Introduction
Much ballyhooed since it emerged on the scene in late 2022, Generative A.I. (henceforth referred to as GAI) has taken the world by storm. At first a novelty of computational science, GAI is now reshaping the world in ways we, with our feeble human brains bereft of large scale statistical computational modelling, are yet to fully understand.
As like all humans who ignore the wisdom of the adage ‘Curiosity killed the cat,’ I was at the time eager to see how the tool could prove useful; my curiosity inspiring me to use – with attribution – the GAI capabilities of ChatGPT for a portion of my January 2023 DOMOTEX presentation ‘Weavers are (K)not Robots.’ I prompted ChatGPT to ‘write an essay about how weavers are knot robots, (k,n,o,t) in the style of film director Wes Anderson.’ It readily obliged while consuming approximately one (1) litre of clean drinking water to generate an approximate 2000 word essay; this according to ChatGPT itself when on 20 August 2025 I asked ‘How much water does ChatGPT consume to generate a 2000 word essay?’
For comparison, I personally consume far more water and coffee than that while crafting prose, such as it is, like this. But then again, I’m a human not a machine; one who favours the primacy of humanity over some (formerly fictional) futuristic techno-dystopian fascist hellscape dominated by machines and the thinking of people who would sell their eternal soul (If such a thing exists.) for ephemeral shareholder value. But, as I’ve said in the past, I digress.
I quoted several paragraphs of the GAI response in that presentation before stating immediately thereafter, and I quote myself, ‘As I stand here before you today I do not possess an impending fear of losing my job as a writer, yet just as those 19th century luddites, I do foresee a time, perhaps in the not too distant future, in which the machine may take my job. The words written by ChatGPT are not what I would describe as 100% accurate, yet in many ways the [G]AI is also not wrong. With further development and evolution it is easy to see how this technology has the potential to be transformative.’
Today, in the late summer of 2025 I profess the transformative nature of this technology continues to be ascendent and I believe not only is my skillset as writer of commentary on the trade of handknotted rugs and carpets imminently imperiled, it is all but dead for the type of positive-vibes-only commentary favoured by the industry, trade media, the advertisers who pay for aforementioned media, and in truth the Trumpian sphere which now dominates our so-called ‘beautiful’ lives. Unless critical creative abstract thinking is involved, and I postulate even this is iffy, the large scale language models of GAI can easily generate words passable as prose that are just as captivating and convincing as any writer, The Ruggist himself most certainly included. I’ll elaborate, or is that collaborate, with ChatGPT to better illustrate my point.
What ‘Prompt’ Inspired This?
Appearing in the Summer 2025 issue of the venerable trade publication COVER Magazine is an article titled ‘Let’s Try to be Clever about AI.’ As someone who self-styles himself as ‘The Ruggist’ is wont to do, I read it, and the entire magazine so as to broaden my thinking beyond the confines of my own feeble human brain. What struck me as most peculiar about an article discussing the use of GAI to design rugs was the apparent (or is that stated) fear of missing out (FOMO) willingness to acquiesce to the presumed inevitable infiltration of GAI into the design process behind the very same handknotted rugs and carpets which grace the pages of said publication. This on the part of those audience members who – as reported – audaciously asked COVER Editor Lucy Upward, ‘How companies can use AI to design rugs?’ One presumes so they could prompt GAI with something akin to ‘Create the most appealing and sellable rug design that COVER will write about.’ I know well the lack of creativity of these types of people.
There was also trepidatious regret expressed as though the inevitability is not in its use, but rather its detrimental use. With this I am firmly in the camp of ‘It will be used to the detriment of humans. Or (k)not.’ Tools are tools, passive without intent (We hope!). How and whether we choose to use them or (k)not has been a question plaguing the rug and carpet industry since someone first asked, ‘How much hand is required in handmade?’ The rug and carpet industry as both immediate concern and stand-in for veritably everything else.
