Why LLM Movies Will Probably be Made, but Will Probably Never Matter
Look, LLMs will never make films worth watching, and when I say "worth watching," I don't mean it won't make films that are technically good, and I don't mean that it won't make movies that people will go watch and pay money for. I also don't mean that people will watch it, and I'll complain and say that they shouldn't.
When I say that films made by LLMs will never be worth watching, I mean that, no matter how spectacular the movies eventually made by them may seem, their time will last only a short season before the month turns over and people abandon such movies entirely. Why? I'm glad you asked. Let's sketch out an illustration.
There's a video entitled "The Abominable O Holy Night," in which a very sincere-sounding singer grides out a horrendous, and hilarious, rendition of the song in question.
If you think I’m exaggerating, you’re in for a treat.
He keeps singing higher and higher, long after he's exceeded his skilled range, and every time you think he's hit the most ridiculous note he can muster, the guy manages to ascend into even greater heights of absurdity. The funniest thing about it is the earnestness: He legitimately sounds like he's trying his hardest, and as soon as he pauses for a musical interlude, just after a screeching proclamation that suggests the rescinding of all musicality as a concept, his voice becomes solemn and his southern accent pours out the smooth cadence of a seasoned preacher: "Yes, it was. Divine."
Now, how could we ruin this? It's very simple: It was a joke. He really did sing it, but he knew it was terrible. Doesn't that just remove a lot of the bite? We went from saying, "Oh, my gosh, he cannot be serious!" to, "Oh, so he really wasn’t serious." What was, prior to the reveal that it was a joke, the singer’s equivalent of tripping, stumbling and face-planting into a parked SUV, has post-reveal become the equivalent of an annoying cousin who thinks suddenly breaking into a mindless shriek is comedy gold.
To tie this back into LLMs, let's just look at why that spoils it, and it's a very simple explanation. The humor comes from the mistake. It comes from the clash of intention with result. There are nuances of the humor: "It's kind of adorable how hard he's trying," and, "You'd think he'd give up after the second time his voice self-destructed," and, "Why did they record this?" and, "Why did no one tell him this is terrible before they started? during? after?" The list goes on. The true joy of the singing is the complex array of baffled questions which, all together, create a confusion greater than a cracking voice, greater than the fun of simply pointing a mocking finger at a poor performance. It's almost an artistic contrivance of inanity from which we derive humor.
Once you reveal it's a put-on, all of those questions instantly disappear. You might still be able to absorb yourself in the fiction, and imagine it's sincere, but now you're engaging in fantasy, and it's unlikely that this artifice will ever achieve the same effect of, "Is this real!?"
Let's swing back around to LLMs, and I believe that the astute among the readership will have already deduced where I'm going with this: Something made by an LLM will never induce the wonderment, the curiosity, or the appreciation that a work made by humans can induce, because there was no "skill" that went into it at all, neither thought or intent. You cannot marvel at the preciousness of the brush-strokes, for their are no brush-strokes; you cannot marvel at how the scenery was rendered with such detail, for nothing was rendered and the details never mattered; you cannot be impressed with the sound design, for it wasn't designed; and you cannot speculate on the type of person the artist might be, for there is no artist.
No matter how splendid a human's work is, there is no escaping that there was a human, and that he did the work. That always, always, always plays a part in one's impressions. We glory in the creativity and laborious efforts of our human compatriots, in which every word, every color, every jot and every tittle has been meticulously (or sometimes carelessly) crafted to a desired end. The expression on the actor's face, the composition of the shot, the improvisation due to scheduling conflicts and unanticipated weather. Documentaries on movies, behind-the-scenes footage, interviews with the crew: these things exist because when we like something we want to know how it was made, and by whom, and why—and why.
There is no sincerity behind an LLM's creations. There is no earnestness in its results. There is only a meaningless—truly meaningless—product, and just like the fad of LLM-generated content, there will eventually be a fad of human content, and for ever will that human volition endure.
