The future is slop
Over the last week, OpenAI updated ChatGPT with new image generation capabilities, and social media feeds were overrun with the unfortunately named Ghibli trend. I've been dismissive of trends involving AI-generated content in the past, but this one event radicalised me like nothing before.
A uniquely singular style that Hayao Miyazaki created and honed over 40 years is now available to anyone who can type in the right prompt. And in less than a day, everyone’s feeds were clogged with a deluge of these cheap, soulless knockoffs. The onslaught caused by the virality of the trend led to complaints, and if nothing changes, a slop-filled future is what awaits us.
40 years of human creative process has been reduced to a mere nuisance because entire feeds are now full of slop. When ‘creation’ becomes as simple mundane as typing in a prompt, the concept of trends and virality start to shift. Feeds fill up with low-effort AI slop and users engage in mindless over-consumption, because what else will the algorithms show us? This deluge of slop content is precisely why we’re seeing trends and memes die a premature death. Memes that would make the rounds for weeks are now constricted into mere 24-hour cycles, losing whatever charm they had in a day or two.
For the masses who've never seen a Studio Ghibli film, the term 'Ghibli' now refers to the trend, not to the studio that made the movies that the trend is based on.
Remember Prisma from a few years ago, when everyone was sharing their photos edited via the app? Prisma at least offered something unique. It wasn’t as mindless as typing a prompt and having a copyright infringement machine regurgitate stolen material.
For someone deeply interested in human emotions, motives, environmental destruction, and climate change, it is ironic that his work is now being reduced to a cheap trend by an industry whose environmental impacts are staggering. This trend, much like the technology that powers it, is “an insult to life itself”.
The powers that be at OpenAI, Meta, Google, Amazon, and Microsoft want you to look the other way while they hoover up every bit and byte and nook and cranny of the internet, they want you to spend your days mindlessly consuming the lowest-common-denominator slop they serve you, and they expect you to be thankful for it. Truly the best time to be alive!