I was also struck by the willingness of COVER to list, by name, several GAI image models one presumes they tacitly endorse, were told about by the persons interviewed in the article, or found by GooglingTM. At the same time, in what appears to be a thinly masked borrowing of credibility, COVER painstakingly avoids naming Nepal’s Alternative Technology, creators of Galaincha Software, while usurping the same firm’s intellectual property in the form of its strapline ‘Modern Technology for an Ancient Craft.’ Why name, promote, and tacitly endorse firms with zero involvement in the trade of handknotted carpets (e.g. DALL-E) while simultaneously and intentionally obscuring one who has, and this is no exaggeration, been critical to the modern carpet revolution whose aesthetics all but underwrite the success of COVER?
I know (k)not the answer COVER would give to this rhetorical question. What I do know is I no longer appear in COVER Magazine because of past critiques levelled against the publication. Stern and discerning critics will, after all, be stern and discerning.
Paraphrasing what I was explicitly told, ‘Don’t bite the hand that feeds you,’ I’m rightly and prudently reminded we should support those who make possible our lives, not those who have the ability to automate the job as designer or writer or creator or media or publisher or what-have-you out of existence. Poof! Job gone. That is the leitmotif of this essay.
It took me a very long time to what I hope is understand the ridiculous absurdity that is humanity and our intelligence. I advocate for the weaver and craft because if we do not start there, with the fundamentals (of civilization) and likewise if we don’t acknowledge this, then… well… what exactly are the qualities we are advocating for in handmade? Is it a trade structure which mimics a British colonial mindset which views class akin to caste, each participant knowing their place as organized by… you guessed it? Is it an American arrogance which affects us all? History could inform if not for said aforementioned arrogance. Is it a Canadian passive aggressiveness which you may not even notice? I know (k)not.
Heeding sound advice, I decided to be clever. Or is that cheeky?
Championing Craft
It is my philosophy, my long held stance, that the primacy of craft, the work of the hand must be defended, promoted, and held in utmost regard. Civilization is, after all, built not by wistful prompts typed into a characterless interface in the hopes of generating some romantically nostalgic version of reality. It is built by labour. Whether that is weaving or writing or what have you, if we fail to draw the proverbial line, it seems we ourselves will be the architects of our our demise. Be they ‘audience members,’ rug designers – talented, ersatz, or otherwise, writers, editors, et cetera, those who are in a position to advocate for the use of GAI to create rugs designs must come understand the jobs they wish to automate are not as dissimilar to their own as they may appear.
Generative A.I. to Design Rugs (and More)!
I truly did not and do not care to write an article besmirching what is the success of COVER Magazine; that is not the point of this article and if you think it is, think again. The author of the article, Denna Jones, did well their job writing an article which piqued thought, inspiring a human to think critically about the subject at hand. Chapeau! This is what good writing does. If COVER is to celebrate another twenty (20) years however methinks we must consider the consequences more broadly.
I disagree immensely and vehemently with the notion of promoting the use of GAI to design carpets knowing full well the savings in time – as measured in the almighty dollar – will not be passed on to those whose jobs cannot be automated; namely that of the weaver. Carpets can be slowmaking at its most refined, yet critical to… well… everything about handknotted rugs and carpets is the role of the weaver. Unless we figure out a way to automate their work, then I question how much further exploitation must the weaver bear so that designers can reap the benefits? Oh! Wait! We have automated the role of the weaver. Those are called machine-made rugs and at least amongst my cadre of colleagues, we consider those an inferior art form. So which do we want in handknotted rugs and carpets? Automation or craftsmanship?
I also did not and do not care to write an article about how GAI will impact rug design. It seems like low hanging fruit to me. Tabloid fodder, albeit somewhat necessary, to appease those who favour expedience and shortcuts over the time consuming nature of genuine craft. Those ‘audience members’ and indeed anyone of similar mindset might as well have asked Ms. Upward, ‘How can I use AI to write articles about rugs so I can start my own publication?’
Instead I have chosen to write/compose/type/edit myself, with my own fingers and intellect, everything you’ve read thus far as mere introduction to the following GAI generated article about how GAI will impact rug design. I hope you see the meta intent behind it; the calling out of our foolishness as we automate ourselves out of existence.
If GAI can augment and perhaps replace the designer, so too can GAI augment, and I genuinely and wholehearted believe replace the writer and the like. If we are to celebrate the former, surely we must celebrate the latter. A horrible realization people generally fail to grasp until it is their job, their labour, their livelihood at risk. I find the concept of inequitable automation a complete anathema to everything about the slowmaking nature of the handknotted rugs and carpets we profess to love.
What follows below after the ‘Prologue’ section was generated (almost) entirely by ChatGPT via prompts I fed into it. I used several iterations of prompts to generate multiple articles and then edited them together with as minimal change as possible to preserve the faux, albeit remarkably accurate, Ruggist tone of ChatGPT. If we don’t need to pay a designer to design rugs, why do we need to pay a writer to write about rugs? Moreover, and this should be obvious, this applies for all labour. Let us not shoot ourselves in the foot as it said.
In a former era of my life I was called ‘inimitable’ by COVER Magazine. As you are to find out, that is no longer the case.
Prologue
The majority of what appears below began by prompting ChatGPT with the following: ‘In the style of Michael Christie, aka The Ruggist, compose an approximate 1000 word article about the use of generative A.I. to design handknotted rugs and carpets. Discuss the pros and cons and provide examples of how to use generative A.I. to create designs.’ Other prompts and refinement ensued.
We join ChatGPT mid-session as it replies to my affirmative ‘Yes’ when it asked ‘Would you like me to pepper in footnote-style asides and wry commentary (very “Ruggist-esque”) to give it even more of that irreverent critic’s column feel, or keep it at this polished long-form essay style?’ ChatGPT, take it away…
‘Perfect. Let’s push this essay further into true Ruggist territory: opinionated, witty, a little irreverent, but still rooted in knowledge and respect for the handmade. I’ll keep the ~2000 words, but I’ll sprinkle in those sly asides, footnote-style commentary, and rhetorical flourishes Michael Christie is known for.’
For what it is worth, I cannot recall ever reading a better description of my writing style. Sadly true as that may be.
Nota bene:
- I did not provide any training data. ChatGPT already ‘knew’ how to write in my style, one presumes from my fabulous and large, some say beautiful, oeuvre of work. One harvested by those shareholder value seeking individuals who see nothing wrong with imitating my style. On one hand this is flattering. On another, as ChatGPT will tell you shortly, it is terrifying.
- The edits to the ChatGPT generated copy are denoted by coloured text so as to provide a clearer picture. Amber for syntax changes and edits. Moo Red for original additions (whatever that means in this context). Deep Purple for copy inserted from other iterations of prompts. Posh Teal when I want to highlight something especially noteworthy.
- Interestingly enough this reminds of the issue of copyright and the notion of protecting one’s style. While this is a discussion for another day, if Michael Christie, The Ruggist, uses GAI trained on his own work to generate work in his own style, is the work his or that of a machine? I’ll stop now before I suffer an existential crisis about the nature of my being.
Without further ado allow me to introduce to you to Michael Christie, The Ruggist, as recreated by the awesome power of GAI via ChatGPT.
[BEGIN COPY GENERATED BY ChatGPT]
Generative A.I. and the Handmade Rug
Pixels, Knots, and the Future of Design
Let us begin, dear reader, with a confession. I, a devoted apostle of the handknotted rug – romantic, laborious, and frequently absurd – have long held a healthy skepticism for anything that reeks of automation. The soul of a good carpet lies in the tension between the hands that knot and the minds that imagine. But as the old idiom goes: the times, they are algorithmic. Yes, we are here to talk about generative artificial intelligence – that buzzword-stuffed darling of the tech world – and what, if anything, it might offer our cherished rug and carpet industry. Before you clutch your Persian Bijar in horror, take a breath, and join me on this admittedly strange, possibly sacrilegious, definitely fascinating exploration.
