The warnings keep coming. As of such and such date, your “content” will be used to help train AI. The overlords have warned us, and so it’s our own fault if we “allow” it to happen by forgetting/failing to change our privacy settings. Part of me can’t help but laugh as everyone warns me to do just that so that my “content” doesn’t get stolen. And yes, I will put the word “content” forever in quotes because it sounds so fucking ridiculous and pseudo-pretentious.

Yet, somehow, it’s the thing that will end up destroying us all (or at least those of us who use it for creative purposes). Even though, in the beginning, it all started out so “innocently.” As a means of self-expression. Evolving the ways in which humans were capable of achieving that task. Except the word “task” makes it sound like an unwanted burden rather than a necessity. Another way of functioning as automatic as breathing. For humans were not built to suppress all they have inside. Even if a lot of what tends to come out is ultimately classifiable as “bad art.” 

Regardless, that so-called bad art is many people’s saving grace. Their “free therapy,” if you will (even though, for painters and other visual artists, there’s nothing “free” about the cost of art supplies). In short, the only thing that’s keeping them from picking up a gun and going on a shooting rampage. Judging from the mass shooting statistics in the U.S., it’s apparent that not enough people are engaging with art. Or “creating content,” if you must (granted, the sociopaths who film and post the carnage think that killing is, indeed, “content”). Any motivation to do so is likely going to be further diminished by the notion that big tech is simply going to profit, yet again, off human labor without actually paying those humans. Tale as old as time. But it’s a tale that’s only turning more macabre. And more cutthroat, with corporations stopping at nothing to get what they need from humans in order to pass it on to AI. To “train” them. Or “it,” if you prefer.

Lucky for me, or lucky for AI, depending on how one looks at it, I know I’m too much of an anomaly to be useful to its “training.” I honestly feel like nothing I do is in line with “typical human behavior.” Right down to the fact that you will never catch me posting pictures pertaining to the announcement of my engagement/marriage/child-bearing journey. That’s right, because these “standard” life events (still deemed standard after all this time) are never something I would partake of. Not sure if the AI will know how to compute that.

Of course, maybe I’m being overly conceited about my “uniqueness.” Maybe there are plenty of “freak shows” out there who simply don’t fit into the mold that’s been carved out for people since the dawn of industrialism. But somehow, I just don’t think so. That the “weird” (by normie standards) shit that I put up on my various social media accounts will only serve to make AI go momentarily haywire as it tries to process “me” into its algorithm of potential human reactions and practices. Worse still, it might totally misinterpret my intent, my meaning. Take my humor too seriously (like a lot of humans already do, in fact).

So yes, I’m tempted not to change my settings. In a way, I want AI to know that there’s someone like me out there to model themselves after. To process me into its possible list of “ways to be.” “Ways to act.” I don’t know, call me crazy, but I almost feel like, without use of my “content,” what’s left of humanity could be fucked. That is, if humanity is slated to imitate AI once AI is finished imitating humanity (think of it as a riff on life imitating art versus art imitating life). If that’s the case, then I have this strange feeling it’s up to me to serve as the exemplar of “divergence.” Of being a “glitch in the matrix.”

And sure, I know a lot of artists see themselves that way. Including Julio Torres. But see, I have this staunch belief that true artists never end up making money from their work (ergo, Torres isn’t as “anti-Establishment” as he thinks he is). They’re always doomed to remain shrouded in obscurity for one reason or another. Usually, it’s because they possess the introverted nature inherent to most tortured artists (e.g., Van Gogh, Kafka), which is the worst possible trait to have in a society that now places all emphasis on “marketing yourself.” Shit, film and record companies won’t even agree to take on a project or artist unless they already have a built-in audience a.k.a. millions of followers. 

Sadly, I knew the work (and it is work) I was putting out there for all “the world” to see was only, in fact, being viewed by, at best, hundreds of people and, at worst, probably about two who genuinely cared to look at what I was doing. Any other “sensible” person probably would have stopped bothering to make my kind of elaborate video art by now. Would have thrown in the towel simply because they weren’t getting very many views or likes (if any at all). Not me. The @lefreakcestchic247 account would live on as long as I did. Sometimes, people accuse me of “churning out” “content” simply for the sake of it. And it’s true, I do put something out every day (I post, therefore I am). But it’s not “just because.” The need to create something daily is just that: a need. Something so deeply ingrained within me that to try stamping it out would mean either 1) I was dead or 2) had been transported via time machine back to an era without the internet that rendered me incapable of “creating content” (at least not in that way). 

Fortunately and unfortunately, I was born into a time that “democratized” art. Or rather, its dissemination. But we were all fools to think it would stop there. To think that the companies that controlled these tools of dissemination would leave it at that. Just standing by appreciating all that free-wheeling “distribution” without eventually stepping in to attempt “monetizing” (read: stealing) the work for their benefit. It just so happened that the golden opportunity to do so didn’t present itself until the amplified advancement of AI.

“Content creators” had a good run though. To be more specific, a good run being unworried by the now constant thoughts of AI stealing anything they dared to post and wielding it for some nefarious purpose. But like I said, I’m not worried. I know my material is too anathema for “processing.” Then again, that’s what might make it the most valuable material of all.