Hey, guys! Shade here. So, I wanted to send out this Substack to address artificial intelligence and how it’s currently affecting the global economy and—more specifically—my business of writing and drawing comic books for you.
For the uninitiated, artificial general intelligence is something that tech companies have strived for; it’s the Holy Grail of tech that is essentially a “Final Invention” in that once you’ve reached this milestone creation, it can create all other future inventions on Humanity’s behalf.
Over the last 1-2 years, AI’s prominence has had a massive jump in quality and performance and we’re now of the verge of “ARTIFICIAL GENERAL INTELLIGENCE”.
The Brave browser’s AI summarizer defines Artificial General Intelligence this way: Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) is a theoretical concept and research goal that aims to create software with human-like intelligence and the ability to self-teach.
Essentially, it’s a neural network that can complete any task or objective issued to it by a human agent, or—perhaps scarily—by its own agency.
AI pre-AGI has actually been implemented in numerous businesses and platforms over the last few years and all major search engines now employ it—much to the detriment of the crumbling media website diaspora that is eroding the ad-fueled business model that fed that industry in the past.
AI CHANGING THE GLOBAL ECONOMY
If you go on websites like Pinterest, a growing amount of visual content is AI-generated.
More and more media companies are employing AI to generate articles, sites like eBay allow you to use AI to generate basic descriptions of auction/sale items and even ad agencies are creating AI-generated “models” to market their products in lieu of hiring problematic meat-puppet models.
In December 2023, I began to teach myself how to use Stable Diffusion, a popular AI image generation software, which I’ve been using since January to produce my “SINNERS Magazine” series of adult publications.
Pandora’s Box has been opened.
Looking at the video game industry, a stunning 31% of game devs now use generative artificial intelligence in their workflow…
Now, while Artificial General Intelligence has not been officially announced, some theorize that it may have already been achieved due to some controversial legal and corporate shenanigans that have happened within the last few months at companies like OpenAI, the company originally co-founded by Elon Musk and currently headed up by Sam Altman.
And, beyond the official announcement of AGI being realized, a massive earthquake shook the tech world this week when OpenAI announced SORA, a text-to-video application powered by AI, and with its announcement there were numerous demonstrations of the platform’s potential.
SEE FOR YOURSELF: https://openai.com/sora
At the news of OpenAI’s Sora—acting as a change agent in the future of decentralized entertainment—Hollywood predicted that over 200,000 jobs would be adversely affected over the next three years.
Imagine now, an independent individual or group of individuals using Sora, could make short clips, short films, feature-length films or an entire video series on an extremely limited budget that rivals or outdoes a Hollywood production that requires hundreds or thousands of human laborers and potentially hundreds of millions of dollars. And these AI-assisted productions could be uploaded to platforms like YouTube for free for you to enjoy.
WHY AM I TALKING ABOUT THIS?
As a professional creative, I think of AI as another tool to create art and tell stories, but I can’t deny that this seismic paradigm shift is going to affect the global economy in ways not currently predictable.
Employees of corporations will have their jobs affected, but I see a massive opportunity for independents such as myself who have something most in the creative fields don’t: a personal customer-base.
If you have people to create for and to sell to, AI can change dynamics.
As a professional creative who’s been drawing and writing for you for the last 20 years, I will persist, using AI not as a replacement for my works, but to assist in research—which I have for months via ChatGPT.
I WANT TO KEEP DRAWING AND WRITING FOR YOU.
Some people are now saying that it’s the WORST time to become a novelist, due to the intervention of AI tools which will—in many people’s eyes—make the job worthless, but I don’t think that’s the case. At least not yet.
For the past six months, I’ve been building the lore for a science fiction cyberpunk novel series. Despite the growth of AI, and the seeming devaluation of the written word, I am persisting.
The day will come in probably the not-too-distant future, that people will be able to simply enter in a few sentences describing a book they’d like to read and an AI app will generate it for them on the fly. We’re not quite there yet, but it’s inevitable.
So, despite everything that’s happening with the AI Revolution, Jex and I plan to continue making comics, graphic novels, merchandise and novels(starting this year) and we hope hope hope that many of you will stick with us as we work the old fashioned way.
Once OpenAI’s Sora goes live for all paid users, Jex and I WILL be using it to move forward with a video series for YouTube, Rumble and other video platforms that will hopefully whet the appetites of those looking to become ensconced in a new sci-fi universe that will extend from videos to full-fledged novels, both PDF and soft/hardcover formats.
I hope you’re excited for that kind of new entertainment coming from SinR Studios! It will just be more for you to enjoy, with the video content being free, of course.
Thanks to all of you for your patronage and support. Know that Jex and I extend eternal gratitude to all of you for helping us to live our dreams and do what we love for a living.
BTW, a new 50-minute(!!!) video is coming to our YouTube channel that asks the following question: HOW COULD “THE MARVELS” BE FIXED?"
…where we take the failed MCU film, The Marvels, and reimagine the concept in a way that we think would’ve been a real banger and global crowd-pleaser!
So stay tuned for that!
Shade
sinrstudios.com
sinnermodels.com
It's a tool. Nothing more, nothing less. People complained about automation taking people's jobs, but all it did is streamline shit. Companies are going to fire people, regardless of if there's a bot taking their job or not.
When you moved from physical paper and inks to digital, was there a problem beyond needing to buy a new machine every few years to keep up with the tech? (or having to buy a subscription now to illustration programs instead of buying them outright, but that's a WHOLE other kettle of fish)
The artists who are making the AI work are the ones who early adopted, but also those who go over the problem aspects of an illustration, fixing things that look 'funny'.
For me, the most alluring aspect of AI art is how it can look like shit from dreams.
I honestly don't think we've embraced this tool HARD enough, and the best part is it can help visualize things that people who write, but can't draw very well.
Of course there are those who are concerned about their styles being plagiarized, But they can continue to do their own thing, and supporters WILL continue to support them.
The only big thing I think is not letting skills as an artist atrophy if one starts depending too much on AI art generation.
As far as the whole 'skynet' cenario, that's only the result of stupid humans doing Garbage In/Garbage out.
Hold your horses. We are *nowhere* near real AGI. The "AI" tools we have now are tinker toys compared to real AGI. Anyone claiming to have invented actual AGI as of 2024 is full of it (and probably selling investment shares).