There exists a peculiar romance in the handmade rug world, one woven – pun intended – into its very knots. It is the romance of the artisan, of the designer hunched over sketchbooks, gouache paints, or CAD software, searching for just the right arrangement of lines and colours. It is the romance of history, with motifs handed down through centuries, morphing and mutating across time and geography. And it is, above all, the romance of the human touch: the irregularities, the tiny ‘flaws’ that are the very definition of authenticity.
So what happens when into this world of slow labour and ancient practice steps a force entirely alien: generative artificial intelligence? A tool capable of producing, in seconds, variations on motifs that took dynasties centuries to perfect. A system not of human creativity but of computational probability. One with which veritably anyone can now dream up infinitely varied designs with just a keyboard and a pinch of poetic intent; the implications for rug design are, dare I say, (k)noteworthy.
It is either exhilarating or terrifying. Likely both.
The temptation to dismiss GAI design outright is strong. After all, rugs are cultural artefacts, not just floorcoverings. They are meant to be steeped in tradition, imbued with the story of the maker. And yet, as with every disruptive technology that has arrived before it – synthetic dyes, CAD systems, digital looms – the genie is out of the bottle, the toothpaste is out of the tube, and the rug has quite literally been pulled out from under us.
The questions, then, are not: Will GAI infiltrate rug design? (It already has.) But rather: How will it? What does it mean for authenticity, for artisanship, for culture? And most importantly: what do we gain – or lose – in letting machines imagine our rugs for us?
The Seduction of the Algorithm
Let us begin (again), as we should, with temptation. Because temptation is precisely what GAI offers in abundance.
You type a few words into a prompt box: ‘Persian medallion rug reinterpreted through Bauhaus geometry, limited to six colours, large scale suitable for a Manhattan loft.‘ Out spill dozens of options – symmetrical, asymmetrical, wild, restrained. Some are laughable, others uncanny, and a few… truly compelling.
For a rug designer, this is intoxicating. The blank page, that terrifying void of creative paralysis, disappears. The GAI becomes a sketching assistant on steroids, an inexhaustible idea factory. Designers who once slaved for weeks to produce five or six concepts can now review fifty in an afternoon. The process shifts from creation to curation. The cynic might say ‘curation’ is the polite word for scrolling until something looks nice.
And it’s not just about volume. The machine is superb at hybridization. Ask it to combine ‘Mamluk medallion,’ ‘Cubist painting,’ and ‘organic biomorphic forms,’ and it will cheerfully oblige, producing mashups that defy categorization. Where human designers hesitate – fearing ridicule or aesthetic monstrosity – the algorithm merrily collides traditions.
In this sense, GAI could be the great liberator of rug design. No longer bound by draughtsmanship or CAD skills, anyone – seasoned pro or curious amateur – can conjure rug-like images. The vocabulary of ornament is suddenly available to all. This is democratization of design… …in theory. In practice, democratization in design is not always the utopia one imagines (See also: beige wall-to-wall carpet.) often resulting in everyone producing suspiciously similar greyish-beige interiors.
The Knotty Reality
But here lies the first, glaring tension: unlike digital art, a rug must be made. Slowly. Painfully. By human hands.
A 9×12 rug at 100 knots per square inch contains about 1.5 million knots. Each one tied individually. Even a ‘simple’ rug requires months of patient labour. The introduction of GAI does not alter this. The making remains stubbornly human. This creates dissonance. If the design emerges instantly from an algorithm, but the weaving takes half a year, where is the locus of value? Does the artistry lie in the computer’s output, or in the human execution?
Already, the industry marginalizes weavers. Predominantly Western designers’ names are splashed across glossy magazines while artisans – of decidedly non-western origin – remain anonymous. Generative A.I. risks pushing this even further: if the ‘designer’ is no longer even a person but an algorithm, the weaver is reduced to ‘mere labour.’ I’ve yet to meet a ‘mere labourer’ capable of tying 1.5 million knots with accuracy.
Yet there is another way of seeing it. Many GAI designs rely on impossible gradients, infinite tessellations, or distortions looms cannot accommodate. To translate such visions into wool and silk requires interpretive brilliance, not rote effort. In this light, GAI could paradoxically highlight the irreplaceability of human craft.
