Or rather, this blog might not exist very much longer.
Perhaps you’ve seen the trend online. Websites with names like thiscatdoesnotexist.com… thispersondoesnotexist.com.
You go there and see a photograph of a cat or a woman. Who does not exist. Who was conjured up, in pixel-perfect lifelike detail, by some kind of computer jiggery-pokery. When you refresh the page, the computer mind creates another fake cat or fake woman for you to be confused by.
Well today, I saw more progress in this direction, thismusicvideodoesnotexist.com. It’s just what it sounds like. The music is generated by computer. So is the video. And it’s watchable, much more watchable than a lot of shit made by humans.
As you probably know, there’s been a surge in AI copywriting tools over the past year or two. Some industry insiders look at these new tools and say, “Hahaha, never-ever will this work.”
I’m not so sure. But I’m even less sure it will matter one way or another.
I had this idea a while ago, a science-ficition scenario. Artificial intelligence gets good enough to generate content — TV shows, music, books.
But good enough for what?
Good enough for each of us. Each of us gets a custom stream of entertainment, based on our previous preferences… based on how our eyes dilate… based on whether we keep watching.
Each of us is served with the perfect content, just for us, just for that moment. Familiar enough… with the right amount of surprise to keep us fascinated and perfectly pleased.
In my sci-fi scenario, you won’t be able to communicate your interests to anyone else. Nobody else will share your tastes so exactly. Why would anyone listen to your perfect song or watch your perfect movie… when he has his own perfect song and movie available, without even a click of a button, just served up, non-stop, 24/7?
Anyways, that’s the future I’m thinking of. And with this video site, it seems like it’s on its way. When it arrives, we will have bigger social problems than a lack of work for copywriters.
Fortunately, we are still not there yet.
That means you can still talk to your friends about a great movie you saw, and that they might like. And you can still make money persuading people to buy stuff that they didn’t know they wanted five minutes ago.
Speaking of which, and motivated by my post from yesterday:
I’d like to point you to a little book I wrote on the topic of copywriting. It collects 10 lessons from 10 of the most successful people to ever put shocking secret to paper.
It’s not a big book… but at least it exists. For now. To find out more about it: