We remain, narrowly, in the golden age of television. I appreciate this may be hard to accept on a bleak Christmas Day when our own Carol Midgley has described even the best offerings as “thin gruel” but it remains true, nonetheless.
The revolution that began in the late 1990s with the likes of The Sopranos — when TV belatedly realised itself to be an art form distinct from theatre on the telly, or a cheaper version of film — has not yet, quite, suffered a counter-revolution. Browse any streaming service today and even the shows you’ve never heard of are fundamentally far better than something half the country would gather to watch simultaneously on ITV 30 years ago. Look, I’m not saying it wasn’t very funny when Del Boy fell through that bar. The 1970s and 1980s lasted quite a long time, though, and he only did it once.
But I wouldn’t bet that this situation is going to last. The reason for this is AI, which will soon make so much art that the economics of trying to compete will be a disaster. In time, it will replace not only writers but also actors, stunts, sets, background and so on. This will all happen mainly because while the old ways may cost millions, the new way costs almost nothing. And yet the results are always, perhaps indefinably, going to be unsatisfying.
You could see that earlier this month, when McDonald’s put out an entirely AI advert in the Netherlands. Glitzy, weird, empty. Currently, it’s true, there are numerous attempts to fight back, such as the way members of Equity, the British actors’ union, are resisting having their bodies scanned. I wish them well but I still fear the looming, dreary, AI apocalypse to be unstoppable.
While good telly still exists, let me tell you about my current obsession, which is Pluribus on Apple TV. Made by the entirely human Vince Gilligan, best known for Breaking Bad, it’s a pretty weird show. Basically, it’s about a virus from space that infects most of humanity and melds their minds. As in, they cease to be individuals and become a hive. Once infected, everyone knows everything, and everyone cares about everyone as much as themselves.
• Pluribus review — Rhea Seehorn excels in Breaking Bad creator’s triumphant return
Or at least, almost everyone. The show centres on Carol, played by Rhea Seehorn. She’s a novelist in Albuquerque, and one of a dozen people around the planet on whom the virus hasn’t worked. The infected bend over backwards to please her but simply cannot. It’s because, now everyone is everyone, nobody is anyone. So whatever they say or do, they’re not really there.
Some of Carol’s fellow survivors deal with this by pure denial. For example, one mother insists that the body which once housed her nine-year-old son is still fundamentally her child. “He is also your prime minister,” retorts Carol, “some guy you dated in high school and your gynaecologist.”
Another exploits the fact that the hive mind will now do whatever he asks and uses them to live out his fantasies, including the sexual ones. To the viewer, though, and to Carol, it’s clear the beautiful women who now appear to want to have sex with him aren’t really even still people who can want anything. Sure, they can pretend, and he can pretend they aren’t pretending. But the emptiness, ultimately, is undeniable. All connection is ersatz. Nothing is real.
Perhaps you can see where I’m going with this. Being dim, it took me a while. Last week, though, I was interviewing our own rock and pop critic Will Hodgkinson, who last month used AI to write a Christmas pop song. Some context here: while the slop deluge is still looming for TV, for music we’re right in the midst of it. An estimated 100,000 new AI songs turn up on Spotify every day. Most are bilge and Will cheerfully admits his own is too. The trouble isn’t that it is actively bad, more that it isn’t bad enough to be interesting. “It’s got Asda Christmas shopping event written all over it,” said one of his friends, aptly.
• ‘I hired a million of the world’s smartest people to fact-check AI’
Why, though? Why no spark? It couldn’t just be because it was derivative. AI, for all its flaws, did not invent the concept of ripping other stuff off. Yet even when — to pick one notorious example — Sam Smith ended up having to pay royalties because his own Stay With Me sounded so much like Tom Petty’s I Won’t Back Down, it still remained perfectly possible to listen to either song with the same sort of connection you’d listen to anything. So why can’t AI inspire that connection? Some argue it just hasn’t got there yet. But conceptually, perhaps even spiritually, I can’t believe it ever will.
Saying “it’s not human” is just describing that situation, not explaining it. Since I started writing about AI, I’ve been trying to pin down exactly what this absence is. Then, in our interview, Will said something that made me gasp. “The problem is,” he said, “when you steal the world’s music, it’s a bit like stealing the dictionary.” And I thought, that’s the answer. And I’ve been watching it for the last month. Because that’s the plot of Pluribus too.
• The dangerous new influencers who don’t even exist
I should point out that Gilligan, having created Pluribus, continues to insist it’s not about AI at all. Which, if nothing else, makes me feel better for not having this epiphany weeks ago. It’s also, though, precisely how the connection between artist and audience is supposed to work, where one person’s isolated idea lands with somebody else and two creative souls find themselves in a conversation.
AI, though, isn’t isolated. It steals everything, all at once. It’s not that it has no soul. It has all the souls, mushed together. Every ingredient you could ever want is there, but so is every ingredient you don’t want at all. It’s the empty hum of a hive. It steals the dictionary, again and again. That’s the problem, right?