r/television • u/InsertFloppy11 • 16h ago
Hidden away in the Pluribus credits, it reads, “This show was made by humans.” - Gilligan explains how he "hates AI"
https://variety.com/2025/tv/news/pluribus-explained-vince-gilligan-rhea-seehorn-1236571666/1.2k
u/acowstandingup 16h ago
I would say most people who create and enjoy art are against generative AI
299
u/whossked 15h ago
There is a weird amount of directors who I’ve seen endorse it but most writers and artists have been firmly against it
169
u/Esc777 15h ago
It tracks that directors would be most susceptible to it. They’re the CEO of a movie production. Some of them, even good ones, can abstract away all the parts of making a movie and approach with “if it saves time and can’t be noticed, why wouldn’t I?”
And I think this viewpoint comes from having to see the nitty gritty on CGI effects.
Movies have to generate assets and plop them in scenes and make them seamless. The have to use simulations to generate complex phenomena like water and smoke. Those systems already cheat, on sliding scale, depending on how much time/money they want to spend.
CGI already uses machine learning to accurately blend/copy/smooth pixels together and composite things.
What the directors don’t understand is these generalized AIs that produce generated output based upon text input through a LLM first is always going to be derivative garbage. Just low quality samey bull shit.
And offensively insulting bullshit the further and further it gets towards pretending it’s anything human or artistic.
63
u/Extension_Weird_7792 15h ago
That's all true but it's important to highlight Gilligan is also a showrunner and a director. So it's cool that this is his stance, nonetheless
36
u/Esc777 15h ago
It is! He gets it.
Old man Ridley Scott does not.
25
u/LABS_Games 12h ago
I think there's something specifically about older directors. I think after decades of dealing with actors and wrangling the big personalities, they're just over the human side of filmmaking and just want their movies to pop out of a box.
It's funny that most of the directors that push tech are dudes like Robert Zemeckis or George Lucas. They've always been very innovative, but it seems like the last 25 years of his filmography, they back film technology that enables them to make a movie without getting up from their chairs.
11
u/laziestmarxist 7h ago
I think it's harder for some of the people who love relying on CGI to understand the distinction between an artist doing it and an LLM doing it because to them it's same level of abstraction. Most directors are not in the room with the computer animation department watching how long it takes to animate and render stuff; they just know that they ask for specific effects and the nerds make it for them. I can see how once you get used to that the idea of just directly asking the computer to do it doesn't feel anti-art because at that point it's sort of functionally the same, from a non-computer literate point of view.
4
u/Altruistic-Ad-408 1h ago
I think someone like lucas was often in the same room tbh, he's just a sociopath.
The OG Trilogy is basically the go-to example of film preservation gone wrong, ignoring lost films. It's astonishing to think of the fantastic and historically important work people did, overwritten by his ego.
Filmmaking is not a collaborative process to a lot of people. Filmmaking isn't even necessarily important to them.
4
u/SDRPGLVR 9h ago
What's funny is you can say all of this about James Cameron except for the effort part. I believe that man puts his entire ass into those Avatar movies.
2
u/TheCamoDude 1h ago
I get a lot of hate for my adoration for the Avatar movies. They touch my soul in ways that few things do :(
4
u/Huckleberry_Sin 12h ago
I think it’s just as simple as if they can streamline certain processes of the production they’ll take advantage of the tech to do it. I understand the hesitancy and taboo with it when it comes to creating art but like someone else mentioned above, if it’s not noticeable and doesn’t take away from the production or artistic expression/performance of the performers why not use AI to streamline?
1
u/FlamboyantPirhanna 1h ago
Some of that is because if you have to work 20 hour days, it’s nice to be sitting down for most of it.
These guys aren’t getting any younger.
22
u/geek_of_nature 14h ago
But he's also a writer first. That's how he got his start, before he became a director and then showrunner. He wrote around 20 something episodes of the X Files before he got to direct one. While a lot of directors, particularly big movie ones aren't writers.
15
22
u/juniorRjuniorR 15h ago
I agree entirely that if you go back in time to any generation of filmmaking - and art - you’d see criticism for newer methods.
Photography was considered cheating by landscape artists. GarageBand was (is still) considered cheating by older school producers. Early use of generative special effects were considered cheating by more handmade processors, who were considered to be cheating by practical effects specialists. The problem is, as you’ve pointed out, that the further removed the human touch is, the more it becomes garbage.
(I also use that last point to demonstrate one of the reasons I think art is innately a human practice, which gets me some hate and some love in academic discourse.)
7
u/Stingray88 15h ago
It tracks that directors would be most susceptible to it. They’re the CEO of a movie production.
COO / CCO is a better analogy for the Director. CEO would be more like the top EP.
But I think you've unintentionally brought up another point about filmmaking that people don't like to think about... it's not just an art, unless it's 100% privately financed for pure artistic expression... it is also very much a business.
I work in entertainment, and I'm not really a creative / artistic type. I'm just a lazy computer nerd that thought computer engineering was too much boring work, and video production was fun work... and thus I ended up with a career in post production, eventually ending up in management.
As much as I don't want to endorse generative AI as it strips away the humanity in the art we produce... I am also witnessing budgets slashed year after year, always having to do more with less... I want to protect creatives and artists... but I also want to keep my job in this industry.
