...And That's What Really Hurts.
Why AI isn't the problem, you are.
I don’t dismiss the fears about the seismic societal change that could come in the wake of the arrival of powerful and unregulated AI tools. It’s always worth remembering though, that AI is not the category change it’s often hailed as. Rather it will alter us by amplifying what we already are. The thing to fear is not the magnifying mirror but the face we peer into it with.
For instance, Noonoouri is a virtual influencer who recently made headlines when she became the first digital character to sign a record deal. Her debut single, “Dominoes” sparked brief controversy over the potential of AI to destroy the fine art of writing pop songs. Warners were quick to reassure that the song was actually written and performed by humans, the only AI element being a tool used to alter the original singer’s performance to create a voice unique to Noonoouri herself.
OK, “unique” is difficult. Actually, when you pick at the words I’m using they all start toppling like, well, dominoes. But let’s start with “unique”. AI was used to give Noonoouri a voice that was not identical to the human voice which first sung her words. Because the final voice was created through a process not directly controlled by human intelligence, Noonoouri sounds authentically cybernetic. It’s not a unique voice though. Part of the anxiety caused by pop’s first outing into the uncanny valley of the dolls stems precisely from the fact that Noonoouri, who doesn’t exist, sounds largely indistinguishable from millions of singers who ostensibly, at some point, did. The perfected, digitised, robotised female voice has been at the heart of pop music for decades, whatever else this sound is, it is definitely not unique.
The same is true of the fears about AI woven into the American writers’ strike. The strike is mainly about the sharp practice of producers who have used the changing ways stories are accessed to slink away from pre-existing economic obligations to their workforce. However many have pointed to the threat of AI as another example of such slinking. If tools like Chat-GPT replaced human screenwriters it would be a disaster for the future of storytelling because such tools are not truly original thinkers but are only capable of pastiche, of regurgitating tried and tested ideas. This is true but anyone who has read a book on screenwriting, from Syd Field to Blake Snyder, will know that this is also not a problem of AI. For years the hot advice on how to be “creative” has been to copy “Star Wars”, “When Harry Met Sally” or “The Godfather” and change the location and character names. The largest part of the paying audience want surface novelty only. Producers have been focusing writers on meeting this narrow need for decades. The overwhelming preponderance of stories that regurgitate formulaic narrative shapes, tropes, themes, characters and ideas is a problem not of the future but inherent to any creative platform that places economic gain at the base of its pyramid of needs. Attempting to make the strike a fight over who gets to “Save The Cat” is like fighting to preserve jobs in a Blacking factory. Much like with Noonoouri, the root problem isn’t that machines are taking over from people it’s that this is possible because people have, for a very long time, willingly turned themselves into machines.
It’s the same on the other side of the outrage provoked by Noonoouri, that her image is too sexualised. That the teenage star whose image, style and public persona are the tightly controlled creation of a middle-aged man actually is an illusion rather than a real girl playing the part with all her heart, felt to me like some small relief. As a digital avatar Noonoouri will not be pressured to starve or exercise or take drugs to work harder and stay thin. She cannot be groped, stalked, assaulted, or threatened. Her rightful earnings cannot be embezzled or defrauded. Neither adulation or vilification will affect her mental health and when her 43 year-old creator, graphic designer Joerg Zuber or Warners or anyone else tires of her presence, she won’t notice at all. I’m not saying it’s ok that our culture continues to place the highest economic value on the sexuality of young women, or that as a consequence old men behave abominably to gain control of this ephemeral and elemental power. Just that, if that’s what’s going to happen, surely it’s better that the victim is just a drawing. Or is the fear that future iterations of Noonoouri might rob hot girls of the chance to fully exploit their ability to be exploited?
Across all the coverage of Noonoouri she is referred to with female pronouns. In this she is part of a long history of non-biological creations given an external gender by their male creator. From “Metropolis” to “Blade Runner”, to “Her” and “Ex Machina”, the history of sci-fi is rich with hot girl robots. “Male” robots are rarely sexy, often only very roughly humanoid. Though if we are all still copying “Star Wars” then it’s worth mentioning that whilst the kitsch camp C3PO subverts gender expectations, R2D2 entirely confounds them. R2, a non-verbal wheelie bin who charms through heroic disobedience, is surely cinema’s first exploration of a truly ungendered character. It is triumphantly an object.
The more traditional sense of objectification is explored in the deliciously problematic “Ex-Machina”, a film where Oscar Isaac defined the character of Musk before Musk had; a man trapped in a bad performance of the man he thinks we need him to be, less a personality then a hall of mirrors. The film’s greatest strength though is Alicia Vikander’s brilliant portrayal of a cybernetic intelligence that has no gender but is alert to the use of gendered expectations to navigate social interaction. This is gender as imposition - clothes to wear, rules to follow, a role to play, a power derived from exploiting the ability to be exploited. Since ours is the age of fresh definitions of gender, then I would love to hear suggestions for the correct term for externalised femininity, for being a female only insomuch as this is more comfortable for everyone else.
At first glance the strangest part of Noonouri’s story is that “singing” is not “her” main career, but a side hustle from the role of “digital influencer”. That a fictional person excels at the art of persuading real people, should come as no surprise. Fictions cannot let you down, cannot fall short of the aspirations they inspire, cannot be found to be defrauding or molesting their fans and followers. Influencers, icons and role-models draw their power from exemplifying a perfected way of being - of course a fictional person finds this easier. This is why we require our flesh and blood influencers to abandon their mortal frailty and become at least part-story. The best influencers on human behaviour have always lived in stories and we mortals have always constructed our identities through failed attempts at being someone that someone else wants us to be. Our uniqueness is always rooted in the ways we fail to live out our fictional identity, that is how we become more than the mirror of the world around us. My fear for AI is not that it will out evolve us, but that it won’t.
If you’re tired of men looking at women, or as in the films I mentioned above, men looking at robots and seeing women, then you might want to check out THE LESSON, a sultry modern noir where director Alice Troughton turns her female gaze on rising star Daryl McCormack as a young English tutor getting tangled in the weeds of a failing marriage between an acclaimed novelist, Richard E Grant and his art curator wife Julie Delpy. Hidden in a country retreat, the weather is hot, the water is cold, Grant and Delpy give masterclasses in simmering resentment and plunging despair whilst McCormack excels as the character who 20 years ago would have been a doe eyed ingenue in a negligee. Released across the UK from Friday it’s precisely the sort of smart independent film you need to start the autumn.
My screenwriting course returns in October in London and on zoom. Across 9 weeks I’ll unpack all the standard writing advice, including Syd Field and Blake Snyder, before offering an alternative approach intended to help you place your own unique artistic voice at the heart of your creations. Full details and booking information here.