What’s the future of Storytelling, now that AI is so popular and accessible?
As someone who doesn’t like AI, I’m sure of one thing…
The future of Storytelling (if done right) is very bright.
1: The “Dark Forest Internet” Theory
What we call AI is, for the most part, Generative Artificial Intelligence. A complex algorithm that must generate something (text, images, etc…).
It does that by training on content that already exists (photos, articles, books and so on).
2: The forest is growing
Since AI is almost free and since most people are lazy, more and more “writers” and “artists” are polluting the web with AI generated content.
And this is summed with the already massive amount of low quality content that we all know and love.
3: AI learning from AI
AI, to be relevant, must train itself constantly on new content. But what if more and more articles, images and videos are AI generated?
AI is already starting to train on its own material, averaging itself out.
4: The content average
AI cannot distinguish between a masterpiece like “War and Peace” and a collection of BuzzFeed listicle. To it everything is training material.
AI, unless prompted differently, will try to generate an average, readable and socially acceptable result.
5: The more average the results, the more average the training
We are about to talk about storytelling, don’t worry. What happens when AI sees average content more and more often?
It will create more and more average results, even if you use a quality prompt.
6: The same will happen to stories
Obviously, AI can generate stories. And, since it trained on entire libraries of content, it can create a great variety of stories.
But what happens when more and more stories are similar to each other and very “socially acceptable” and bland?
7: Stories become predictable
This is not something new. Look at most movies and novels published in the last 20 years: they all follow a structure and, when you start studying storytelling, it is evident.
Now imagine this multiplied…
8: AI can open new creative outlets
An example is Rock, Paper, Scissors, that is made with the support of AI (and it’s one of the most genius parodies I’ve ever seen).
But most people will use AI in the laziest way possible.
9: The human touch is always mandatory
Stories are so powerful because they communicate straight to the depths of our souls. Creativity, empathy, emotions, fun…
All these elements are what make stories effective.
10: This is why the future of Storytellers is so bright
The more predictable most stories are, the more people will be attracted by genuine, human stories.
Plus, always remember that storytelling isn’t just for your audience: creating stories is an amazing tool for your own mental health and improvement.