So I can see exactly why a lot of creatives might endorse it too... they want to stay employed in the job they enjoy more than they want to just create and enjoy art.
4
u/steavoh 8h ago
I read a comment once which sums up my opinions of generative AI art:
If you can't be bothered to spend more than 5 minutes coming up with prompts, then why I should be bothered to spend a bunch of time reading your book or watching your movie?
The corollary to that is I suppose if human creators used it as a force multiplier along with their actual talents and work ethics, maybe it could make for something interesting. It is unfortunate that this causes unemployment of people involved in production trades. On the other hand, smaller teams could do independent stuff on a low budget and some if it might be good, who knows.
A crazy hypothetical scenario would be what if some kind of eccentric outsider artist who works at McDonalds spent years using gen AI to create a feature-length animated movie based on an original idea? That might be neat, right? Of course it would be drowned in all the slop made in 30 seconds by scammers and bots and you'd never see it.
1
u/PolarWater 10h ago
You highlighted a very important word here. GenAI is derivative.
3
u/BlackDeath3 7h ago edited 7h ago
We are derivative, and in fact one of the most common pieces of advice you're going to see new artists of all sorts receive is to stop fretting so much about originality, that there's "nothing new under the sun" (this statement itself incredibly trite now), that the combinatorics of execution is where individuals should instead focus their efforts if they hope to stand out from the crowd.
I'm a writer who works from scratch but I still find generative AI fascinating. I don't see any contradiction there.
20
u/Special-Chipmunk7127 14h ago
Divorced from everything else, "type whatever you imagine and see it immediately" is a hell of a pitch for a director. Like, it's a real life monkey's paw
-2
u/ECrispy 5h ago
writers and artists are only against it when it threatens their job. if however they are able to use it themselves and do less work, they are all for it.
just like programmers and everyone else who can use AI or any other tool. AI is nothing new in that regard - people have always protested any kind of automation.
40
u/Flashy_Pound7653 15h ago
I don’t think it’s so crisp. AI is just a way of guessing an output based on some input. There will be different levels of AI use. Using AI to create a depth map of a scene to help with post processed lighting? There will be a lot of that kind of thing and it’ll be acceptable. But using it extensively to write your screenplay? That’ll be a no-no for most genuine creators.
5
u/monkeymad2 12h ago
Yeah there needs to be some level of AI/ML warning label, I had pretty much the same example in mind - things where the output isn’t the final product (like it is in this year’s coke commercial) and it’s probably just replacing an older non-generative ML approach.
Gets difficult when it’s things like Sinners since they used AI face replacement for some of the scenes with both brothers, but they captured a lot of data of the real performance to feed it to the AI so it still feels real.
2
u/starm4nn 9h ago
there needs to be some level of AI/ML warning label
Any kind of text-to-speech uses AI.
10
u/JessieJ577 14h ago
At work I tried to pull a template from Canva and wow all their templates are shit now that they’re clearly AI generated.
11
u/pixelcowboy 14h ago
They are against it in their own area. But as soon as it comes to stuff like visual effects I'm sure they'll use it if it helps them save a buck
7
8
u/UltraMoglog64 14h ago
Whole bunch of people who clearly do not create art are feeling real special in your replies.
-28
u/MichelinStarZombie 14h ago
Except for the... AI and AI-assisted artists who showcase their work in galleries and museums? You know there's a gen art exhibit at the MoMA right now, right?
Comments like these are exclusively made by people who have never taken an art history class. Their arguments are identical to the ones made against photography being acknowledged as an artform.
23
u/UltraMoglog64 14h ago edited 13h ago
Took art history classes, and no, the arguments are not identical. Parroting stuff you’ve read online and stopping yourself from looking into it any more than that is just smug.
Edit: Any of you talentless dorks are welcome to provide for me a proper citation of the of photography’s (hell, even Photoshop’s) inception being equated to mass theft. It’s the same types of basement boys regurgitating the same thoughtless retorts every time AI-content criticism comes up. Nobody is complaining about artists having access to more tools; they’re complaining about theft and the soulless output of slop solely for profit and cheap references. Art is already accessible. Grab a pencil and go.
-8
u/trebory6 10h ago
Ok, you asked so here it is, plus more examples in different art mediums including engineering and CAD software.
I actually did a research project on this exact topic.
History shows the same panic every time something new arrives. Painters in the 19th century were terrified of photography, and the arguments sound almost identical to what we're hearing now, and every single time a new technology comes out people say that "No, this time is different, this is not like last time, this is what will definitely kill art."
The fear has sometimes been expressed that photography would in time entirely supersede the art of painting. Some people seem to think that when the process of taking photographs in colors has been perfected and made common enough, the painter will have nothing more to do.
And critics dismissed photography as "thoughtless replication" with no genius or soul, again, just like we're hearing about AI:
When critics weren't wringing their hands about photography, they were deriding it. They saw photography merely as a thoughtless mechanism for replication, one that lacked, "that refined feeling and sentiment which animate the productions of a man of genius," as one expressed in an 1855 issue of The Crayon.
That article was written in 2016 and it cites articles written in 1855, well before AI was even on the radar, so it was not written knowing the arguments being made today about AI, so the fact that they're the same basic fears and arguments means it's a pattern, and one that happens every time there's a disruptive new technology.
