We’ve crossed these technological thresholds before. And the outcomes were nothing like what was predicted, whether it was the creation of the typewriter, the availability of small and affordable motion picture cameras from Europe (viz. Arriflex and Bolex), affordable HD prosumer digital video cameras or digital musical instruments, or whether it was desktop software allowing uncoordinated people to create computer art.

Each time, pundits and purists declared the technology would make humankind the ‘servant’ and not the ‘master’. That it would dehumanize us and destroy the human touch, the human factor. That never happened. Not one time. 

But these technological inflection points did have an impact and follow a pattern. They invited charlatans, changed the win distributions to favor the very best in a given field, and generally elevated everybody’s game.

The world got a shock recently when both ChatGPT and MidJourney demonstrated the effective use of a diffusion model and natural language prompting (commands) to get bots to, when prompted, return an article, image, or even a book – that made sense, and which, while not a Rembrandt or Hemingway, was kinda’ sorta’ okay. The image had people with 6 fingers, and the text had no specific insights – but in a pinch, it’s good for creating a photo of a phony boyfriend, or an 11th-grade paper on Vasco Da Gama.

These technologies – MidJourney and ChatGPT – are not AI, or Artificial Intelligence, which means – in technical  circles – general purpose intelligence or intelligence with agency, and the ability to contemplate and direct itself, inside a body or not. 

No, you’re forgiven if you got spooked, but these weren’t even Machine Learning, which involves training data (successive  feedback and correction). ChatGPT and MidJourney use pre-programmed instruction. Data sets and instructions are there from the get-go.

ChatGPT works through its Generative Pre-trained Transformer, which uses specialized algorithms to find patterns within data sequences.

Pretty cool stuff, even if it famously isn’t thinking, doesn’t know things, and therefore can’t get the correct number of fingers on a human hand correct. Yet. 

I won’t bury the lead here: text-to-image generation will likely do a few things: 

1. Raise the bar for the creative disciplines it touches – directly and indirectly. Currently, this includes digital images, graphics and photos – mostly on the web. Eventually, it will include print and even motion graphics and video. Everybody’s work – to remain competitive – will have to improve. 
2. It will place the determination of who is the best, creatively, in the province of industry professionals, not the public, which will struggle to discern the best from just good.
3. It will shift the distribution of market wins (money, attention) away from just ‘average’ to the very best in any creative discipline, and
4. It will create jobs for prompt engineers, who are doing what artists would do with their hands, with their minds.

And ChatGPT will do even less than that. It will produce beautiful garbage. It will make you exactly not a thought leader, which is where all the wins are in the Web 2.0 world, if you have not been paying attention. It can synthesize and plagiarize with the best of them, but it will always be derivative, downstream. Because these technologies cannot think. They are as useful as the hands (mind) using them is capable.

This work always has and will continue to will necessitate some level of creativity and knowledge of art styles, genres and history – in addition to dexterity and physical coordination.