The money-pinching media’s deliberate, self-corrupting embrace of word slop generated by artificial intelligence is one of those things that was both predictable and predicted. Why beat them when you can join them?
Still, I must admit I wasn’t expecting the thin end of the wedge to be Brian Sewell.
If you missed it, and there’s no reason you shouldn’t have, the title previously known as the London Evening Standard “commissioned” an AI version of its long-serving former art critic to review Van Gogh: Poets and Lovers, a new exhibition at the UK’s National Gallery. Sewell himself was unavailable for this task, on account of being dead since 2015.
It’s not hard to get the feeling that Vincent van Gogh – the real artist, also fairly dead the last time I checked – deserved better. He’s not the only one. I’m going to go out on a limb here and say this isn’t a marvellous sign for the future viability of arts journalism as a source of personal income.
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The story was broken by Jake Kanter, a living human journalist for entertainment and media website Deadline, which ran it under the pointed headline “London’s Historic Evening Standard Newspaper Plans to Revive Acerbic Art Critic Brian Sewell in AI Form as it Stops Daily Presses and Fires Journalists”.
Not to get too nerdy about it, but there’s something about that style of headline, with all the words capped up, that really elevates the grim absurdity of the developments described.
I’m also intrigued by the Guardian’s follow-up, which posited that the London Standard – the title has dropped its “Evening” and gone from daily to weekly – was to “feature AI-written review ‘by’ dead art critic Brian Sewell”, as its punctuation suggests the concept of a “by”-line.
By the time the first weekly London Standard arrived, the general dismay had migrated to the AI-generated representation of Keir Starmer on its front page, which was accompanied by comments from the UK prime minister outlining his view – a rosy one, some might say – that AI can be the game-changing saviour of the beleaguered British economy. Innovation, productivity, something, something.
Words spewed out by a random regurgitation machine are immediately disqualified from any flavour of merit on the grounds that they are transparently without meaning
As for the “review”, well, the AI generator, or whoever prompted it, decided that “Sewell” didn’t like the Van Gogh exhibition very much, contending that it was “yet another insipid exercise in sentimental hagiography” and “a shallow indulgence” that saw “his works reduced to greeting cards for the emotionally overwrought”.
Insipid? Shallow? Reductive? It seems generative AI is just fine with being the pot that calls the kettle a striking shade of black.
The interim chief executive of the London (Evening) Standard – acquired by former Russian intelligence officer Alexander Lebedev and his son Evgeny back in 2009 – declared that Sewell’s estate was “delighted” with this apparently once-off resurrection.
But the tepid assembly of words under his name doesn’t work as a tribute. It doesn’t function as art criticism because the AI hasn’t actually seen the Van Gogh exhibition. And it doesn’t serve as satire or parody because, again, there is no human discernment or intent here.
So why does it exist? I’d be among the first to say not everything that appears in newsprint has to be journalism. The odd slab of entertainment is fine – merciful, even. But words spewed out by a random regurgitation machine are immediately disqualified from any flavour of merit on the grounds that they are transparently without meaning.
My reaction to every soulless gimmick like this is the same. Whatever the rationale, whatever the wheeze, all I hear is Brian Cox as Succession’s Logan Roy sighing his famous, human-written line from the karaoke club sofa: “You are not serious people.”
Regrettably, the slippery slope is in sight. Actors, of course, have witnessed high-profile examples of posthumous cameos in their profession for years and now find themselves on the cusp of an army of onscreen AI replacements and offscreen deep fakes.
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The exhuming of “name” journalists is equally tedious and even cheaper. Why bother paying the wages of people with a pulse when you can drag a star name out from the archive and, at the push of a button, reinvent their brand in 2.0 form?
After all, journalists from the past were better writers, right? They had all week to come up with a single piece of copy before reclaiming their stool at the bar, so they would want to be.
Sewell thought no woman artist was capable of aesthetic greatness. Maybe there are other deceased, uncancellable hacks whose names can be invoked to cause offence from beyond the grave when a media outlet craves attention. Antiquated views that would prevent someone from starting a career today can more easily find their way to publication if there’s a bot to blame.
Now it seems all too feasible that the same outfits that litter their recyclable headlines with catchphrases from sitcoms no one under 40 remembers will be itching to imitate the London Standard manoeuvre and launch AI versions of their late staff. Not even death will upset the status quo.
The media is free to use technology not to move forward, as other industries do, but to turn back the clock.
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