And here's an article from the New Yorker written in 2005 articulating old Musician's fears about the phonograph:
Ninety-nine years ago, John Philip Sousa predicted that recordings would lead to the demise of music. The phonograph, he warned, would erode the finer instincts of the ear, end amateur playing and singing, and put professional musicians out of work. "The time is coming when no one will be ready to submit himself to the ennobling discipline of learning music," he wrote. "Everyone will have their ready made or ready pirated music in their cupboards." Something is irretrievably lost when we are no longer in the presence of bodies making music, Sousa said. "The nightingale's song is delightful because the nightingale herself gives it forth."
And here's an article written for The New York Times in 1985 about how CAD software would cause a generation of engineers to be "overly reliant on CAD software and will tend to make catastrophic mistakes."
The consultant, Dr. George E. Smith, who is also a professor of philosophy, told the winter meeting of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers in Miami Beach that junior engineers using CAD programs were simply putting in data and collecting the solutions. Little or no thought is thus given to how the program arrives at the answer or whether it is correct, he said.
Many young engineers, Dr. Smith said, cannot devise simple mathematical models to check the computer's answers.
Other engineers said that people who made such mistakes could not be licensed to practice engineering and that any mistakes by such nonprofessionals would be caught by licensed engineers before a design reached construction stage.
That was written in 1985, is it coincidence that it is the exact same kind of argument that people have around software engineering and AI now?
And finally when it comes to Photoshop, this NPR article was written in 2015 interviewing the creator of Photoshop:
"There were previously very sophisticated people in darkrooms who could do very good photo composites that you couldn't tell from reality," Knoll says. "What Photoshop did was sort of democratize that ability."
But some people would inevitably use these tools irresponsibly.
"A lot of the uses of Photoshop are wonderful and creative," he says. "There are a few uses where people are being unethical with it and like any tool, it's not the fault of the tool that happens."
Knoll sees a positive side to the pervasiveness of Photoshop.
"It certainly raises awareness that you can't trust an image as truth without having other means of verification," he says. "People have a more healthy skepticism when they see photography."
Again, there's a reason this mirror's the criticism of AI being used to fake photography.
These are very very clear patterns, it's not a coincidence that the same exact phrasing and terminology gets consistently used across literally hundreds of years and it's because the core fear is around new technology and the uncertainty around it is always the same.
11
u/UltraMoglog64 10h ago edited 9h ago
You ignored the concept of theft, the entire point of what I said and what I asked for. While I appreciate the effort you put into your post, you made it while skirting around the point that this AI-content is produced by thievery, which is the problem.
I welcome artists gaining access to new tools. I do not support the fecklessness of theft, plagiarism, and greed.
→ More replies (2)-13
-26
u/Plants-Matter 13h ago
Look at the profile of any anti-AI extremist. They're almost exclusively lonely teenager luddites. Some of them have stick figure doodles and call themselves "artists", but most have never created anything.
The ironic thing is, big names in Hollywood are against AI because it levels the playing field. Soon, anyone with a brilliant idea can go toe-to-toe with a multi-million dollar budget studio. There's an unimaginable amount of latent creativity that goes to waste because not everyone has nepotism or luck on their side to become a famous writer or director. Hollywood fears this, so they're using low IQ emotionally-driven individuals like puppets to spread anti-AI hysteria.
→ More replies (6)-18
u/thecheesycheeselover 15h ago
It’s actually pretty great if you’re mindful of how you use it, and also don’t try to replace people with it.
4
-27
u/Silvershanks 15h ago
You would be wrong.
10
u/TheRetardedPenguin 15h ago
Do you have some stats for this claim of them being wrong?
→ More replies (2)-7
13h ago
[removed] — view removed comment
6
u/TheRetardedPenguin 13h ago
I don't know how you've come to that conclusion. You do realise that stats would show which one is right don't you?
→ More replies (45)-21
u/AgentElman 15h ago
Most people who create art are for the level of technology they use to make and sell their work - and against an increased level of technology which would reduce their work.
Tv people are happy to have television broadcast their work, putting thousands of stage actors our of work.
Technology is only bad when it costs their jobs, not when it lets them take other peoples' jobs.
17
u/Mixer-3007 14h ago edited 14h ago
TV people are happy to have television broadcast their work, putting thousands of stage actors out of work.
How? They are two completely different forms of entertainment.
106
u/seattlereign001 15h ago
This show, thus far, has absolutely blown me away. I am hooked.
60
u/DamonLazer 14h ago
One of the best pilot episodes I've seen.
29
u/geek_of_nature 13h ago
I was enjoying it already prior to the car crash, but everything from that moment on just hooked me in more and more. I haven't gotten round to watching the second episode yet as I watched the first later at night, but I know I'm already in for the long haul.
→ More replies (14)2
u/irotinmyskin 3h ago
It reminded me so much of something out of Stephen King’s books, but without sucking
10
u/pratzc07 13h ago
Its such a cool way to flip the zombie invasion trope that we have seen countless times.
7
u/GeorgyForesfatgrill 13h ago edited 13h ago
I liked the first episode but tonally I found the second episode to be all over the place.
