An Insult to Life Itself

This column is a reprint from Unwinnable Monthly #186. If you like what you see, grab the magazine for less than ten dollars, or subscribe and get all future magazines for half price.

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Wide but shallow.

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Hayao Miyazaki, director and animator of many Studio Ghibli classic animated films, has laid bare the truth about generative artificial intelligence. In a clip from a recent documentary, the man known for many acerbic takes throughout the years is shown a demo of computer-generated animation and shares his reaction to this nascent yet seemingly ubiquitous technology: “I would never wish to incorporate this technology into my work at all. I strongly feel that this is an insult to life itself.”

In this specific bit that Miyazaki is shown by his team, a grotesque clump of oiled human-like limbs hurls itself around round a bare floor. The director admits that it’s creepy, and if that’s what the creator is into so be it, but the machine that created it has no idea what real pain is. Those in the room say that their dream is to build a machine that can draw like a human, to which there is a cut, and then Miyazaki says “we humans are losing faith in ourselves.”

You have likely seen the mudslide of generative AI slop painting memes classic and horrid in a Studio Ghibli style, all of which just lends more credence to what Miyazaki is saying, his own words echoing those of creative people since these models went global. Horrendous, to say the least, like images of ghouls who have stripped the face off another creature to wear as a mask, Michaels Meyers made meme and mask and meme and mask again.

Miyazaki is right to say that what these tools have been generating is an affront to life itself. Which doesn’t mean there’s no place for large language models or generative technology, but that the human experience at the root of all meaningful creative works is still required. Parasitic data crawlers can scrape petabytes of data for millennia without ever approximating a complete human life and the delight and surprise contained therein. It’s not enough to mimic, copy and warp, to bloviate, vomit and pretend.

As a poet, I can’t help but think of the few times I’ve been asked by civilians about poetry and writing poetry and if I’d look at their work. I’m always happy to look at anyone’s verse, what a privilege to share someone’s attempt to wrangle their innermost thoughts into slippery, mercurial language. But at the same time, I have to ask, who’s your favorite poet, what’s the last poem you read that shook you, what do you think poetry is? To engage in poetry or any other art for yourself with any real meaning requires engaging with others through it as well, finding something that resonates with you, then emulating, but of course always missing the mark, because you can’t possibly approximate the lived experience of that writer. But simply by participating, reading and writing, we help each other find our individual voices.

I could ask one of these tools similar questions, and I’d probably get surprisingly readable answers, maybe even stuff that would make me reconsider my own notions in some way. But it wouldn’t be a dialogue, a communion with my fellow living beings – just a shout to the void and a striking and hollow voice in return, well-articulated frameworks for endless empty-calorie navel-gazing.

Generative AI can only echo. There is no life behind the work, just scorched rainforests and squandered water resulting in meaningless aesthetic. Life is already well beyond this and always will be.

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Levi Rubeck is a critic and poet currently living in the Boston area. Check his links at levirubeck.com.