Screenshots via Carrot Weather, by Brian Mueller, available on iOS and Android
My favorite weather app for some time has been Carrot Weather. It’s a highly customizable weather app with fantastic widgets, multiple source options, and snarkiness. The weather app had personality, and that was kind of fun. Mostly, I was there for the customizable interface, but an app with a bit of snark is sometimes a fun surprise. It was likely one of my most frequently used apps.
However, the other day when I opened the app, I was greeted by an offer to hear a song about the app. Right away that set off my, “I bet this was lazily made with AI” alarm. When I had a chance, I played it. Flat vocal tones, strange timing between words, some words squished closer together and less clearly than people would sing, generic sounding backing music, words that aren’t common being pronounced differently. Yup, all the hallmarks of AI-generated slop “music.” You can find the entire musical here and judge for yourself.
I couldn’t be 100% certain it was AI-generated, so I did my research. I couldn’t find any credits for the music, another red flag. Usually a band, the people who provided vocals, everyone involved with production, all get credits on music… unless there wasn’t anyone else involved. And then I found it, an interview for John Gruber of Daring Fireball’s “The Talk Show.” Here, the creator of Carrot Weather, Brian Mueller, spoke of how he created a musical. Gruber proposed he “commissioned an entire musical” only to find out that, actually, Mueller used “an AI thing” he was “playing around with.” No one was commissioned for that.
I came for the weather, and found generative AI slop devaluing the labor of real artists. What a lousy start to my day.
Make it for Me!
“I would never be able to do hire a bunch of singers and musicians and that kind of stuff. It would cost like half a million dollars or cost half a billion dollars.”
– Brian Mueller, on The Talk Show by John Gruber (Daring Fireball)
Claiming that it’s so impossible or expensive to make this kind of art makes it seem like he didn’t research the costs of doing so. After all, before generative AI, people did this kind of stuff all the time. It’s hurtful to hear that humans may not have even been considered for this project, as it would not cost nearly as much as Mueller said to make such a thing. I hope it was just an off-the-cuff joke, and not that he actually didn’t even consider humans for the project, but I see others making the argument who haven’t tried to involve others. It’s becoming a common claim, that art is impossibly expensive and therefore generative AI is okay. Meanwhile, artists have three roommates, two jobs, and get a few pennies from Spotify every month (cancel Spotify, by the way). Just because it’s easy to steal does not mean a price tag is too much.
To claim that generative AI isn’t stealing a job from artists because someone never would have created something another way might be true, at least for the creation of this one thing. But how was the model trained? What was its environmental impact? Who built the hardware that runs it? Is anyone tortured by the hum of its data center day and night? Did someone have to look at obscene materials for 14 hours a day to generate “safe” content for you to consume? Generative AI is soaked in blood, if you know to look deeper.
I’d ask anyone who considers making something with AI, why make something if it’s not going to be art? Why make slop? Why not try to at least see what it would take to make art, either your own effort or that of others, instead of slop? Wouldn’t you rather see if you can reasonably help people with your vision, rather than turning your back on them? If you never would have made something without generative AI making it for you, then you shouldn’t make it. The pollution, exploitive labor, water usage, and non-consensual IP usage is not worth it. There is no “harmless” generative AI, it’s always doing harm, it’s always using gobs of power, it’s always commodifying art.
And trust me, no one’s paying small artists millions of dollars to make art. Unless you’re tipping really well at the coffee shop or bar they’re working at to afford to make music.
Thanks, Apollo, for All the Talent!
“And so it’s just been a ton of fun and it’s just, it’s the kind of thing that I think AI is perfect for being able to do things that you would never, ever be able to do. Like I’m not a music person with any kind of musical talent, but I can write.”
– Brian Mueller, on The Talk Show by John Gruber (Daring Fireball)
Learning music has been one of the best things I commit myself to
I have friends who make music of all kinds. I myself dabble. My notebooks have half-written songs with some possible chords and riffs written in the margins. I know bands on hiatus right now because they’re in their bedrooms, in their practice spaces, trying to work out new music to release and perform next year. Because that’s what you do when you make art, you put in the work. You make the art. Am I good enough to perform and write all the music for my songs? No. But I keep working. One day, my soul will be poured into music I made and I’ll have something that I can be proud of, something that can unify groups of people in song, dance, revolution, and commiseration. Or maybe it’ll just be for me. Creation is joy, and that’s also enough.
Creative people often have their talents assumed to be gifts, something that get bestowed on us like a gift from the gods, rather than something that required dedication and work to achieve. And yes, you can be “gifted,” be better than average at something from the start, but talent is something you work for, not something you’re born with. I’ve got a good ear for notes and good muscle memory, but I still have to build up my calluses and practice the same thing hundreds of times a day to get better at it. Some people have wonderful singing voices, but they have to practice and train and protect their voices all the same. It takes hundreds, thousands of hours of hard work to get to the point that you feel like you can make and share your art.
Talent is work. And the Carrot Weather creator’s comments make it seem like he doesn’t want to put in the work. And that’s fine! It’s work, after all! Not everyone has the time for it, especially a small business owner! He’s not a bad guy because he doesn’t want to put in that effort, in fact, I’d say as a user of his apps and listening to him on a podcast, he seems like a pretty nice person. But this should serve as a cautionary tale about how AI can lure people into making choices that seem harmless, but can hurt others. How AI can spoil a product for someone else. Generative AI has this way of taking something that is exploitative and harmful and hiding everything that went into it. It’s so easy to just click something and exploit labor and the planet, upsetting those who care about either. We have to remember what it’s really doing, the labor it was built with, the possible art theft, the water and natural resources used or polluted to generate something. You can have a fun idea and ruin it with AI so easily. A little good-natured fun can become hurtful to an audience when AI is involved.
The Real Evil AI
Carrot Weather may have had a gimmick of featuring an “evil AI” that generates the weather report, but the real evils of AI are in the generation of works without the compensated and fair labor and love of humans. Evil AI is the polluting mess of generative AI that relies on stolen songs, writings, musings, labor, and other forms of art to make slop that devalues real work and real passion. Generative AI is the real “evil AI.”
Guess I’m going back to using Apple Weather after all, I just can’t stomach generative AI polluting my fun little weather app. I already miss the home screen widget, Apple’s just isn’t as good as Carrot’s. How hard is it to not include AI slop in everything you do, people?
Source:
- John Gruber, The Talk Show on Daring Fireball