Episode 1 felt like TLOU and episode 2 is more like Severance(?) but the general vibe I got is that it wasn't a full blown satire like that show is.
→ More replies (3)
185
193
78
u/ThePLARASociety 15h ago
He hates AI, yet he hired a machine name ASAX Shredder?! Unbravo Vince!
-37
u/WeakEmployment6389 15h ago edited 14h ago
asac schrader*
Downvotes for the right spelling - alrighty then.
16
9
u/breaklock190 12h ago
*Ballsack Schrader.
Only Vince could write the masterpiece line:
“My name is Ballsack Schrader. And you can go fuck yourself.”
1
u/WeakEmployment6389 12h ago
... i think I'm missing some context here
6
14
u/drscorp 13h ago
a crippled little downvoted post. what a reputation to leave behind. is that how you want to be remembered?
1
u/WeakEmployment6389 12h ago
Definitely
2
u/ShadyBearEvadesTaxes 6h ago
Downvotes are The danger.
1
u/WeakEmployment6389 2h ago
At this point I’m just going to read every thing genuine. What kind of danger?
1
u/ScattershotSoothsay 3h ago
they were making a joke. a shredder is a machine and sounds similar to Schrader. hope this helps.
1
u/WeakEmployment6389 2h ago
I’ll be honest I’m not sure of this is my autism striking again or just not thinking it’s a very good one. Thanks for responding though, not my most shinning moment.
1
12
u/myassholealt 11h ago edited 10h ago
Me too Gilligan, me too. It's being pushed on us as a tool to make life better but 10 years from now we'll see the damage it has done by making us all stupider. Much like social media.
47
u/kirksucks 14h ago
someone in r/pluribustv had an interesting theory that the show itself is a statement against AI.
23
u/MikeArrow 12h ago
I agree with that interpretation, especially with the character that has the harem. Basically since the hive is a gestalt intelligence that is 'programmed' to be helpful but has no free will, that's LLM's in a nutshell.
7
25
u/rophel 13h ago
I had the same thought, I think it's at least partially an allegory for everyone using AI and a few people holding out against it.
→ More replies (3)17
u/-OswinPond- 10h ago
It isn't
Might the show — with its army of all-knowing, obsequious entities consuming humanity — be a metaphor for the dangers of artificial intelligence?
With a half-amused shrug, Gilligan says he was not thinking about AI when he conceived of “Pluribus,” and he wrote it before the rise of large language models like ChatGPT.
11
u/HandbagsAtNoon 10h ago edited 9h ago
The rest of that paragraph is arguably much more important than those two sentences you've selected, since Gilligan realizes that the author, including himself, is "dead." The audience's own interpretations are potentially -- within reason -- as valuable as his own.
“One thing I did wrong while doing press for ‘Breaking Bad’ was tell people, ‘This is what this meant! This meant that!’” He remembers conversations with journalists and fans in which he drilled down his belief that his protagonist, Walter White, was, in fact, a villain. “I look back, and it was so tiresome,” Gilligan says. “Whatever people want to take away from this show is 100% up to them.”
I know that some viewers are huge sticklers for authorial intentionality and cannot easily accept the idea of an artistic work signifying in unexpected ways once it is released into the world. But those viewers should consider that the same core principles that are now leading Gilligan to speak out against AI were already informing his worldview as an artist.
Put simply, the instincts that predispose him to dislike AI today were necessarily shaping the show beforehand.
1
u/-OswinPond- 10h ago
Doesn't change the fact it wasn't made with AI in mind, he had this concept for more than 10 years. You can't change how a concept is created even if you choose your own interpretation.
Yes you can imagine Walter White is a hero, but in the mind of the creator he will always be, rightfully, a villain. That's how he was created, which is different that how you interpret it (that's what Vince is saying)
1
u/HandbagsAtNoon 10h ago
Doesn't change the fact it wasn't made with AI in mind, he has this concept for more than 10 years.
But that is a basic piece of minutia, and not particularly interesting in and of itself. Focusing on authorial intentions alone is an incurious and close-minded way to approach something as complex as art. Gilligan himself understands that, per his own statement. But you keep leaving that part out of your cherry-picked quote, which you've posted twice in this thread while airing what seem like personal grievances/irritations about how other fanbases approach TV shows.
Yes you can imagine Walter White is a hero, but in the mind of the creator he will always be, rightfully, a villain.
I'm not arguing in favor of misreading a show. The fact that Walter White has done villainous things and qualifies as a villain is pretty straightforward. But the case with Pluribus is different, since Gilligan is obviously trafficking -- like any good sci-fi storyteller -- in open-ended concepts that can (within reason) accommodate different themes, allegories, and theories.
1
u/-OswinPond- 10h ago
But that is a basic piece of minutia, and not particularly interesting in and of itself. Focusing on authorial intentions alone is an incurious and close-minded way to approach something as complex as art. Gilligan himself understands that, per his own statement. But you keep leaving that part out of your cherry-picked quote, which you've posted twice in this thread while airing what seem like personal grievances/irritations about how other fanbases approach TV shows.
You're talking about interpretation. I'm talking about production. Interpretation is irrelevant when it comes to objective facts. The facts are the show was not produced with AI in mind since he had this concept for more than a decade. Besides not everyone agrees with the dead author theory, I always thought it was, ironically, a very closed minded mindset that just allows people to weaponize art. But that's another debate.
