I Went Viral in the Bad Way

I work on a CMS and have pitched the idea of including these tools. I figure that they're on their way to becoming standard features, maybe we could get a temporary advantage by checking that off early.

To me the outrage on Twitter seems luddite, with the creative class substituted for factory workers. If the analogy holds, the spread of the new technology is unlikely to be much restrained.

It's not that their concerns aren't real. This tech can pair down that list of names in the credits after a major motion picture from hundreds to dozens to a handful ... to, some day, a single virtuouso in front of a computer. That will certainly empty a lot of rice bowls. But as with jobs lost to textile machinery, they fill up again, and more, as that labor applies itself elsewhere.

I think the original article's chosen image plays well with unsettling/uncanny nature of current AI generated images, faces in particular.

Definitely disagree with claims of "it's never gonna look right" in the tweet chain - DALL-E 2/Imagen/Parti are already notably better than Midjourney in general. Visible flaws will continue to diminish and prices will drop.

> For these reasons, I don’t think I’ll be using Midjourney or any similar tool to illustrate my newsletter going forward

> [Header image from Getty]

Maybe I should complain about how multi-billion dollar companies utilizing aggressive intimidation tactics to collect fees, even for public domain images they have no claim over, are stealing work from developers at the independent Midjourney research lab.

Ha. My first thought was Fat Darth Vader losing the lightsaber duel and shitting himself