76. A bleak future
I.
Last week I wrote about Halide and Process Zero, which allow you to take smartphone photos without AI ‘enhancements’. What you see is what you get. At Halide, they don’t believe that artificial intelligence always contributes to the creative process.
This week, support has come from Procreate, the app that every creative person with an Apple Pencil and an iPad has installed. The app allows you to sketch, paint and illustrate digitally. CEO James Cuda wants nothing to do with generative AI. “We will never put any form of generative AI into our products,” he says. “I don’t like what’s happening in the industry right now, and I don’t like what it’s doing to artists.”
On its website, Procreate goes one step further. “Generative AI strips the humanity out of things,” the company states. “The technology is built on a foundation of theft and is leading us towards a bleak future.”
I must say that my love for generative AI imagery has also cooled in recent months, for precisely the reasons Procreate cites. I’m still following it closely, and the developments are both amazing and unsettling at the same time. On LinkedIn this week, I saw an advertising guru fantasising about how, in the future, everyone could run their own advertising agency by generating products in a flashy little video. But how will your product stand out if everything looks the same?
That’s why, in recent months, you won’t find any more images from Midjourney at the top of my blogs. Either I create them myself, or I use copyright-free art from Artvee. With credit given. It’s fantastic what people come up with and create; let’s not hide that away but celebrate it.
II.
Diagonally in front of me in the cinema sat a lad who would occasionally cover his eyes with his hands, only to laugh awkwardly as he looked around. I saw him doing it; he couldn’t hide the fact that he found Alien: Romulus thrilling. The beer he’d brought to his seat didn’t help. His anxious shifting caught my eye. I take that as a compliment to the film.
Alien: Romulus is yet another instalment in the Alien film series. It’s a sort of sequel to the very first one, not least because the story is largely set aboard the same ship. We follow a group of young protagonists trying to escape a planet where they are being worked to death as slaves.
They are, of course, all different characters. One has a big mouth, one is pregnant (always a good ingredient for gruesome horror), one is a cyborg, and so on. All of them are potential prey for the murderous aliens on board the ship. The film is indeed thrilling at times, with clever use of sound and silences in particular. There’s no shortage of gory horror either.
Just switch your brain off for a bit, because the premise doesn’t hold water. And not everyone will be a fan of what happens at the end and how a character from earlier films has been brought back to life using AI. In any case, this is a ‘best of’ compilation of Alien films. As a result, you’ve probably seen almost all of it before, but hey, whatever works. It looks brilliant and you’ll see a few people in the cinema jumping out of their seats.
---III.
A strange trailer has appeared for Megalopolis, the new film by director Francis Ford Coppola. It’s his passion project, into which he’s poured years of his time and money. He struggled to get the idea off the ground, but it’s finally coming. I still don’t really have a clue what the film is about. The word ‘all-encompassing’ springs to mind when I think of it. The first reviews are not kind. “Too much”, “too boring”, “pretentious”, “incoherent”.
Film distributor Lionsgate may already sense trouble brewing and is trying to avoid an expensive flop. At the start of the trailer for Megalopolis, reviews are quoted to demonstrate that the film classics of 85-year-old Coppola were not understood in their day. With quotes from well-known journalists, films including The Godfather and Apocalypse Now are taken down a peg or two. As if the makers are saying: just wait, in thirty years’ time Megalopolis will also be a classic, despite the negative reviews the film is receiving now.
Except… the quotes in the trailer are incorrect. They weren’t written by critics – or they were about a different film. The late film critic Roger Ebert did indeed once write about ‘a triumph of style over substance’. Not about Coppola’s Dracula, as the trailer suggests, but about Tim Burton’s Batman.
Bad publicity is still publicity, Lionsgate might have thought. The distributor has now doubled that by first focusing on negative reviews and then, following criticism of the fake reviews, withdrawing the trailer. With a mea culpa and apologies to the critics involved and to Coppola. Incidentally, the trailer is still available to watch via other channels; here it is:
(I’m really looking forward to this.)PS.
32-year-old Australian Emily is terminally ill. She is dying. She has sold some of the precious time she has left in three-minute chunks to strangers. To strike up a conversation. To reflect. The proceeds from the project go towards cancer research. Time to live is the name of it, a lovely idea.
Are we living in the future as predicted fifty years ago? In 1974, the Saturday Review asked visionaries such as Isaac Asimov, Jacques Cousteau, Neil Armstrong and Andrei Sakharov what the world would look like in 2024. They weren’t far off in some cases, as a few predicted just how big the internet would become. But humanity has not yet built a base on Mars.
A quick round-up of gaming news, as Gamescom took place in Germany this week. It wasn’t exactly overflowing with mind-blowing announcements, but there were a few surprises. For example, the first trailer for Monument Valley 3, the new instalment in the series of beautiful M.C. Escher-esque puzzle games. It’s coming out on 10 December, exclusively on Netflix.
There’s a new Mafia game on the way! I love the Mafia games. For a change, this fourth instalment isn’t set in the US, but in Sicily in the early 1900s. Where it all began, so to speak. Mafia: The Old Country is coming out next year.
Indiana Jones and The Great Circle has a release date: it’s coming out on 9 December for Xbox, with the PlayStation version following next year. Really looking forward to a new adventure with Indy.
---Amazon Prime Video is launching an anthology of episodes based on various games. These include Mega Man, The Outer Worlds, Sifu, Pac-Man, Armored Core… and Spelunky! My favourite game is getting a whole episode. I’ll be ready and waiting on 10 December.
---From the love generation to the phone generation. French DJ Bob Sinclar has had enough of the sea of phones he keeps seeing when he looks out at the crowd. “I play my biggest hits and people just stand there frozen,” he sighs in an Instagram video. By his own admission, he has just given his worst show ever. “What are they waiting for? They’re all standing there looking dead. I’ve never felt so bored after a gig.”
Fontaines D.C. have released a new album. Romance. A brilliant album, ugly cover. It’s a sleeker and, at times, slightly less dark production than you’re used to from the Irish rock band, but don’t let that put you off. The passion is palpable. On 16 November, I’ll be singing along with the most exciting new band of recent years, who just keep on growing and growing.
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