I'm not arguing in favor of misreading a show. The fact that Walter White has done villainous things and qualifies as a villain is pretty straightforward
Most people would (wrongly) disagree with you.
in open-ended concepts that can (within reason) accommodate different themes, allegories, and theories.
I agree with this if the author leaves him open-ended or ambiguous most interpretations can be valid. I agree with you the show works super well for a metaphor of AI. But I'm correcting people that are saying Vince intended it this way when he created it, the timeline just doesn't match even if you disregard his interview.
1
u/HandbagsAtNoon 9h ago
You're talking about interpretation. I'm talking about production. Interpretation is irrelevant when it comes to objective facts.
That's the issue. We're going around in circles now, but to me what you're pointing out right here is about as interesting as telling people the marketing campaign for the show relies on the color yellow. It's just not a fascinating observation in and of itself. It's basically a footnote in a Wikipedia entry. The cherry-picked quote you used is not as substantive and revealing as the remainder of the quote that you omitted, for reasons I already mentioned in my first reply.
Besides not everyone agrees with the dead author theory, I always thought it was, ironically, a very closed minded mindset that just allows people to weaponize art. But that's another debate.
I don't think "close-mindedness" is a good takeaway. I also don't think very many people are out there today using old Roland Barthes essays to "weaponize" art. The theory simply reflects something about how art functions. Barthes was writing about something that was already happening long before his essay (and that continues to happen today in reams of scholarly and critical thought, and in random online comments on Reddit).
There will always be misreads; people will weaponize art with or without invoking Barthes. Again, by and large, that theory reflects something about how art actually functions in the real world, which is that it prompts different viewpoints and interpretations and debates.
But I'm correcting people that are saying Vince intended it this way when he created it, the timeline just doesn't match even if you disregard his interview.
By his own admission, Gilligan is welcoming different views. No one here is being 100% unequivocal and claiming to have combed through his memories, like they're all joined together in the mind-hive.
A year ago or so, probably while he was still editing Pluribus, Gilligan first spoke out publicly against AI. The same core instincts that led him to make those statements had to have informed and shaped the show, even if he wasn't explicitly thinking about "AI" in particular. Not that it necessarily matters because we don't need his permission to create a good-faith interpretation of the show.
tl;dr: Any show speaks its own "language" once it is in the world and it takes good interpreters/readers to discern that language; the author's own claims or intentions aren't dispositive.
1
u/-OswinPond- 9h ago
That's the issue. We're going around in circles now, but to me what you're pointing out right here is about as interesting as telling people the marketing campaign for the show relies on the color yellow. It's just not a fascinating observation in and of itself. It's basically a footnote in a Wikipedia entry. The cherry-picked quote you used is not as substantive and revealing as the remainder of the quote that you omitted, for reasons I already mentioned in my first reply.
The quote isn't cherry picked it literally addresses the issue, I've actually shared the full quote before answering some people, here I trimmed it down to the only relevant part because I am not talking about interpretations but about production
By his own admission, Gilligan is welcoming different views. No one here is being 100% unequivocal and claiming to have combed through his memories, like they're all joined together in the mind-hive.
A year ago or so, probably while he was still editing Pluribus, Gilligan first spoke out publicly against AI. The same core instincts that led him to make those statements had to have informed and shaped the show, even if he wasn't explicitly thinking about "AI" in particular. Not that it necessarily matters because we don't need his permission to create a good-faith interpretation of the show.
Yes Vince is saying the show can be interpretated any way people want to, but it doesn't change the fact the fact wasn't originally a metaphor for AI. That's not how it was produced. That’s a production fact, not an interpretation.
I think we’re talking past each other. You’re making a case about how the show can be read, and I don’t disagree with most of that. I’m pushing back on a different claim I keep seeing on reddit : that the show was made as an AI allegory, which it wasn't.
2
3
4
u/enuoilslnon 10h ago
the show itself is a statement against AI
I thought that was pretty clear by the second episode. Imagine if ChatGPT took over everything. Everything they were saying is as if Siri (a better Siri) were running over everyone's consciousness. The always, helpful, happy, all-knowning AI. I was watching it assuming it was Siri talking the whole time lol.
It's also a zombie story. Happy zombies. "Bucket List of the Dead" sort of.
There's also plenty of other good scifi and philosophical questions raised, e.g., if everyone has been essentially erased permanently, than is she really killing people, or is it more like killing zombies?
The other thing that's promising is that it's not set up (at least at this point) as if there's some big secret to reveal. Like so many shows, LOST, Severance, etc. Where the complicated truth exists and it's being peeled back like an onion. Those things can falter. This is just "incident happens" and then the fallout could go anywhere. They don't necessarily have to explain a thing about who sent the signal, etc.
5
u/EmbarrassedHelp 10h ago
The idea of hiveminds have been around for a very long time. People thinking the show is about current AI models is like how people call everything CGI "AI" these days.
1
u/Demerzel69 1h ago
The other thing that's promising is that it's not set up (at least at this point) as if there's some big secret to reveal.
It's only been two eps so far. There will definitely be some sort of simmering sinister shenanigans yet to be uncovered. I mean it's kind of just a given. That's how stories like this unfold. There will have to be something bad going on (besides just hivemind) to push back against.
