-- CARPENTER SPACE COLONY 6, MAYBE 7... WHATEVER
Oh hey! I LOVE your new shirt, you lookin FLYYYYY!! How you doin'? Oh shit, it's THAT bad? Fuck. HUGS, homie, don't forget, I see you doing your best, and you are really awesome, and u lookin good in that shirt!
*ahem* Yo wanna play Tetris? "I made it!" It's touch-friendly, hop up on the leaderboard! Gotta do an extra tap/click to play it in this article, then there's a "done" button in the corner to keep scrollin on down the winding road that is this article. Article? lol what IS THIS?
Did *I* make that? Kinda.. Get your pitchforks! I used an AI to code it, and it took days full of error messages and telling it "no no, like THIS" over and over.
It was pretty easy tho to make a Tetris. It started with me saying "hey make an index.html that is a tetris game." and then I added the leaderboard and dealt with bugs and problems (there's probably still bugs) and kinda BAM, Tetris!
Wanna play Snake? It's touch-friendly, do it right here, get dat ass on the leaderboard!
Did *I* make that? It took a really long time and I had to work with this tool over and over to even get it to that basic state.
We're drowning in AI talk, and I'm drowning in AI, so ayy imma dive in!
I've been using AI as a tool to create various cool things. Kari had a dream where she was a balloon in a video game named Sky High, in which she rose up through the sky and shot at obstacles. There were lead balloons that would drag you back to the beginning of the previous level if it hit you. The dream was far more cinematic but..I made Sky High last year, that one took months, give it a shot!
Now THIS one, I feel much more ownership over, I mean Tetris and Snake already existed, I was just like... summoning lazy clones with that..
But did I MAKE it?
I've worked in Photoshop for years, and I'll always make my actual static visual arts myself, even as I watch "AI" features creeping into the software. But, really? Look at this thing "I made" in Photoshop:
I don't even remember how I made that thing, but it was all messing around in Photoshop for HOURS, and I certainly would never be able to draw or PAINT that shit, ya know?
Regardless, I ain't gunna use AI for my static art, but did I MAKE THIS? I spent hours in Photoshop building this one.
I've been feeling defensive about using AI to make games and figure out how best to work with it. I'm going deep.
There's a thing I made (yeah, I'll say it!) called the Particle Portal, here's an earlier version of it, it's evolved WAY past this:
SLOW DOWN, take a breath, take a look at it for a minute. Watch what it's doing. It's a dynamic particle system I've been working with the AI on for the last year and a half. It has a control system and it reacts to sound in tons of different ways. I've deployed it at a couple festivals with a projector and a power bank and a 10-foot screen, people zonin out on it, saying shit like "wow!" This didn't come from me saying "yo ai make something that looks cool!" It was endless back and forth with me suggesting new ideas on and on and on and things breaking and fixing them on and on. If you're still looking at it, what you're seeing is kind of a basic older one, here's a lil sizzle reel I made for the Particle Portal when I was still calling it Particle Playground (I won't call it a playground until people can run in front of the projector and shove particles around [I may try to use an xbox kinect], so it's the Particle PORTAL for now):
Did I make this system? I feel like I DID! But I'm not a coder, I've barely touched this code. It's been well over a year and thousands of interactions with the AI to build this. I'm supremely impressed with these tools and they keep advancing at a horrifying rate. I'm just using it to make fuckin games and particles, some people like using it as a therapist or other doctor and I see some of that as kinda alarming, some people just hanging out with it like a pal, and who knows what evil powerful people are thinking about doing with it, YIKES!
So.... I titled this " Does AI Make Things Too Easy?" I dunno, but I showed it your new shirt and the AI likes it, too, and wishes you strength and good luck.
Glad I could clear all that up. Are we cooked? Happy birthday, everybody!!!
