Robot Musicians, Free Corporate Branding, and AIs with Personality: Being a creative professional in the future

If pop culture (in any media you can name) is about one thing it's this:

manipulating and exploiting the emotions of young people.

It's always been just that, since as early as the days of "bobby sox" culture if not earlier. But back then it was a developing science and rough street art, given that it was implemented by human beings with musical instruments (remember those?) and film cameras that they had just figured out how to motorize. And they worked in the framework of old-fashioned concepts like stories and song structure, following trends and marketing on paper. And other awkward techniques.

Well...that was then.

Now, a film soundtrack is a single piano note at a time, because pianos by nature evoke a wide array of emotions in the listener. It's been proven through years of study and experimentation and research, and the creators of your home entertainment complex' content are very efficient and practiced at it.

Every emotional reaction you experience when watching your TV or a movie has been proven to be reliable to happen through years of study and experimentation and research, and the creators of your favorite movies and TV shows are very efficient and practiced at it.

And you don't even need a real piano - they're kind of heavy and expensive, you know? No, just open the FREE software Garage Band, create a new Score, and drag notes around with your mouse.

BAM - you're a composer now.

Garage Band and similar programs also has lots of different sounds should you get bored with piano notes - why hire an orchestra or start a band or even learn a musical instrument?! Or music theory or how to read music?! That's so 20th century.

You're probably wondering why every film trailer you've seen uses literally the exact same sounds and notes to emphasize each beat of it's condensed summary of the next big blockbuster's narrative. It's for similar reasons.

Visual design has a similar issue. Software like Adobe has for decades made it much simpler for anyone who can afford it to create visually appealing design with no artistic skills at all. And now you don't even have to pay for it.

But if you're an entrepreneurial person and you want a logo? Just grab it off the internet. Free visual branding for all! Want a piano note with that?

Going beyond logos: when it comes to UI/UX, be it fullstack app development architecture like Flutter or CSS frameworks like Bootstrap, development has reached a point where the app or site that you just built just about designs itself. The process where you just grab a theme and install it on your Wordpress or Wix site is going to be de facto in fullstack and mobile development sooner than you think.

Search UI/UX on Behance, Dribbble, or even Pinterest and Instagram. (Heck, search any kind of design on those sources.) Ever notice how alike everything looks? So many "flat" designs, so many soft textures, round corners, and light pastel colors...

That's a feature, not a bug.

What does the future look like? We always wondered, and we will continue to wonder.

First, a whimsical thought.

Deepfakes is the news media word for CGI created persons dispatched into the internet for any number of reasons.

You'd think you need very expensive sophisticated equipment to make such things, but you'd be wrong - a lot of the best programs are freeware, actually.

Fun fact: A training ground for this technology (per the article) is the porn industry, a concept I don't want to think about either.

And with our culture and civilization in upheaval and a very important election just a few months away, the implications are....troubling.

But we're here to talk about creative work.

How soon will it be before AIs can create creative work? I've written about that here, a site I frequented before remembering I have a blog. 😕 At the time, I felt the idea was very futuristic, e.g. not gonna happen in our lifetime.

Well, it seems to be happening.

Ever go to sleep at night with one of those 10 hour relaxation videos on YouTube that are basically one note going on for 10 hours? Even worse, they are sometimes accompanied by futuristic Blade Runner looking animation that goes on the entire duration of the video, with many variations. And it's not just relaxation videos that do that, either.

Human created? Maybe.

...or maybe not.

Can an AI be taught what specific piano note makes the humans feel sad or worried in conjunction with certain visual images? Can it also create certain visual images that can evoke any and all feelings?

Maybe not. Or maybe.

The glass half full view is that AI is a scam created and promoted by big corporations to frighten workers out of looking for better opportunities, or asking for raises and benefits and such. But then you have to take into consideration that it's working, and it was working even before the great Coronapanic-induced mass unemployment situation we have now...and now you know the glass is leaking.

Anyway, let's assume that AI created creative work is currently impossible. It's still a reality that to be a creative professional or service, you have to understand the psychology of manipulating emotions. It is the creative professional's one and only important skill to know. (Remember how your family said a psychology degree was useless? Yes, that's why you never listen to your family's advice. It will hold you back.)

Craft is important, too, but not nearly as much. Case in point from the music world:

Like a piano, a great vocalist can command the emotions of the listener quickly and effectively. Can s/he sing? Who cares? S/he invokes feelings through music, which is the greatest luxury in the world. Audiences leave a show in a state of heightened pleasure...unless it's a fusion show, in which case the people in the back feel like they've been doing homework. It's not fair, but it's true.

What can you, a human creative, do?

We must do our thing. Practice drawing, learn music theory, study cinematographic/videographic skills and craft, whatever. But connecting to your audience in a real, compelling, memorable way means more than being able to draw a complicated thing.

I mean, don't you love it when someone does that for you?!

AIs can never feel that. The poor things.

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