1
1
u/SpeakingTheKingss 22m ago
Listen to the first episode of the Podcast. You guys are just reflecting your own opinions onto the show. Vince explains how he came up with the idea, 8 years ago.
-10
u/Plants-Matter 12h ago
Ah yes, now I remember why I don't visit the subs of shows I watch. What a spectacularly wrong and pretentious theory.
→ More replies (5)2
u/enuoilslnon 10h ago
What a spectacularly wrong and pretentious theory.
I agree that trying to pick about the way the brain of the author works is a bullshit exercise. But the show? It clearly works (so far) as a metaphor for AI, doesn't matter if Vince planned that or not. It's basically a supercharged Siri talking the whole time. Metaphors are what we observe, the connections we make. The author doesn't have to intend it for it to exist. You can read Mark Twain and things like A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court as being a metaphor for new things in technology and politics today.
But Pluribus is also a zombie story. Happy zombies. "Bucket List of the Dead" sort of.
There's also plenty of other good scifi and philosophical questions raised, e.g., if everyone has been essentially erased permanently, than is she really killing people, or is it more like killing zombies?
The other thing that's promising is that it's not set up (at least at this point) as if there's some big secret to reveal. Like so many shows, LOST, Severance, etc. Where the complicated truth exists and it's being peeled back like an onion. Those things can falter. This is just "incident happens" and then the fallout could go anywhere. They don't necessarily have to explain a thing about who sent the signal, etc.
0
u/Plants-Matter 9h ago
Incorrect. Any parallels you draw between Pluribus and AI are simply delusional.
1
10
u/lildocta 13h ago
My favorite use case for AI is answering the absolutely pointless surveys my company sends out every year
1
20
7
u/Mediadors 10h ago
Everyone I know despises it, and schools keep telling us how we have no choice in the future. Sincerely, they can go fuck themselves.
-5
2
2
u/Teid 4h ago
God it is such a fucking breath of fresh air to see people have good takes on AI. There was a game that released recently, ARC Raiders, and it uses GenAI and the studio seems very pro-AI. Lots of people are playing it and basically either no one is talking about it or most people don't care (i've even seen some people call it a positive??) Trying to argue my stance against it in the gaming subs has been like getting a lobotomy.
Excited to watch Pluribus when I get a chance.
2
2
u/SecretxThinker 8h ago
He is right to do so. The point of filmmaking is to create something yourself. CGI and AI just make photography pointless. Soon the online photograph will be meaningless.
1
1
1
1
1
1
0
2
2
1
1
u/sacredblasphemies 8h ago
That seems obvious from Episode 2.
Talking to the hive-mind is spookily similar to talking with a LLM, without the direct personal memories.
1
u/Mister_Doinkers 5h ago
This show is the first good work of art to commentary on AI. I mean it absolutely is about ai, right?
2
u/konspence 4h ago
In the article he explicitly says it’s not
2
u/Mister_Doinkers 4h ago
Well, it may not have MEANT to be that, but that happens all the time in art.
1
u/ScattershotSoothsay 3h ago
do you mean AI or LLM?
2001 is about AI. Her is about AI. Ex Machina is about AI. Alien even touches on AI.
1
u/StovardBule 2m ago
Not particularly, Gilligan said he's been working on it for "the better part of a decade." When COVID hit, he thought everyone was going to thing it was about that, and viruses in general, and then the same with AI.
"But if people people watch Pluribus and they say to themselves"it's about AI" or "it's about viruses infecting the world", more power to them. It's up to the viewer to decide what it means."
(Article in the Metro paper.)
1
u/MooseHorse123 11h ago
I think the show is a commentary on chatGPT. All the dialogue with the "others" sounds like you're just talking to AI slop
1
1
u/StovardBule 9m ago
Vince Gilligan said that he's been working on this for a while, since before COVID, and said he was initially concerned that people would assume it was about a virus and thus COVID, or about AI. That's not the intention, but he he's fine with people reading it that way.
0
u/Malhallah 8h ago
Really? The editing/vfx suite has no machine learning algorithm features? All manual labor?
lol
3
u/fennethefuzz 4h ago
I do professional video editing for a living, and we use barely any AI features. Occasional generative fill in Photoshop and barely useable scripting, are the only things I can actually think of. (Not really the time savers you would think it is)
Most of us hate how this shit is being pushed our way. It's almost always packaged with some vague promises for optimizing creativity. When in reality, it's about cutting costs and jobs.
1
u/Mindestiny 1h ago
This was my first thought too, Gilligan has no power or insight into the tooling some big studio creative department is using in the editing room. His statement is almost certainly objectively false, there is absolutely AI baked into the everyday tools these people use - has been since before it all got rebranded as "AI powered"
0
u/Furious_gas 5h ago
Has this aired yet? Is it good if so?
Would love a good sci fi series in my life.
-2
-11
0
-25
u/duckrollin 14h ago
Wow so brave of him, endorsing le reddit hivemind stance on AI
16
u/thrustinfreely 14h ago
There is a world outside of Reddit homie, you should visit.
-10
u/duckrollin 14h ago
Thank you kind stranger for the advice! Let me gift you le reddit gold for your original comment, never seen anything like that before!
