Getting Isekai’d is gnarly
“Isekai” is a trope in anime where the lead character is reborn into (usually) a fantasy world after a tragic death. I picked this trope because it parallels the motivations behind audience shrinkage that data pollution creates. And yes, that is the reason Victor is mostly depicted as a black hair anime protagonist.
(It’s also just really fun to write.)
Not everyone is familiar with the anime “isekai” reference and the motivations behind my usage of the “Truck-Kun” meme, but it’s an important allegory to understand concerning Ai addiction.
Victor’s motivation is simply to escape the black box but to do so will have dire consequences for everyone else, some of which are discussed in the video below. This series across future episodes is a discussion of ethics, industry, futurology and philosophy told in-between familiar memes fleshed out or decontextualized by Ai. Outside of those motivations, I just want to entertain with a new medium that’s in constant transformation.
The idea of Victor “throwing everyone under the bus” is in reference to this new dynamic of modern life. By transparently demonstrating what Ai-assisted content looks like using familiar imagery, we can push past this foggy era of confusion and into the responsible mitigation (and application) of these new social economic dynamics. That’s what I believe, anyway.
Or as described in the video below, we’re at Threat Level: Gollem and I am just doing my part to ring that siren as loud as possible before Ai becomes as toxic for society as social media is today.
Warning: This video is pretty intense.
With all that said, I do not believe government intervention or corporate censorship is the answer outside of targeted malicious use cases. Instead, using Gabe Newell’s piracy argument that this is a service issue, the tables may very well turn to where creatives are sustained by a form of super convenient micro-licensing. More on that later.
As more people experience Ai escapism for the first time, a few will be the first to fall into the “holo-addiction” of generated media. And as we look more and more to sci-fi for answers to our problems of today, it’s no surprise this was covered in Star Trek: Next Generation S3-Ep21 “Hollow Pursuits.”
The most controversial aspect of this series is core to the greater discussion around generated content. Since generated content can be made with anything publicly available online, everyone will soon use it in some capacity to generate their own derivative experiences. How do we apply royalties to generated content, or can we at all?
What I hope to accomplish here is providing a means for artists to monetize on this audience divergence, ideally as a form of passive income like running a gaming server of your [OC] where you set the rules of the world and its characters. You may believe that sounds farfetched now but generated imagery that’s competitive to corporate-run animation studios would have sounded the same just a few months ago. Midjourney has been out of private beta for less than a year as May 2023 after all. Look how much has already changed and this will not stop until we take this bull by the horns and direct this beast.
Note to artists: MovieMachine is, in real time, crafting a template for surviving as creatives in a generated ecosystem. My strongest suggestion is to gain some user experience of how generated content is made through our Discord and be receptive to generated content of your art by providing a web portal for fans to send in their favorite stuff. Simply starting a discord for fans and making a channel for generated content will help mitigate unwanted data pollution.
Although I don’t believe Ai will ever actually replace the heart behind art, it can make your life a lot easier in ways you may not and will not expect. So let’s explore that for a good cause and see what happens.