AI will probably not end the world

AI, Avatar, and all the other things I looked at this week

All y’all want to talk about on this bird app is AI, and I am mentally gearing up look at another 10 illustrations of you in a space helmet.

The apps are getting good — twitter (still a website) is abuzz with two tools in particular this week. Lensa, an iOS app that produces a bunch of AI generated portraits, and ChatGPT, a siri-on-steriods assistant that can do, well, almost anything.

These things are fine and fun the time being. The chatter around automation has been the same since the information age began: One group of people proclaiming it the most important technology ever, and another group worried that no one will ever work again.

Both of these takes are real on some level, and plenty of ethics conversations to hash out, but I think Stew says it best:

StewartSC @stewartsc

@_garretthughes Or AI becomes another tool in the creative's toolbelt the same as Photoshop filters and actions, Lightroom presets etc. Creatives would have access to those same AI tools and can likely do more with them.

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🔗 the new Avatar movie is good actually

I regret to inform the Avatar haters that press who got an early screening of Avatar: Way of the Water, are all but foaming at the mouth. The movie is only 10 years behind in production, and cost 250 million to make.

My hot take is that Avatar is good actually, and it’s anti-imperialistic and militarism themes age like a fine wine into my adulthood. That being said, I have a really hard time believing we’re going to see the box office smash that happened in 2010, especailly in a post-Marvel, post-pandemic society. What do I know though.

I can’t quite work out how I wanted to fold this joke in, but i’ll leave you with the best James Cameron roast I’ve ever seen.

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🔗 i am loving Gen-Z pop

screentshot from hemlocke springs music video, girlfriend

• I stumbled upon hemlocke springs on a spotify playlist a few weeks ago - i’m obsessed with this absolutely wild bridge in the song “girlfriend”. They just released the music video and i absolutely love it. Gen-Z has certainly put a stick in the ground that anti-aesthetic is the new aesthetic. There’s something really magic about stripping away the shininess of pop and just having a fun time with a DV camera in your parents yard.

• Speaking of great gen z artists, I am loving Samia’s (my personal favorite nepo baby) new songs that came out this week, including Pink Balloon, which is co produced by Christian Lee Hutson. Listen here.

• Big news for skinny white boys: the Alex G Tiny Desk is now out.

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🔗 house of baggucci

I am going through my oversized art book faze, but very excited about Baggu: Hold Everything. No referral link non-sense, I just love everything Baggu does.