think about AI or LLM's, I remember what Tolkein said, that "Evil is controlled by creation". Entropy and evil cannot create. It can’t organize. It can only destroy, break down, and pervert what already exists. Tolkien reiterated this idea and said as much when he invented the Orcs (elves twisted by Sauron) in literature, and said so in multiple private letters throughout his career.
Creation is something that living things do. LLM's create by scraping the web and riffing off the heavy lifting creative beings have already done for them. Everytime we invent and innovate, we effectively change the rules of the game. It's the same with evil uncreative people. They love fighting systems that work because they can’t make one.
Plan B is their eternal playground because they can never invent plan A. They wait for someone else to create Plan A so they can begin working overtime to destroy it so it can be replaced with Plan B.
My youngest did some subcontract work for him. Tim Burton. Didn't get to meet him but as an artist it looks good in her portfolio.
Artists will think they're too unique, iconoclast, brilliant to be copied by AI. It must be a blow to realize you weren't all that special.
Remember, though, an AI copy relies on an original.
Take "soul" as what relates one to others, the complement of the body, which separates one from others, and things work out surprisingly well for insights.
It's stealing his relations to others, which relations are what makes him him.
Henley (captain of my soul) and Shaw took defiant possession of their souls, which was a mistake of insight.
#15 Cinderella in the Buzzfeed article. AI made the bitchy step sisters as pretty as Cinderella. The original Disney cartoon drew them as polished turds. And they behaved accordingly.
The human soul is a necessary, driving force in art, music, and story telling. We're going to miss it very soon.
I like the Wes Anderson Lion King. The style was instantly recognizable to me although I’m not a Wes Anderson movie fan. Perhaps that is why it didn’t bother me as missing the style. I do like Tim Burton movies with “The Nightmare Before Christmas” being a favorite. But you can’t just put a Disney Princess in front of a generic Halloween background and call it Tim Burton’s style. Nor can you copy Sally and call her a stylized “Sleepy Beauty”. But it is Buzzfeed, which is soul sucking while never producing quality content.
an idiotic attachment to big-eyed girls.
There ain't nothin' in the world like a big-eyed girl, though, Althouse. They make me act so...funny. And spend my doggone money. And feel real, real loose like a long-necked goose, don't cha see?
“Don’t take my picture because it is taking away your soul.” I like the idea that the photo taker is having their soul taken away. Taking 100’s of pictures (or videos) instead of enjoying an event seems to at least make the event less impactful for the photo taker.
The other day I asked ChatGPT to compose a Hemingway short story about coming upon AI for the first time. The result was "written" in the first person and the style bore no relation to any of Hemingway's published work; not the good stuff, not the bad stuff.
Burton seems to be suggesting here that the AI results were close enough to feel like his soul was being stolen. I doubt it.
For humans who are scared of A.I.
(I'm with you, baby!)
I've started a murder mystery set in 2092.
Chapter 1 will be free to my substack subscribers.
Whodidit With a Clone?
Chapter 1, Part 1
brilliant comment at the top of the thread, thanks RSM
The trans-pics come alive with Lana Del Rey's Big Eyes song.
Althouse:
"Maybe it hurts Burton's feelings that his style is banal. "
My first thought as well. Always liked the stories far more than the animation, which strikes me as clunky.
'Maybe it hurts Burton's feelings that his style is banal.'
Maybe because they are ripping him off. You may not like his style, but millions do, and it has 'garnered' him millions of dollars.
I'm not a fan of 'all spooky all the time,' but it's a look that he came up with.
Hollywood has clearly run out of ideas. They will be running all of the old stuff through AI filters from now until the end of time.
Reminds me of when I found a bootleg Chinese-language version of our book offered for sale on Amazon. (They took it down after we squawked.)
Side story, when I try and take a picture (with my phone) of one of our dogs, she goes into a frenzy to make it impossible to take her picture.
She thinks I'm taking her 'dog spirit'.
*Well that's how I anthropomorphize it.
A basket of correlations informed by [human] intelligent design.
Burton’s aesthetic was once original in movies— same as Wes Anderson. Neither of them have changed up their styles
I'm struck by a fear that many people hate to read and they find no entertainment value from it. Books are a learning tool and nothing more. So it's like that scene in Dead Poets Society where kids are taught how to "appreciate" poetry.
Mark Twain definition of a classic: a book everybody owns and nobody reads.
Many books are work to read (including Twain, now) and so are not as fun as popular entertainment.
I read for fun!
So when corporate media tries to regurgitate Hitchcock or anything else, I just find it amazing that people who worship money think you can just fake the literature even when the author is dead.
AI will flood the marketplace with shit books and cause even fewer people to read, as the experience is worse and worse. See also cinema.
Artists will think they're too unique, iconoclast, brilliant to be copied by AI. It must be a blow to realize you weren't all that special.
Holy shit.
You've got a fucking brilliant kid, Timmy, in your class, and all the other kids are copying everything he does. And you give everybody an A and tell Timmy, "Did you think you were special?"
Nice job, teach!
Leland's the only one here who bothered looking at the photos and who knows about Tim Burton's style.
The AI just took the Disney princesses (scantily clad doe-eyed girls) and put a freaky dark backdrop on them.
I guess you could say that Tim Burton DOES like big-eyed girls: Winona Ryder, Helena Bonham Carter. I just don't think he has anything to worry about.
AI doesn't do this until a human requests this tool to do something. AI is not running anything here, it is just a tool at this point.
Reproducing a style of an artist is stealing something that is within that artist. An artist feels his or her art has a signature style that has come from deep within which connotes who the artist is.
I worked with five year olds who could easily group pictures from old art masters by their styles. There is some essence there.
Post a Comment