Rui (00:26)
Hi everyone. Today I am joined by Julia Morton. I came across Julia via her Substack, which features some of the most avant-garde artists interacting and experimenting with AI and technologies. These artists engage in a wide range of mediums in the past and current life from painting and filming.

I find Julia's Substack refreshing because it's a quiet, reflective voice that doesn't shout AI doom on art space, but trying to see all of the complex nuance, the good, the bad, the ugly, and the new possibilities. I will link Julia's Substack in the episode description. Please check it out. Besides her Substack, Julia has worn many other hats.

fashion designer as her first career, book editor and writer, co-founder and gallery director, YouTuber from 2006 to 2015, and just keep in mind that YouTube started in 2005. I am very honored to have her on the show.

Julia Morton (01:41)
Thank you for inviting me.

Rui (01:42)
⁓ You have worked in fashion and you have directed a gallery and you've made YouTube videos. Do you see any common threads among all of these creative endeavors? What are you searching for across all of these different threads?

Julia Morton (02:00)
I love history and I read history all the time from all civilizations, from all times. And I think comparatively, we're very fortunate to live in a time of so much change, challenge, opportunity. And so for my life, I

grew up in the 60s and they were going to the moon and computers were just beginning and I would watch Star Trek and the other science fiction things. But these things at that time were no longer feeling far away. They were feeling possible. And so I think that shaped my choices as I came of age.

graduated from college and began working, and even before then, in the choices I was making, to take advantage of the fact that we live in a world now where as women, as young people, ⁓ as humans, we're able to participate in helping to create things and helping to shape the dialogue.

And so the choices that I've made are really just a follow through to those ideas that we're fortunate to have these chances. People from a hundred years ago didn't. You know, if I look back at my grandmother and my great grandmother, it wasn't even a question that they were women or in one society or another. It just simply wasn't possible. Life was so difficult and dangerous

just this, the struggle to eat every day, these things were, you know, to have a bathroom indoors was great luxury today. think that we, wouldn't imagine this couldn't be, but what a change, you know, such a simple thing has made in terms of freeing us to be more creative. I don't have to worry.

about every single moment of my life. don't have to wake up and think, can I eat? I can wake up and think, what would I like to create today? So what an amazing time to live in.

Rui (04:26)
Indeed, it is amazing time despite all of the instability and people see on the news, know, all the horrible news, ⁓ whether it's about climate or politics, but relatively speaking, we're still in a much better situation than people hundreds of years ago, especially for women in professional capacity. ⁓ Actually, my closest friend right now, she is, I,

I really don't know how old she is. She's more than 80 years old. I talk to her on the phone every other day, every three days, often what we talk about, especially after I watched the TV show, Mad Men, and she was working that era. And it was mind blowing for me to try to even just imagine the amount of personal and professional

obstacles that she has to overcome in that period of time in order to, I don't know, just have a very lively and thriving life as a woman.

Julia Morton (05:30)
and to be respected by herself, by others, to feel like she could participate, could have a say.

And I don't think it was just for women. think that societally, the structure of hierarchies were such that, you you had to always be concerned about your appearance and your, you know, how you came off and don't be strange and don't, and how lucky I was to grow up in a time of liberation. And so things that I, you know, I took for granted.

that my mother couldn't do. just assumed I was equal. I assumed I was a peer.

we have access to education and to sources of knowledge now where we can look at a problem and say, I think I would like to solve that problem and then begin to try to do that.

I think that's super exciting. And AI is certainly going to be a part of that. I think what you're doing by, I listened to a number of your podcasts, and I think you've chosen a cross section of people that are helping the world at large.

to get a picture of just how complex this new access to human knowledge is, how many people can access it and use it in their own way to find a way to increase and to evolve and to solve problems.

It's scary because people scare each other. but we're also incredibly creative and this is why we're still alive. This is why all creatures are alive, because they're very creative.

Rui (07:26)
Yeah, 100%. when I was ⁓ reading through your sub stack, ⁓ it really feels like a very living and breathing exhibition for how artists are responding to AI. How do you decide what to spotlight? Like what would draw your eyes?

