When the hologram of Whitney Huston performed a duette with Christina Aguilera in 2016, I`m sure many of us got goosebumps and tears, even despite the fact, that Huston`s hologram was a bit off quality as the organizers later noted. They later announced they needed to perfect the appearance of the hologram to match the star-caliber of Whitney. But even without the desired quality of producers, the fact that a dead superstar is performing live with a currently famous singer made people fascinated. Why? Because this very scene blurred the division between present and past, the current and the history.
But, I hope, once this, I guess, pure logical fascination with the performance settled, some of us started thinking if what we saw was ethical.
Is it ethical to not just use, but fully utilize an image of a dead person in a live performance or is it just as if we`d watch a movie with Marylin? It`s just a tape and a replicated image.
I think I was 12 years old when saw Vladimir Lenin. I was born in 89, and naturally, saw him in his death, not life, and still was frightened, impressed, and many other things, to see an actual person who I know has died and has something to do with history.
This natural desire to see or be close to important events is what drives many people toward history books, museums, and movies. We all want to know what happened and feel part of something bigger, and this desire is so huge, that it often messes with our ethical borders.
I am sure that every teenager in the phase of their riot will listen to Kurt Cobain and Nirvana even in 2051 and every time they`ll feel pain for the loss and wish they`d ever be at his concerts. Well, once it was a problem, but it`s not anymore, hologram of Kurt may have a world tour one day, or maybe even will have a collab album with mmm…Ai generated Michael Jackson featuring real The Weekend. Will it be a bestseller? Yes! Will it raise questions? Yes!!! Will it be ethical toward these artists? We have to understand before the technologies got too advanced and the producers started taking advantage of them.
This means new contracts will appear, new regulations in law, and new codes of ethics, that can snake that, for example, the producers of Matrix won`t make a new film with the Ai-generated Keeanu, and Sex and the City won`t have the newest version featuring Ai Kim Katrall, because we all know that brand truly sucks without her participation. This means that artists will have to not only secure their selves with contracts and their reproduced images but also their generated presence and also secure their right of vanishing or dying without being reproduced after their death. Because as we see now, death is erased from the agenda and replaced by virtual immortalization.
But for now, we`re not really rushing into discussions on ethics, because every sanction in the world appeared right after the disaster.
Now we`re just assuming what the disaster would look like, mostly based on the images and patterns injected by culture, but simultaneously dive into this unknown tube by continuing to use Ai assistants for work or even for fun without really understanding what they do. And what they do is kill the even notion of objective reality, leaving us with only multiple variations of intersubjective realities (a term widely used by Israeli historian Yuval Noah Harari, simply meaning a shared perception of reality between two or more individuals), which already cause us misunderstanding in society, because we made everything arguable. If the proof of reality is validation, visual components, then now everything and everyone can get those. My reality can be easily proved by images and validated by a certain amount of people, who follow me, it makes my version of reality as credible as those in history books. This means we all now are kings of our kingdoms, but none of us knows what it`s created for.
As a result, these new tools aren`t going to just bother us economically, but even more ethically, questioning all our previously created patterns and formats of relating to reality, our ideas on objectivity, and our relationship with the time, past, present, and future.
This probably means it`s time to move on to creating new patterns and formats. But who`s going to do that?
Let`s see some examples of Ai generated content mixing objective reality with a “what if”
What if Ancient Egypt wouldn`t fail?
Visually interesting series of ai generated works
AI shows what ancient Egypt would look today if it never fell 🤯 pic.twitter.com/foeNIAxGuS
— Daily Loud (@DailyLoud) February 3, 2023
What if Cars were humans?
@aimakeart23 What if cars were human? #aigenerated #car #cars ♬ Astronaut in the Ocean – Barlas & Mert & Yoelle
What if Armenia had a different future or past?
Portraits of auto designers with their prototype cars of Armenian YERAZ auto factory of 60-70s.
From “Parallel History” project.
• mirzAian collection
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As a result it questions all our previous patterns and formats of relating to reality, to the time, past, present, and future, which probably means it`s time to move on towards creating new patterns and new formats. But who`s going to do that are we willing to ask chatgpt about it also?
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