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Comment by periphrasis | Hacker News Reader

And because the passage of time implies progress, this will be inherently better than what came before. /s

It will be significantly better for everyone who consumes media.

Imagine if you can get movies custom made to your own personal preferences?

So literally generic content replacing art? Just tell the machine what you expect and like and then your expectations can be satisfied on-demand! Sounds like cultural oblivion and I will hold my tongue on the quality of your aesthetic judgment.

You should google the definition of generic.

> Sounds terrible and I will hold my tongue on the quality of your aesthetic judgment.

Thank god! Your opinion would devastate me!

Anyway, I'm super excited to be able to prompt an AI to "create another kubrick movie in the modern era" or "make a seinfeld episode about living under covid" or something.

A better large language model would generate a script 100x better than any of the current hollywood writers (who do a pretty piss poor job as it is...)

I was referring to the genre fiction versus literary fiction distinction, something which would be very evident if your understanding of the term wasn’t limited to the first hit of a google search.

You're either changing your argument or you suck at writing. Which is it?

Obviously everyone knows what the genre of fiction means. But that wasn't what you said in the slightest lmfao.

I think this over values a lot of what is produced for tv and streaming, which I could at best describe as filler. A ton of cultural production has little to no artistic value, but exists to be basically slightly different and fresher than last years iteration. Why watch last years hallmark or lifetime movie when this years is the same one but refilmed? The same can be said for at least half of the Netflix/CBS output.

Exactly.

You'll get one Kubrick/Spielberg/George Lucas every decade. But the vast majority of what's produced is another dumb Star Wars movie or another Marvel cash grab.

You are looking only at mass distributed titles

I don’t disagree about the artistic merit or lack thereof of most “content”. Will AI produced content be worse than 98% of what’s on Netflix? Probably not! But this will drastically change the economics of content creation, such that something that has the chance to be actual art will be dramatically more expensive than that which can benignly occupy a user’s attention as they alternate between staring at a screen and flipping through their phone. Give it a generation, or even just a decade (look at how rapidly audience tastes have degenerated since 2014 or so) and no one will be able to conceive of “content” being anything else. Who is going to sign on to fund popular entertainment with artistic ambition, eg The Fabelmans, or art house fare, eg Tar, in such a world? Such a future, a world without popular or even middle brow art, is dystopian to its core (and indeed it may already be our present) which is why I fail to conceal my contempt for the aesthetic values of anyone who would eagerly embrace it.

Does “art” occupy much of the collective attention to begin with? If we look at best picture nominees by box office gross, something like 6/10 weren’t seen by anyone to begin with, and that was an unusually low percentage historically.

No literally the opposite. Instead of having to create blockbusters that appeal to everybody and therefore none at all, we can create stuff that appeal to smaller audiences and try new things.

If you are the type of person who complains about the fifth transformer movie, or ask why Hollywood doesn't want to take a try on new things, the cheaper a production can be made, the better the ods that somebody can make it.

In a world where you need 200 million dollars to create a game, only studios of that size can make the games, and we never get Kerbal Space Program, Rimworld or Minecraft.

As a quick example of movies: Pearl Harbor would have been a great war movie if it had toned down the rom-com part by about 80%, but then it would have lost a big part of the audience. On the other hand, it would have been a great romantic movie if it had turned down the war content by about 80%, but then it would have lost the other part of the audience.

As it is, it is too long, and not a good movie in the first place.

Now it appears to me from your comment that you want to find a way to hate this no matter the merits, but honestly most people will want to watch things they like, and then be delighted and surprised. Game of Thrones did as well as it did because of the plot twists, not because it was predictable. The CGI and general budget went up for the last seasons and they are universally looked upon as the worst ones.

As a challenge for you: which movie, that you consider art, sold at least 10 million tickets in its original theater run?

No, half the joy for most people who socialise is sharing the experience with others. I also couldn't care less if you were to show me a chess match and tell me it was Stockfish vs AlphaZero but would if it were Hikaru vs Carlsen simply because I am interested in the work of others much more than an algorithm even if it were to be as good.

> half the joy for most people

You should talk to the average Netflix user and see if they can name any of the writers/director/producers.

They might be able to name a couple of the main actors/actresses.

No one cares about the producers/director for the vast majority of media.

Some small % of people care (who are interested in the production or whatever) and I'm sure they'll continue to watch purely human generated content.

The vast majority of people will move on because AI generated media will be 100x better than the garbage scripts that hollywood writers put out.

I agree that there are a few directors who are incredibly high quality (your tarantino, kubrick, etc.) and people of those caliber will continue to be successful.

But yeah, I'd much rather have an AI generate me a movie than watch Disney's next cash grab star wars movie (that has almost comically bad writing).

It probably will be at least somewhat better, but not for this reason.

Better for who?

Probably a net improvement for humanity overall.

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