No photography, no actors, no scenery, no cameras, no musicians, no production company…just me and a keyboard. Text to video is in its infancy but text to image gets better by the week, literally. When I started playing around with some of these programs a few months ago I was pretty impressed, but there was nothing like the level of texture and detail you can achieve now.
I’ve spent my entire working life in the creative industry. My memory is hazy at the best of times but I do know that a good few years of my professional life was pre-computer. It was all cutting boards, scalpels, Letraset and spray mount. Computers landed at the end of the eighties and suddenly we could produce instant designs without the need to stay up all night slicing letters out of Pantone film. All those years ago the threat was that computers would take our jobs and we’d end up packing bags at the Tesco checkout. Thankfully, Tesco never had to deal with an influx of entitled designers from Soho.
But the arrival of AI is sure to change everything: these creative tools are beyond anything we’ve ever imagined. And remember, it’s only week one. I’ve already been challenged by designers who say, ‘Yeah, but the copyright’ or ‘Yeah, but there’s no soul’. I just smile knowingly at the smell of clever people pooping themselves.
Sure, the hands can go a bit weird and the eyes wobble like a demented rattlesnake, but how many weeks will it be before they fix that? Basically folks, content is now free. No need to fret over finding the right actor or model. AI will fill the role instantly with a perfect, racially non-specific person without the need for any agency, fees or royalties.
And Suno will write you a nice little ditty as the background music. No need for any grumpy old failed rock star to feign interest in your ‘exciting new product’ as he takes the brief for another ‘something upbeat with a catchy refrain’.
So. Will AI take all our jobs and ultimately destroy the planet? Quite probably. But seriously, I won’t get into all that here. Maybe next time. In the meantime, can I suggest we loosen up and enjoy these fantastic new creative tools. After all, as Spaceboy says, ‘life is an adventure’.
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About twenty years ago roadworks at a roundabout in my hometown forced traffic to drive anti-clockwise around it for a few days. Everything was clearly signed and managed so although it felt a bit weird, actually it was all very straightforward. Now, maybe I’ve got some mental health issues but I swear every time I use that roundabout, to this very day, I have to think twice about which way round I should go. My point is that seemingly insignificant disruptions in our daily routines can have a long, long lasting effect.
Is it any wonder then, that having forced people to stay in their homes, on and off for two years whilst paying them from the public purse for the occasional Zoom call, has created a culture of malaise. The western world has surely succumbed to a brain virus that whispers ‘why bother?’ at the very prospect of commuting back to the office.
Normally experiments are conducted with a handful of guinea pigs, the results then extrapolated across the entire population. The WFH experiment, by contrast, was conducted the other way around by locking down the entire population of planet Earth and then waiting to see the effects. Well, the results are in and few could argue there’s been a rush to peak productivity. On the contrary, productivity has slumped since we were all taught how little our personal contribution makes to the economy, or even our own personal wealth for that matter, and is crawling along on its knees at levels much lower than pre 2008. Clearly, a kind of entitled malaise has seeped its way through our veins and up into our brains: an opiate that has turned us into rudderless drones for whom work is little more than an irritant that interferes with our busy lives on social media.
At a conference recently I listened to a high profile architect explain how personality and DNA tests could help sculpt the working environment of the future by adapting the room temperature, the colour of the walls, the lighting and the type of office plants for each employee’s individual requirements. My response was a tiny puke at the back of my throat. The thought that this level of corporate pampering and pandering is the future of work can only be a red flag for managed decline. Of course the working environment should be comfortable, but when mollycoddling culture gets to the point we have to bring in aspidistras for the new intern perhaps the pendulum has swung a little too far.
More to the point, have you noticed how the super-nice guy who makes a beeline for you on your first day always turns out to be the Judas? Interior design is just the same. Virtue signalling brands with bouncy castles in reception are often the most toxic places to work. (Ask anyone who works at Google). Colourful, cuddly receptions are sure to be hiding something deeply sinister, I reckon.
