Then try to think of examples where Generative AI has betrayed a lack of creativity or care from the creator, and thus left a sour or ambivalent impression.
Personally, I can't do the former and the latter is depressingly easy.
This reads like Clifford Stoll’s “the Internet will never really matter” article - and the internet was already 40 years old and the web server was already older than ChatGPT is today. Your post sounds a bit like this sentence: “ The truth is no online database will replace your daily newspaper, no CD-ROM can take the place of a competent teacher and no computer network will change the way government works.”
Where was the TV in 4 years? Facebook? The telephone?
I don’t know if you are correct, but the bar of “cultural artifact” created from a system that just barely came to be and who’s capabilities wouldn’t even be close to this until like 3 months ago, is just a really really early thing to make a decision on already.
A couple of years ago I predicted that an award winning movie would eventually be made that used generative AI as part of the production process.
Then I learned a VFX artist on that movie used Runway's AI-assisted rotoscoping tools (though notably not generative AI, so I guess my prediction hasn't resolved yet) for the emotional sequence with the rocks.
https://www.techbrew.com/stories/2023/03/09/this-ai-startup-...
(I'd argue that the armies of orcs in the Lord of the Rings movies are a ~25 year old example of AI usage in movie making, too.)
I guess I should refine my question to be about text to media specifically.
Likewise for the orcs I guess. Maybe its just going to be a matter of degree and any test I come up with have exceptions and counter examples.
The worst example I've seen was the title sequence from the Marvel show Secret Invasion in 2023, which I think was the worst show Marvel have put out (independently of the awful title sequence.)
I've got the impression that concept art for movies is heavily AI generated now. Directors like being able to spin up a visual concept from a prompt as part of the development process. The concept artists are really suffering.
Right now you have failsons like musk bragging about his terrible "one shot" short films but people who use them with more subtly and with actual skill will just look like anything else being produced.
Are we speeding towards a future where most people are effectively wireheaded?
Art is fine. In fact, I dare say the masses are even more appreciative of capital A Art nowadays that everybody and their dog believe they are an artist because they asked a machine to draw a pretty picture.
We will have a lot more slop, yet humans will keep creating and appreciating Art, because this is what separates them from the beasts.