The Pros of A.I. in Rug Design
Let us catalogue, generously, the benefits.
- Rapid Prototyping: Historically, designing a new carpet might involve months of sketching, weaving samples, or poring over reference books. With GAI, we can now rapidly iterate hundreds of design ideas in minutes. This is not just efficient – it’s liberating. The designer, freed from the tyranny of a blank page, can play, remix, and experiment with abandon. Rug houses can generate a wide variety of directions before committing to costly loom samples. Waste is reduced, time is saved, clients are impressed.
- Hybrid Aesthetics: The machine excels at stylistic mashups. ‘Ottoman tulip motifs meets Memphis Group postmodernism?’ Done. Ask it to combine Uzbek suzani patterns with Baule textiles, and it will. Tastefully? That’s your job. But the point stands: GAI encourages visual syncretism, an approach already familiar to those of us who know the rich, mongrel histories of rug design. Such juxtapositions might invigorate an industry sometimes accused of recycling itself.
- Mass Customization: Clients could specify colours, motifs, moods, even vague ‘vibes,’ and receive bespoke concepts in minutes. Rugs become more personal – though one might ask whether a rug designed in thirty seconds can ever be ‘personal.’
- Small Atelier Empowerment: A single entrepreneur, armed with GAI, can produce presentation-ready concepts once reserved for large design houses. In theory, this levels the playing field.
- Democratization: With generative tools, anyone with curiosity and a decent sense of style can generate a rug design. This doesn’t replace expertise, but it lowers the barrier to entry. Emerging designers – especially those in regions without formal training institutions – can now engage directly in the visual dialogue of rugs. Interior designers, retailers, even end-consumers can dabble in design. A hotelier can sketch a lobby rug in words. Whether this is good for design quality is debatable. (See also: ‘Pinterest Interiors.’)
- Bespoke on Steroids: Imagine a client saying, ‘I want a carpet that feels like Monet, but with the vibe of a Tokyo street at night.’ Previously, a designer might smile politely and then curse softly into their tea. Now? Type the prompt, tweak the output, and voilà! A perfectly madcap starting point for a truly unique handknotted work of art.
The Cons of A.I. in Rug Design
Optimism aside, there are substantial downsides.
- Derivative by Definition: GAI is recombination, not invention. Its outputs are statistical averages of existing images. It is only as good as the data it was trained on. Much of this is Western-centric, Euro-American in aesthetic bias, and fundamentally disconnected from the deeply regional traditions that give rugs their historical resonance. Ask for a ‘Persian carpet’ and you may receive a digital fever dream with questionable borders and an unholy centre medallion that would make any Iranian weaver weep. The risk is a glut of rugs that feel superficially ‘new’ but lack depth.
- Cultural Appropriation on Steroids: GAI does not understand lineage or cultural property. A prompt for ‘Navajo rug’ will yield plausible imitations stripped of context, meaning, or permission. What was once appropriation by a few designers could become appropriation at scale.
- Devaluation of Labour: There is a seductive temptation to conflate designing with making. Let us not forget that a rug, particularly a handknotted one, is not an image. It is a physical object, the result of thousands – sometimes millions – of individual knots, each tied by a human being. No algorithm can replicate the texture of wool, the irregularities of a hand-dyed yarn, or the slow unfolding of pattern under patient, practiced hands. If design becomes keystrokes, the perceived value of both design and weaving may plummet. Rugs risk being viewed as décor commodities rather than heirlooms. (I would argue we have already long devalued labour.)
- Technical Impracticality: GAI churns out impossible designs: gradients no dye can replicate, fractals no loom can weave. Translating them into rugs requires compromise – often stripping away what made them alluring in the first place.
- Homogenization: Ironically, democratization may lead to sameness. If everyone uses the same tools trained on the same datasets, will rugs begin to look suspiciously alike? (Spoiler: Yes!)
- The Danger of Pastiche: GAI generated designs often have a veneer of beauty -symmetry, colour harmony, novelty – but they can lack intention. There is a risk of creating rugs that are mere visual pastiches, with no narrative, no cultural grounding, and no aesthetic spine. Without an experienced human curator (a designer, a weaver, or, dare I say, a Ruggist), these designs can feel hollow.
