An Audience of One

Today, AI tools lower the energetic costs of creating something. They make it easier to start and easier to finish. AIs can do a lot of the hard work needed in making something real.

I find little joy in having AIs do everything when I am being creative, but I do get enjoyment in co-creating with them. Co-creation feels like real creation. My role still takes effort and significantly determines the quality, style and nature of what is created. I typically spend 30 minutes to an hour co-generating an image in an engine like Midjourney. I have spent hours with AI co-writing an essay. All the stuff I like the best requires my personal attention and involvement as a co-creator.

My hypothesis is that in the near future, the bulk of creative content generated by humans – with the assistance of AI – will have an audience of one. Most art generated each day will be consumed primarily only by its human co-creator. Very little completed art will be shared widely with others – although a small percentage of it will be shared widely.

If most art created in the future is not shared, why is it made? It will be chiefly made for the pleasure of making it. In other words, the majority of all the creative work in the future will be made primarily and chiefly for the joy and thrill of co-creation.

Right now there are roughly 50 million images generated each day by AIs such as Midjourney, Google and Adobe, etc. Vanishing few of these 50 million images per day are ever shared beyond the creator. Still image creation today already predominantly has an audience of one.

A large portion of these still images are preliminary: a sketch, a first draft, a doodle, a memo, a phrase, not meant to share. But even among those creations completed, very few are shared – because they were made for the pleasure of making them. You can generate an endless stream of beauty for the same reason you take a stroll through a garden, or hike into the mountains – in the hope you’ll catch a moment of beauty. You might try to share what you find, but it is not why you went. You went to co-create it. I think of a walk in a garden, or a hike in the high mountains – a hike that is not necessary for transportation reasons – as an act of co-creation. Together with nature, we are co-creating the moments of beauty we might find. Most of the beauty in the world is never seen by anyone. When we encounter these glimpses of a vista, or an exquisite way something is backlit, we are an audience of one. The joy is in discovering it; sharing is an afterthought.

We have some traditional analogs of an audience of one with journals, sketchbooks, diaries, and logbooks. The creations in these forms are not intended to be shared beyond the creator, and in some cases, that limited audience is what makes them powerful. They bring a type of protective solitude to the creative act, and that power will also be part of an AI-based Audience of One. These kinds of private art act as a generative platform for bigger things. But reckoned in volume, a bona-fide artist may create far more material in private than is ever seen in public. However if you asked an artist why they fill notebooks and sketchbooks and journals, they will not say it is because this creation is inferior, but because they love to create it, because they enjoy it.

For those who view art primarily as a communication act, this art for an audience of one – traditionally found in journals and sketchbooks – still serves as communication, but to the self. In a curious way, AI can elevate self-communication, because its co-creativity enlarges the canvas and deepens the details of this communication to yourself. It is an enlarge self-inquiry.

In an AI-enhanced world, the realm of journals, sketchbooks, diaries and other private forms is expanded. Instead of compiling simple notes, doodles, fast impressions, small observations and other acts that can be done quickly, our journals, sketchbooks, and diaries will include fully rendered paintings, entire novels, feature-length movies, and immersive worlds.

These new creations will shift the time asymmetry long associated with creation. Until now an author would toil years on a book that could be consumed in a day; a painter sweated months over a painting viewed in seconds; a million work hours would be put into a movie that is watched in 2 hours. Henceforth, it may be quicker to generate a movie than to watch one; quicker to co-create a historical novel than to read one; faster to co-make a video game than to play it. This shifts the center of gravity away from consuming to generation in a good way.

I don’t believe that total viewing hours in a society will ever exceed total creation hours, but AI-based co-creation can help balance that imbalance. It makes entering into the creation mode much easier – without the need for an audience to justify the effort. From now on, the default destiny for most art will be for an audience of one, and it will abide in the memory of those who generate it. While some of this co-generated work might find its larger audience and some very tiny fraction of it might even become a popular hit, its chief value will be in the direct, naked pleasure of co-making of it.