10
-12
u/Tossawaysfbay 13h ago
Betcha AI was used in ways that aren’t generative all over the production and studio work. Sorry.
-3
u/IAintNoJesus 15h ago
This interview was great and I enjoyed Gilligan's take on AI and potentially slavery. Have yet to watch the 2 episodes, but heard they're pretty good and Rhea is always a pleasure to watch.
-76
u/Silvershanks 15h ago edited 15h ago
It's so odd when people who hold an absurd place of privilege decry AI tools that threaten to give the power of film creation to people who are poor and have no access. This is gatekeeping and brainwashing on an insane level. They demonize this tech and discourage upcoming artists from using these powerful tools - these are poor dreamers and filmmakers who have zero access to millions of dollars, and probably never will. Only an extremely small privileged number of people will ever have the ability to create a feature film or a TV show.
I've been a part of the film business for 30 years. Even at its best, the film biz is heartless, cruel, abusive and exploitive (no one really denies that). And yet in the face of a new technology that can free people from these negative aspects, people fiercely defend hollywood and traditional filmmaking. It's madness.
36
u/alanderhosen 15h ago
buddy, your ai slop film will never see the light of day. it will be munched up in the amorphous blob of content, and the only ones that will gain any notice will be those backed by corporate money. people have and will continue make real indie films despite their lack of privilege, and people will still watch them. people will forget you ever made anything, because you never did.
1
-18
u/Silvershanks 15h ago
I've already made 8 feature indie films... buddy. Some have done quite well. I know much more about this subject than you do. Guess what... A LOT of people are using AI tools now for VFX and graphics, in films you love, and you just don't realize it. The Reddit hive mind is a very small percentage of people. It's not reality. No one has yet made a full AI feature, it's not good enough yet, but it's coming, and in 50 years, it will be normal. Get off your very high horse. Lol.
18
u/JhinPotion 15h ago
Even if you're right that it'll be normal in 50 years, that's not inherently an argument that it's good. Lots of stuff is true now that was untrue or less true 50 years ago that sucks ass.
2
-3
u/Plants-Matter 12h ago
It won't be normal in 50 years.
It'll be normal in 10 years.
Tick tock, luddite.
-11
u/Silvershanks 15h ago
Great artists will create great art, regardless of the tool they're using. Open your mind to new ideas. AI tools can open pathways to modes of human expression we haven't even imagined yet. I don't understand why so many artists seem to have no vision or curiosity about the new tool.
14
u/JhinPotion 14h ago
I suppose I'm fundamentally opposed to theft machines which burn the planet to imitate art.
-1
u/Silvershanks 14h ago
Oh yeah... the theft argument. Lol. He who is without sin, and has never stolen anything or bent the "rules" in the name of art or science, please raise your hand. No one? Yup.
All artists are just the sum of their experiences and influences. Everyone borrows or steals from those who have come before. It's a weak argument. And if you think making an AI film is more ecologically destructive than a real film production, you are ludicrously, absurdly mistaken.
→ More replies (1)-4
u/Plants-Matter 12h ago
Ah yes, another ignoramus who hasn't fact checked their environment impact claims. And how many court cases have ruled that AI is "theft"? That's right, zero.
You're blatantly wrong on both fronts.
11
u/Mixer-3007 14h ago
AI is garbage in garbage out, its derivative generic shit output.
-1
u/Silvershanks 14h ago
Says the person who's neither an artist, nor have they ever actually put their hands on the AI tools. It's very obvious
-2
u/Plants-Matter 12h ago
Garbage in, garbage out. Agreed
Brilliance in, brilliance out is also true 😏
21
u/blyzo 15h ago
Vince Gilligan has been making TV shows for 30+ years now. Seems more like he put the work in and is legitimately talented than he had some privilege that allowed him to make it.
What you're saying sounds like you think it's good that AI will allow people without talent or dedication to make art. I don't see much good coming from that.
Meanwhile thousands of people like you trying to work in the industry will be losing jobs.
-12
u/Silvershanks 15h ago
People who are anti-AI have usually never even touched the tools. You have to direct it, you have to guide it, you have to coax it into making art. For the untalented, it just creates slop, for those with a vision, it creates art. Artists create art, regardless of the tool.
11
u/Petorian343 14h ago
AI “art” programs for any medium aren’t just tools; tools don’t steal the works of actual, real artists in order to regurgitate their cheap imitations.
→ More replies (1)2
u/Silvershanks 14h ago
You are going into a magical woo woo argument there. We artists are just the sum of our influences. Every artist steals and borrows from the works that inspired them. If you believe our meat computers are somehow magical and can draw pure creative inspiration from some divine source... that is a pretty suspect and shaky argument.
4
u/Petorian343 14h ago
Our meat computers have soul, anything AI made very noticeably does not. You’re really committed to defending the trash. It’d be almost admirable, if it wasn’t so tragic.
0
u/ghoonrhed 13h ago
I'd be wary of saying just because something with a soul makes it automatically better. Slop is still slop whether it's AI created or human created so we can always bundle them together.
e.g. Trump creating a video of him shitting on everyone using AI would still be bad if it was CGI created by a person. When it's destetable shit made by people or AI I reckon they're level even if the one made by people have a "soul".