Take a poll of a thousand WFHers and I’m sure they’ll confirm that they’re even more productive than when they were made to turn up. But how many of us truly believe that the cogs are whirring away super-efficiently at the DVLA, the passport office or our local council now that they’re balancing work with Netflix?
Here’s an experiment that won’t happen: Take two creative agencies, Red and Green, then set them the same brief. Red agency staff are allowed to WFH as much as their little hearts desire. Green agency members, on the other hand, must turn up to the office on time every day, with team meetings, creative brainstorms, team lunches and evenings in the pub with all the argument, laughter, piss-taking and drama-queening you’d expect from a creative agency. Which agency will come up with the most inspiring solution?
We’ll never know, but my money is on the company that gets along socially, can have a laugh together and, more crucially, compete with each other for the most inspiring ideas. The adrenalin of competition drains away when you’re not in the same room. My experience in the agency world convinces me that I’m right of course, but hey, you guys go have your polite little ‘any other business?’ Zoom call and let’s see what you’ve come up with.
As a kind of corporate nomad I get to witness a fair few companies in office mode and it seems to me that contemporary culture has eroded many of the fundamental principles that once underpinned the modern workplace. Teamwork shouldn’t be all smiles, hugs and compliments. Productive teamwork demands a certain level of ribbing, sarcasm and healthy derision in order that everyone ups their game. People seem scared to speak up today. A polite round table with everyone on tenterhooks waiting to be offended is an NUT meeting not a brainstorm. The rough and tumble of office politics is absolutely central to its creativity.
I had thought that clipped, overly cautious speech, laden with jargonese and void of any actual meaning had died along with bowler hatted civil servants back in the fifties. I fear I’m witnessing its rebirth only in modern garb. Tentative, tight lipped, vanilla soliloquies that dip into the buzzword lexicon like a chimp with a bag of candy are the order of the day: ‘inclusivity, diversity and sustainability’ literally litter every brainstorm I’ve been unlucky enough to be a part of recently, so help me god.
Those that constantly ask themselves if they’re happy at work are the same people who constantly ask themselves whether they’re happy in life. But the pursuit of perpetual happiness is for stupid people. Happiness is the fleeting dopamine tingle you feel when you receive unexpected good news, or when you get better exam grades than your best friend. If you have conventional body chemistry the feeling will subside as quickly as it arose. People who feel a constant sense of elation are called drug addicts. In reality, what most people are seeking is fulfilment and that’s the polar opposite of fleeting. Fulfilment is a slow process of fermentation which may take decades and is probably impossible for the Insta-gratification generation.
Since we abandoned the office, designers and architects have been tasked to come up with, what seem to me, desperate new ‘concepts’ to attract us back for more than a day a week. But hey, I’ve got an idea. How about just telling us? At my first job if I rolled up at three minutes past nine the boss would shout ‘thanks for coming in’ from his glass office. Today, of course, I could sue him for bullying and harassment due to the fact my tardiness is a symptom of acute TBS (time blindness syndrome) and ADHD. Such is progress.
Look, isn’t it obvious? Ships need engines, rudders and captains. Ships aren’t easy to control when powered, steered or captained remotely. Why do we even have to argue this?
Anyway, you don’t need a futurist to tell you that as AI takes over the mundane, the menial and a fair bit of the creative output, workspaces will morph into social hubs built for community, collaboration and competition. This way we’ll get FOMO if we’re not on board the ship.
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Most trends born in California become diluted by the time they arrive on our damp and cynical shores: yoga, veganism, vegetable smoothies, poke, Botox and fillers, tooth whitening therapy, therapy, the whole athleisure-wear thing, boho-chic, hyper-gluteal augmentation, even the opioid crisis…all fade a little on their long journey across the Atlantic in order, perhaps, to acclimatise to life beneath our sullen skies. But there’s one trend that has surely been amplified en route from La La Land: canophilia, aka our obsession with dogs.
Unlike the Americans, we Brits have loved our pet dogs for over six millennia as dog culture really kicked off in 4000BC, just at the end of the stone age. So essentially, our relationship with our favourite pet rolled along perfectly happily for six thousand years…until something shifted post Covid. A cultural blip in the matrix perhaps, but today it’s impossible to go to a shop, a bar or a restaurant without a dog sniffing at your ankles.
