Every generative AI tool, from ChatGPT to Midjourney, is linked in the same unfortunate way. The Text with Jesus app is inextricably linked to the deepfake nudes generated by supercharged tools from Microsoft and Google — in that they share one foolish premise at core. It’s this: The creative ideas and beauty that exist as expressions of our uniquely human experience are capable of existing without the humans who express or experience them, and not only should this beauty and these ideas be treated as commercial products but the act of creation itself should be a product.
Talk about separating the art from the artist. It’s rich, then, that the answer to whether any particular version of generative AI is sophisticated enough now depends on whether it can produce something uniquely human, like poetry and art. But the question that is never answered is this: Sophisticated enough for what exactly? Who wants to live in a society that devalues human creative art, the one thing we’ve been compelled to do (besides mating and murdering) since the dawn of time?