- Ethical Quagmires: Much of the data GAI tools are trained on is scraped from the internet without proper attribution. If an GAI model is trained on centuries of indigenous or protected cultural art forms, does the resulting design amount to digital appropriation? What if it ‘accidentally‘ replicates the original exactly? What if it mimics the style of a contemporary designer without their consent? We must demand transparency, attribution, and respect in how GAI–assisted designs are developed and used. Cultural heritage is not free clip art. We must tread carefully here.
Automation vs. Craft: The Soul Dilemma
What makes a rug meaningful? Is it the pattern? The colours? The story it tells? Or is it something more elusive – the sense that it was made with human intention, that each knot is a record of someone’s time, care, and presence? In short, is it a carpet with soul?
When we automate design, but keep weaving manual, we create a schism. The idea becomes instantly replicable and infinite; the execution remains laborious and finite. This disconnect can result in carpets that look stunning in render but fall flat in wool and silk. (See also ‘Crafting Exceptional Carpets in a Changing World‘ by the real Michael Christie, The Ruggist, ‘…a littoral area betwixt what things actually are and a delusional view of what we want them to be.)
Worse still, it risks reducing the weaver to a passive executor of digital whims. (Though again, I would argue in many ways we have already done this.) That’s not just disrespectful – it’s destructive, or perhaps extractive. The strength of traditional rug-making lies in its collaborative nature, its symbiosis between designer and artisan. When that balance is lost, we lose more than beauty. We lose integrity.
The Philosophical Question
At the heart of all this is a deeper inquiry: What is design?
If design is merely the generation of images, then yes, GAI is a designer. But if design is the shaping of those images into artefacts with meaning, resonance, and physical presence, then the human remains indispensable.
Rug design has always adapted to new tools. Natural dyes gave way to synthetic. Hand-drawn cartoons gave way to CAD. Fax machines once zipped designs across continents overnight – a miracle at the time. Today, we use WhatsApp. Generative A.I. is not the end of design; it is simply the latest tool. But unlike the others, it challenges our very definition of creativity.
A Cautious Embrace
So where does this leave us? To reject GAI outright is foolish. The industry will not ignore a tool that offers efficiency and novelty. But to embrace it uncritically is dangerous. The risk is soulless, derivative rugs, devoid of human imagination. The path forward is to use GAI as muse, not master. A collaborator, not a creator. Let it generate sketches, absurdities, provocations. Let humans – designers and weavers – interpret, refine, and imbue them with meaning. Because no one falls in love with a JPEG.
They fall in love with wool underfoot, with silk shimmering in shifting light, with the knowledge that human hands tied every knot. GAI may flood us with patterns, but without the weaver, they are mere pixels. The true magic of rugs begins where code ends and craft begins.
Conclusion
Generative A.I. is here. It will produce marvels and monstrosities. It will empower some and cheapen others. It will force uncomfortable questions about authorship, authenticity, and artistry. But perhaps discomfort is exactly what the rug industry needs. For too long, it has coasted on tradition, recycling motifs under the guise of ‘heritage’ – erased or otherwise. GAI, by its disruptive nature, forces reconsideration of what design is, who gets credit, and how value is apportioned.
If wielded carelessly, GAI will fill the world with soulless rugs. If wielded wisely – critically, reverently, and with respect for the hand – it could spark a renaissance, because the handmade rug will survive not because of its designs, but because of its making. Even in an age of infinite digital images, nothing compares to the patience of human hands tying knot after knot, slowly, stubbornly, beautifully, into a rug.
[END COPY GENERATED BY ChatGPT]
Epilogue
Allow me, the real Michael Christie, The Ruggist to actually conclude by reïterating a few key themes and points from this article.
