When the web came around, it got called the end of gatekeepers like traditional publishers and media houses. Anyone could publish. All they needed was talent. No one could prevent people from publishing.
Now, in the age of generative AI tools, we appear to have come full circle. Anyone can publish, even if they don’t have talent. So we seem to be in need of gatekeepers again.
This can be the moment where traditional publishers and media organisations make a comeback. But it’ll require them to understand the game and their role in it intricately. To understand generative AI, where it belongs, and where it doesn’t. To know where to draw the lines, and where to erase the lines.
However, I’m afraid the minds that go into the making of these organisations are the products of the age that watched gatekeepers reduced to the status of pretentious villains.
The Wild West is getting wilder, and nobody can be sheriff anymore.
I also wonder however, if my thinking of generative AI as a great big threat to “quality” art is the same as what the gatekeepers of yore felt about the web. Am I just the pretentious villain of today? Am I the tired old man looking for the good old days because he can’t handle the tomorrow that today is rapidly turning into?
I don’t think I am. Perhaps I am wrong to think so but I don’t think I am. Because I can see a new kind of artist on the horizon. One who is not only unhindered by the gatekeepers who once stopped me, but also the gatekeeper that I am.
Perhaps it is my definition of talent that is in need of updating.