I think he makes some really interesting points here.
DM: Look at this macro photo! This takes real skill. So much better than the crap you try to pawn off as “photography”
Me: You wound me, Sir.
DM: LOL You suck!
I expect creators will see much more of this sort of thing as AI generated content becomes ubiquitous and even preferable and perhaps superior (at least in the public mind) to human made art.
Why learn to use a camera, or paint, or write, or make music, when AI can do it not only instantaneously but also tailored specifically to individual desires and personal tastes WITHOUT the perceived burden of paying an artist, copyright law, etc.
Moreover, why create when the majority of humanity PREFERS to have their content generated by machines — and they will. Yes, they will, eventually. In fact, I suspect the majority will sooner rather than later prefer easy cheap effortless machine generated content. Sure, it’ll be derivative and lack those undefined things that make for true skilled talent and artistic inspiration, but given a choice the majority of people prefer fast food over that created by an actual skilled and inspired chef because it’s easy, comparatively cheap, and preferable to making your own dinner. Those same people prefer endless Marvel movies of decreasing quality with the same plot and characters and dialog, and all those godawful Spiderman, Batman, Superman, Star Wars, and Star Trek reboots to any new and original content (please don’t send me hate mail about this last line, come to MisCon next month and buy me a coffee and you can tell me why I’m wrong to my face).
Scifi often predicted a post-scarcity future where machines did all the work, leaving humanity free to be artists, musicians, writers, students.
But what if it turns out the other way?
What if the machines become the artists, the musicians, the scientists, the writers, the inspired creators…
… and WE end up doing the miserable grunt work instead?
And now you know how to write a scifi story.