Restaurants desperate for trade have caved. Perhaps in the name of inclusivity they hang ‘dog friendly’ signs in the window above a shiny bowl as if allowing dogs is the magic bullet they need to get back to profit. A couple of years ago I guess it looked kinda cute, but frankly it’s hard to walk down a local high street now without accidentally booting a tin bowl along the kerb. These are the places I vow never to visit, and I’m sure I can’t be alone.
Q. How does your dog smell? A. Terrible.
The age old joke wasn’t wrong. Owners who exclaim ‘My dog does not smell!’ have been inoculated with doggy stench daily over many years having never left Rover’s side. They even allow him to sleep on their bed for god’s sake. Polite customers, meanwhile, pretend it’s absolutely normal for a bear of a beast to be slumped beneath the next table even when the whiff of wet fur wafts across their creme brûlée. And if you feel an exploratory tongue douse the back of your hand at the bar you can be damn sure that it’s recently been intimate with a dog’s rear end, if not another’s then its own. Peculiarly, for a nation addicted to hand sanitiser we remain stumm. Non dog owners are mute onlookers as they watch their favourite places become, literally, dogged by mollycoddled mutts.
Cultures twist and turn but ultimately they settle by consensus. That’s why we don’t see ‘no bicycles’ signs outside bars and pubs. Culture has deemed it inappropriate to lean your muddy mountain bike alongside your table, so there’s no need to ban it. But since the ‘blip’ we must now endure legions of snapping, snarling, sneezing, yapping, gnashing, drooling, farting hounds in every establishment. And bikes don’t do any of that. Meanwhile, in crazy California where all this began, dogs are banned from restaurants and even stores that sell packaged food.
Hyper-anthropomorphism is hard to say, but nonetheless very real. Today’s dog lovers talk to their pets in cartoon baby voices, celebrate their birthdays (the day they arrived) buy them Puppucinos from Starbucks, doggy ice creams at the seaside, create Instagram pages for them, tie bibs around their necks at mealtimes and push them in doggy strollers when the poor darlings can’t keep up with the pace around Waitrose. They take up seats in restaurants, bars, buses and trains as if we must all accept that the ironically named ‘Charlie’ with the flappy tongue is simply one of us. It’s gone too far.
Clearly these beloved animals are the children we never had. It’s a dog’s job to be the child that never grows up and tells you to f*** off, basically. But they’re also living, breathing status symbols. In the countryside it’s not unusual for a family to rock up at the pub, fully Huntered and Barboured, accompanied by a brace of pony sized brutes as if to flaunt the fact that they can afford to buy steak every day of the week. They may as well drive their Range Rover into the bar. It would be less of a nuisance.
Back in the pre-gastro days it was heartwarming to see a local farmer nestled by the fire, his loyal Collie alert to any unusual comings or goings. But recently dog culture has morphed into an obsessive cult; a perverse display of narcissism that says ‘sod you, these are my true friends’. On a serious note, I believe it plays perfectly into the current phase of self loathing mankind is going through. We may love our kith and kin, but we despise humanity for everything that’s gone wrong on planet Earth. After all, no dog ever started a war.
We all know that teenage stabbings have become so commonplace the press is no longer interested. But leave a pooch in a car without the window ajar for more than fifteen minutes and you’ll be on the front of the Daily Mail beneath the word ‘MONSTER’ the next morning. Seriously, our priorities are way out of kilter.
I may not be a dog lover, but I’m no hater. I can more than appreciate the majesty of an Irish Setter bounding along a deserted beach in pursuit of a far flung stick of driftwood. I can even see it in slow motion as it shakes itself dry, water droplets glistening in the late afternoon sunshine. I simply ask that you don’t bring it sweating and panting into the pub to do that. That’s my point. Dog lovers, please spare a thought for those of us who don’t love your dog, but can definitely smell it. And restaurateurs, please be brave enough to say that your dog days are over.
Bone appetit!
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