Anyone, Anything, All at Once // Variant Perception #6

Why society sits on the verge of a creative revolution unprecedented in human history

“It’s like a dream. It comes from the subconscious.”

Creativity sets humans apart. Our ability to create art makes us human.

The quote above references the creative process of music legends Jay-Z and Anthony Kiedis by Rick Rubin, a world-class music producer. 

Rubin describes their creative process as participating in what’s present in a free way. The artists listen, look for clues, and find the connective tissues of what’s observed in their life. The creative threads present in their own consciousness are uncovered and isolated. 

Artists possess this heightened, unique antenna through which they translate the human experience in artistic ways.

Then their creativity gets released into the world. Millions of people laugh, cry, and emote when they experience art and creativity. It’s something we (we humans) have always hung our hats on as unique to us. We’re special because we create art. 

But is that true? Because we’re on the verge of testing this theory in a meaningful way. 

We’re watching the explosion of an entire new class of online tools for creation, called Generative AI. 

And, we’ve hit an inflection point in just the last 60 days where I’m hearing of a new breakthrough or new tool every week. 

Generative AI encompasses any AI tool that generates (hint the name) media from text inputs. Everything from text to images to videos to even computer code. 

You type in some parameters, let's say “blue monkey eating spaghetti” and voila! 

I’m now the new owner of this beautiful image which I made HERE. I can use it however I please for personal or professional use. 

There are tools for writing marketing copy, essays, and chat scripts. There are tools that edit videos and images. 

There are tools that write code, create videos, and there’s even a 100% fake podcast between Joe Rogan and Steve Jobs generated with AI (skip to 2:00 in to hear the fake interview). As a big fan of the JRE pod I find the AI-generated intro to be hilarious.

Here’s just a small sample of all of the companies building generative AI apps and the niches they’re in.

It’s the beginning of a fascinating shift that will unleash individual creativity on an unprecedented scale.

And it’s aout to challenge our ideas of what constitutes creativity.

What’s the difference between your creativity and AI? 

I’m going to consult Rick Rubin’s wisdom and lean on him for an answer. While generative AI appears to be creative, I don’t believe it’s yet at the point of being original.

AI algorithms still need to be “trained” on datasets. You show the AI some data and it finds patterns which it then generates content.

Now, this is similar to the creative process as outlined by Rubin.  

The artists listen, look for clues, and find the connective tissues of what’s present in their life and their observations of life.

Except, the AI of today is only looking for clues from what has already been created. Humans possess the ability to create what’s never been imagined before.

In other words, generative AI is only creating more of what already exists.

But what I’m most excited about in all of this, however, is how AI creates what I’m calling the Anyone, Anything, All at Once phenomenon.

Soon, anyone will have the power to unleash their creativity with the stroke of their keyboard.

A dad becomes a movie producer creating a short film starring his family members as super heroes just with text and images uploaded into a program.

A talented writer becomes their own media agency by storyboarding their new book to better pitch their idea into a TV or movie deal.

A comic book super-fan becomes a publisher with fully-formed comics and illustrations just from text prompts into a generative AI program.

With text to image, anyone can be a graphic designer, film producer, special effects expert, and more. We can all become anything, anywhere, all at once with just a laptop and an idea.

Generative AI at its finest will unleash a massive amount of human creativity. Not because AI is creative itself but because of the commoditization of creative production skillsets.

And this is all going to happen faster than anyone can imagine. I’ve left out dozens of use cases and cool projects happening in the generative AI space as it’s just too much to include in one newsletter. People are creating new apps every week using generative AI as the foundation.

Keep your eyes on this space because there are going to be some fascinating developments coming out at a lightning fast pace.

-Jared

P.S. There’s one sentence in this post written by the AI word document processor, Lex. Can you guess which one it is?