I do not really follow the trend of AI generated art; I generally prefer my art made by humans... but can you really tell the difference? I wasn’t familiar with synthetic media until just recently but I realized that I’ve been exposed to much more synthetic media than I thought. Synthetic media is the artificial production and manipulation of data and media by automated means such as for the purpose of misleading people. Here’s the general approach:
https://vriparbelli.medium.com/our-vision-for-the-future-of-synthetic-media-8791059e8f3a
For being such a hater I can’t believe I didn’t realize that I follow a piece of synthetic media on Instragram: @lilmiquela. She is a robot living in LA with real-life friends. Of course she’s VERIFIED. I was totally perplexed and fascinated when the evil Insta algorithm recommended her account to me, I just had to see what she was up to. Her account is just like any other influencer’s. She advertises products, drops singles, and lets us into her fabulous life that she shares with her human, celebrity, and robot friends.
I consider the Miquela account synthetic media because she’s a computer generated robot/person/account; she’s not real (right?!). I always just assumed that the people that run her account set up these shoots using a live model to stand-in for her body and then superimposed a computer-rendered image of her face with the matching facial expression. I’m not really sure how they do it. I feel like the way this account is being run currently is really fun, light-hearted, and kinda artistic. It’s entertaining to see what the life of a robot amongst humans could be like. This robot imitating life is a quirky piece of speculative design.
I imagine people do fall for her advertising tho. Influencers do influence and we live in a time where people do what strangers (or even robots) on the internet tell them to do sometimes. I feel like as long as the messaging of this account doesn’t change I think this kind of synthetic media can be harmless.
Resources
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synthetic_media