Somewhere deep in the heart of America, in the back of a bus hurtling down some godforsaken highway, Walmarts and cemeteries and Civil War battlegrounds whizzing past, mute and forgotten and eternal, Bob Dylan is on his iPad.<\/p>\n
In and of itself, this wouldn\u2019t necessarily warrant commentary. Dylan<\/a> is on the road again, on the final leg of the Rough & Rowdy Ways Tour, which began in the grand metropolises of the East in Fall 2021 and is now concluding, nearly half a decade later, in the dustiest nooks and crannies of the South. Dylan is a man who likes to see the sights, but his current destinations\u2014Dothan, Alabama; Tyler, Texas<\/a>\u2014are so minor, so out of the way, one imagines there are few sights to see. So it seems he’s passing the time between performances the same way any of us would: by going on the computer.<\/p>\n It\u2019s what he\u2019s doing on the computer that\u2019s so fascinating. Several years ago, Bob began posting birthday messages, eulogies, and various cryptic missives on X.com<\/a>. Shortly thereafter he shifted his online presence to Instagram<\/a>, overwriting an unremarkable grid of promotional graphics and archival photos with the chaos of antique musical performances screen-recorded from Youtube and uncanny monologues from long-dead historical figures, including Stephen Foster, Andrew Jackson, and Al Capone.<\/p>\n This latter category of post was particularly perplexing. The videos, usually twenty to thirty minutes in length, were often framed as if their subject were speaking from \u201cbeyond the grave,\u201d like some sort of carny stunt. The content of the speeches was seemingly original, but it was delivered with the unmistakably stilted affect of an AI<\/a>-generated voice. Dylan, of course, offered zero context for the sudden burst of social activity: no announcements, no acknowledgements, not even captions on the posts. Dylanologists of all stripes were left to sift through the entrails on their own, uncertain of what they might be looking for.<\/p>\n Late last month, the mystery deepened further with the launch of Dylan\u2019s new Patreon page<\/a>, announced with little fanfare via Instagram Stories. \u201cThe Dead Speak Starting Today,\u201d the graphic trumpeted, \u201cExclusive on Patreon.\u201d Then, in smaller text just below, the kicker\u2014subscriptions would cost $5 a month, the going rate for any number of Substacks or podcasts (including mine<\/a>). Here at last, on the eve of his eighty-fifth birthday, Bob Dylan had apparently assumed his final form: content creator.<\/p>\n Reactions to Dylan\u2019s latest venture poured in swiftly. Most expressed either bafflement<\/a> or indignity<\/a>, many taking exception to the apparent use of AI in the posts. The concept of Nobel laureate<\/a> Bob Dylan sinking to the level of slop generator was simply too much, a sure sign of the culture\u2019s terminal degeneracy\u2014not an unreasonable sentiment, to be sure. But in the rush to judgement, the role of AI in Dylan\u2019s Patreon offerings (what a spectacularly odd phrase to be writing) has been undertheorized, if not overemphasized.<\/p>\n Whether Dylan is using AI in the first place is a matter of some debate. The announcement flyer clearly has the look of a generated image: cheap, anonymous fonts; crowded, unimaginative layout; vague asymmetry. The content it advertised is another matter. Pangram\u2019s AI detection tool claims \u201cBull Rider,\u201d the first story made available on the page, is fully AI-generated, but three other AI detectors state the very opposite<\/a> (the irony of using AI tools to detect the use of AI tools should be self-evident). Same deal with Dylan\u2019s latest Patreon drop, a short story called \u201cFrozen Pizza,\u201d issued just a few days ago. It\u2019s a classic eye-of-the-beholder situation. If you want to see AI in the writing, it\u2019s there. If you don\u2019t, it isn\u2019t. To paraphrase Dylan himself<\/a>, the only thing we know for sure about the prose is that we don\u2019t know anything about the prose.<\/p>\n