Real Artists

We watched a movie about songwriting where a Mom and her son and her guitar teacher create art.

I loved it and absolutely adore watching talented people perform.

And it called to mind the artificial intelligence talk that has kind of made the rounds.

Hollywood threatened the use of A.I. to change the way that movies are written.

I had someone tell me that authors will be made obsolete because a story can be written by just placing plot points into the computer and seeing what is spat out.

Ugh!

There is absolutely nothing better than creating something.

I don’t even know what my life would be if I weren’t working on something, and I can’t see how human beings will be removed from the process.

I’ve had some people send me something that was written through the A.I. machine.

As a writer, it appeared flat to me. Lacking in emotion. None of the human touch.

The words were there, in the right order, but just flat!

I know people who have used it to write a toast for a wedding or a eulogy!

That’s absurd to me.

I’ve written wedding toasts and eulogies. The words I chose were specifically picked for the people I was talking about.

Words chosen from my heart. Each word labored over. Not a canned string of cliches.

So, mister get-off-my-lawn will be slow to accept the change.

A professional colleague asked me if there was anything I could think about in the A.I. realm that might help me to do my job better.

I was polite about it, but all the while I was thinking that my number one strength is in bringing ME to the party.

I get that it’s a whole new world.

We watched the Taylor Swift documentary and it seemed to me that a lot of the music was also created on a computer.

I know she’s very talented and can play the piano, but some of the sound is definitely produced a lot differently from how Mick and Keith or Paul and John created.

Perhaps fifty years from now people will laugh at the fact that the Stones made their records by playing real guitars and harmonicas.

My process of filling up a black notebook with notes as I put a book together?

Yeah.

I’d be laughed out of the room.

Yet I don’t believe that true artists will ever be removed from the equation.

At least I hope not.