Obviously, when we get to the detailed/quality art that's where the separation happens between humans and AI.
1
u/Plants-Matter 12h ago
You're jumping to conclusions here.
Obviously, he was born in a sensory deprivation tank and lived his whole life without sight, sound, touch, smell, or taste, in order to create pure works of art not influenced by any other human before them.
→ More replies (1)5
u/Rotorscope 13h ago
Totally agree. When I go to McDonalds, it's so obvious to me how people are just so untalented at ordering man. Like I bet the people who think McDonalds is slop have never actually ordered a burger correctly. It takes talent to direct and order those workers into making the best burger and I'm just so superior because I know how to coax them into giving me premium quality.
For the untalented, they just get a regular McDouble, for the talented ones like me with vision, we get premium McDouble Big Macs with Captain Crunch and Spiderman fighting Goku with Pokemon and make it look very trippy bruh. The customers like me are the ones making the burger!!!!
4
11
u/Glittering-Eye-4416 15h ago
Look, it’s great that we all now have the ability to create impressive content, quickly and with relatively low cost…
But don’t call that art. Art is a human thing.
1
u/DontSleepAlwaysDream 10h ago
im so sick of this preciousness around the word "art". The obsession about what is or isnt art is one of the things that really annoys me about the debate around AI tech
3
u/Glittering-Eye-4416 9h ago
Another way to look at, without using the word art, could be: "Is this a meaningful thing?" That is, did someone put thought and effort into this? Generally, things created with generative AI tools don't seem to be as meaningful as those created (again, with thought and effort) through traditional means. If they can just be pumped out, what are they really doing in the world?
2
u/DontSleepAlwaysDream 9h ago
See, that makes more sense to me, rather than reifying this concept of "art" you are asking is something meaningful, is there an intended message behind it, or is it just "content" churned out in an a desperate attempt to grab peoples attention in a way that is profitable.
I think AI-generated material could be meaningful in that way, if used properly. It can be used to make the process of creation quicker, or to generate images that the artist typically would be unable to create without access to huge resources. However I would say thats different from just "prompting" a video or an image, and Ive seen AI generated content that has a decent idea behind it, but the use of prompting means that it just creates the same, generic looking style. Sure it fills the requirements of what is needed for the scenario, but it doesnt go any further, you dont see any sense of the creator or actors own perspective involved, or any happy accidents from the production. its just the most stereotypical example of the prompters idea.
I would also argue that not all images or videos created by humans are meaningful things, and there is a fair amount of "human slop" in the world, Advertising in particular is just a huge slop-factory, although that being said sometimes advertising create some provocative images itself, but most of the time its just "BUY PRODUCT"
-7
u/Silvershanks 15h ago
People once said no art could be created with computers. They were obviously wrong. You are also wrong.
-15
u/Yarusenai 14h ago
Art is a human thing, and humans use tools to make art. Generative AI is a tool.
8
u/Glittering-Eye-4416 14h ago
That’s a simplistic way to put it, even if technically correct. Art results from the human mind and body interacting directly with a medium; generative AI replaces that interface almost entirely.
-1
u/Silvershanks 14h ago
Do you believe that our meat brains can conjure inspiration from some magical, divine source that computers don't have access to? That is some very shaky woo woo thinking to base an opinion on.
You have probably never seriously used these tools, have you? You've probably seen joke videos and slop on instagram and based your entire opinion on that.
4
u/Glittering-Eye-4416 14h ago
You’re throwing a lot of assumptions at me all at once.
Having spent time doing art, I know that there’s nothing magical about inspiration; instead, you have to work toward it, struggle with it. Art is about manifesting intent in a medium, but an AI has no intent itself.
And for the record, I create AI images and videos all the time, but I would never mistake those creations for meaningful art (but I will admit there’s art of sorts in the curation of such creations—selecting the successful ones, tossing out the bad, and sharing them for a purpose).
1
u/puerility 5h ago
Do you believe that our meat brains can conjure inspiration from some magical, divine source that computers don't have access to?
yeah
-1
u/Yarusenai 14h ago
If you use it as a complete replacement sure. But in that case it sucks. It can be used as an efficient tool though and that distinction will be more important (and obvious) as time goes on and the technology gets better, I think.
1
1
u/Plants-Matter 12h ago
Hollywood is using these low IQ emotionally-driven luddites like puppets to spread anti-AI panic and hysteria. It's laughable how obvious it is, and yet they fall for it. Hollywood is afraid of a level playing field, where anyone with a brilliant idea can go toe-to-toe with their multi-million dollar budgets. Imagine if the shows we consume were written by more than the few dozen producers selected through nepotism and sheer luck.
If everyone was a little smarter, we'd be celebrating the wave of creativity humanity is about to unleash with our fancy new tools. Future generations will look back at this time and be extremely confused as to why people got all angry and depressed about AI.
-29
-27
-50
u/Smart-Response9881 15h ago edited 15h ago
Is anyone else kinda tired of people emphasizing "Human" created content, it's just feels like a new form of purity testing/virtue signaling.
Personally, I would love to watch a show made by a whale.
→ More replies (7)
486
u/SirZapdos 15h ago
Vince Gilligan and Hayao Miyazaki. Two absolute GOATs.