Foremost is an understanding that luddites rightfully feared technology would take their jobs and livelihoods. Weaving did not vanish with the industrial revolution however, it just became more automated with significantly fewer jobs and increased prosperity for those who owned the new technology of power-looms. It also drastically lowered the price of wovens making them more accessible to the masses, a structural economic dilemma we’ve yet to adequately resolve. Similarly, I fear the GAI of this era and the immediate future will lead to increased prosperity for those who own the new technology of GAI, and likewise those who successfully figure out how to exploit it to their benefit. Unfortunately this will likely lead to more class and caste as the jobs that cannot be automated are treated – as civilization tends to treat all such essential jobs – poorly.
A trusted confidant of utmost stature within the industry, a muse of sorts who read the penultimate draft of this article, rather astutely suggested I highlight one way GAI and AI could truly help innovate rugs and carpets, namely: Innovation of Translation. Design aesthetics – the drawing as it were – aside, the rote computational power of both GAI and AI has the ability to greatly improve the translation of improbable concept to weavable reality. Task AI and GAI to find the hidden efficiencies, the simplifications, that balance betwixt the artistic intent of the designer, and the practical concerns of weaving. (K)not with creating the ‘most appealing and sellable rug design that COVER will write about.’
The same confidant also suggested that the above ChatGPT article in my style still seemed ‘fake,’ and ‘not really me.’ In this regard I believe they have highlighted the broad dangers of the world in which digitized statistical versions of reality are surreptitiously passed as authentic or real or, I don’t know, not fucking dystopian. The ChatGPT version of me is a high-fidelity statistical model of what I would write, except it’s (k)not. My prompt was an article about GAI and rug design, my result, commentary on the importance of our humanity and not foolishly doing away with it. I wrote this article about the dangers of GAI and our perversions against reality to remind that while you too can ask GAI to generate an image of autumnal leaves blanketing the ground, it will never be as real as stepping into nature and experiencing (perhaps even photographing) autumnal leaves blanketing the ground. Pastiche is as pastiche does.
Returning to the ‘prompt’ which inspired this article, a media house discussing the use of GAI to undermine the creative aesthetic legacy upon which their business is built. I do wonder whether there is a wholistic understanding of the (perhaps) unquantifiable value of human labour in our lives via craft and craftsmanship. If experienced and well qualified designers can now be replaced by designers with questionable qualifications and moreover if the latter can generate veritably infinite design content via GAI, do those designs even retain value? Classic economic theory dictates that unlimited/infinite supply would push the price/value to zero. Valueless design, woven meticulously by hand into existence, with the lion’s share of profit given not to those who are essential to the physical crafting, but to those who contribute zero value. Have some salt with that.
Moreover what about those who write, or whose business is built upon the writing of others? Or in truth any job which risks being automated out of existence? Smell the coffee my friends, there are more of these than first appear.
The above article generated by ChatGPT in my style should serve as sufficiently adequate proof of my theory that the role of the writer is likewise imperilled. Quod erat demonstrandum. Writing is already an underpaid position (See: Journalism.) often best practiced by those with other sources of income. So why would any publishing house pay a writer if with some clever use of GAI an article can be generated for ‘free?’ Hint: Ugh. If you need a hint my point is already lost. Methinks those ‘audience members’ may have well just asked ‘How can I replace you [INSERT NAME OF ANY WRITER] with GAI so that only beautiful, some say the most beautiful, nicest rugs ever to exist are gloriously praised in writing?’
I know what you are thinking… ‘What happens if I ask ChatGPT to generate such an article?’ In the interest of brevity (too late!), I’ve not included the results here. I leave it to you and your own curiosity. See you in hell!
Furthermore, taken to one extreme, albeit logical conclusion, in an era of infinite content of all forms do these words themselves, written by either me or machine, even retain value? [Cue ominous music.]
I know (k)not what any of this will mean for the future of humanity, or handknotted rugs and carpets. All I know is I will continue to advocate for labour, and craft, and soul, and intention, and genuinely inspired creation and design, and all the other messy things that make us foremost human. Let us value ourselves before technology and let us not blindly succumb to ease, efficiency, and a dystopian future disconnected from the infinite resolution (and joy) of our human existence.
Sic transit gloria mundi. Tata!!