Reality – RIP

A friend posted a bit about contemporary music on his Facebook account today, prompting me to respond, “Crank up the Auto-Tune and plug in the synthesizer. Soon nothing will be what it really is, but nobody will care so long as it turns a profit.” Or words to that effect. It’s true, I think. We’re heading for an A-I future where nothing is what it appears to be. Including actor’s faces. Something the SAG/AFTRA negotiating team understands better than most, as they try and cut a deal for their member’s futures.

For me it started with Harrison Ford. I’m a huge fan of the actor and his Ark movies, but I wasn’t sure what to think when they let it out that they would be using A-I to give him a younger appearance in the “Dial Of Destiny” film. I thought it was a good movie, and Ford’s appearance didn’t bother me in the least, because it looked like Harrison Ford, only younger. So, no big whoop, right?

But then my wife turned on “The View” and my view of the whole thing changed. They had a movie director who also acts on the show promoting a new movie in which she is starring. I think that’s what they said? Thing is, the actress on the show looked nothing like the character in the movie. I mean nothing. Two different people. Isn’t that taking things a bit too far? I wasn’t sure. Could just be me, resisting the inevitable shift to the ultimate unreality of A-I. And then I had a thought. What if the woman on The View was only directing the picture and the woman starring in the movie was a different person altogether and I was just confused? Which is the way it turned out to be. I had to check out the film’s cast on IMDB to be sure. My thinking was all messed up, thinking the director was also the star. When she isn’t. But theoretically, she could be, because A-I would make that possible. Wouldn’t it?

I’ts easy to be confused when confronted by what seems to be the unlimited potential of A-I to alter our reality. Who needs actors when you’ve got computer generated images that look and sound like the real thing?

While I was pondering these hi-tech issues I received an audio track from a friend on my iphone. He had butt-dialed me from the bathroom. The audio was him clearing his throat and then flushing the toilet. After I stopped laughing I sent it back to him with a note that in the future he might want to stop taking his phone in the bathroom. So much safer. And yet, since nothing is what it seems to be anymore, I’m not sure any of it really matters. Soon, nothing will be as it seems, and we’ll all be clueless. Sucking up all the altered audio and video the professional influencers, propagandists and marketers send us and following wherever it leads, blindly comfortable in our arrogant self-assuredness that we’ve got it all figured out.

This brave new hi-tech world we’re entering into is clearly littered with pitfalls. But then, maybe not. It’s all so confusing. If only we had something less prone to organic failure to take the reigns and tell us what to do? How to live our lives? Wouldn’t that make more sense?

One thought on “Reality – RIP”

  1. I was watching Rachel or Ari on YouTube and, suddenly, some was knitting. Some Asian person had copied and pasted and was impersonating MSNBC and ended up in my feed. She had thousands of views and people were commenting. Give that to AI and Rachel will be saying stuff she didn’t actually say.
    On Saturday, the Asians are streaming all of the football games on ESPN to Youtube.
    The internet will be like the land line. There is so much crap on it that we unplug it.

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