Julia Morton (07:46)
⁓ I am drawn to so many things, so I have to just pick and choose. I'm trying now to follow threads where I might talk about, say, NFTs, and then I might do a few stories on that, ⁓ and then I'll break and go to something else. I'm about to release a story today about an artist who I like very much, and

I should step back for a moment and say that everybody speaks art. I think just like you see a new baby trying to verbalize, language is natural for us, and I think visual language is also natural. I'm not an expert, I'm no different than any other human being. I simply look at work that I think might be relevant to a wider audience.

There are certainly things that I fall in love with that everyone looks and says, what are you out of mind? But, just like what you're doing, I'm speaking to an audience. And so I want to provide something useful. And so I try to find subjects, artists who are addressing things that I think might be relevant. And of course, I'm listening all the time to

the world to hear where are the pushbacks. In November of last year, I curated a show at a gallery. live in Austin, Texas. the dealer and I came up with the title that had a question in it. And the question was, is this the end of the beginning of art? Is AI evolution or is it the end?

It was interesting to me because when I had had my own gallery five years ago, AI hadn't really emerged fully at that time. And people were very excited. people were very positive.

But this last time in November, people came in and walked around a bit I would say to them, well, what do you think? And they would say, well, I came in ready to hate this show. So this was a big switch.

Rui (09:58)
lately, people would hate on AI. But your sub stack is a space where it's a lot more, there's a lot more neutrality, like you wouldn't just highlight the bad or the good part, but just let them coexist. And I think

the ability to hold that complexity and to even further drill into that critical nuance point is really important for people to start ⁓ facing whatever fear they might have in mind with the new technologies. And I'm sure that we're not the first generation to face a wave of shock of the new technology. People who have seen TV or bicycle or car in the past probably have

reacted in a more or less similar way.

before we dive deeper, I would like to take a step back to understand your own value stance on art. Art captures

so many things. It can express what language or even our conscious mind wouldn't be able to fully grasp or capture. And it can be interpreted, of course, in billions of ways. But if you had to simplify, what would you say art is for? For example,

Leo Tolstoy framed art as being, you know, about truth and Marcel Duchamp saw it as shock and provocation and rebellion So where would you place your own definition?

Julia Morton (11:22)
⁓ I think.

Well, of course, I have lots of answers to that question, but I think specifically for what I'm doing right now, it's a time capsule. I think it's going to be very, a lot of times when I write about art, and I've been writing for many years now, I would step back and again, I like history and sometimes I'm writing about things that happened a long time ago or were created a long time ago. you're kind of looking back in time. It's like a time machine.

Rui (11:36)
Mm.

Julia Morton (11:52)
And then you wonder, how did people feel? What did they express? What were they wearing? What were they doing? What were they holding? What did they think of the world? Our art today is very, very expressive. Again, in the past, you had to conform to styles. I mean,

Caravaggio, there certainly were artists who were doing what they wanted the way they wanted to. But most artists had to do religious pictures or royal pictures or, you know, their clients were the wealthy people who could afford art. Most people couldn't. When printing came on and then art became more affordable, ⁓ it changed. But I think it will be very interesting in a hundred years, in a thousand years.

to look back at the art we're making right now and understand something about what it felt like to essentially transition from being completely analog humans to being partially digital or cyber humans. In your lifetime, we're going to begin to evolve. We're going to say, okay,

you know, need people to live in space, but humans don't live well in space, so we need people who are willing to alter their genes so that they have different lungs and they can live in space, or they have different gravity, or maybe we turn our feet into fins, because that makes more sense for flying around in zero gravity. I don't know.

So for me, is a time capsule.

Rui (13:29)
100%.

Interesting

You see your role as almost like this curator to capture a lot of the sentiments right now that's floating around into this time capsule. And a lot of the sentiments, you know, it's all about emotions and a lot of those emotions, it's...

vulnerabilities, rawness, mistakes, pain, suffering, or joy, whatever you name it. ⁓ Do you think that that layer of emotion, it's really unique to the human art? Or can an AI generated piece ever truly express something vulnerable in the way that a human can?

Julia Morton (14:10)
I think we are AI. AI isn't separate. It's us. We made it. It fed off us. So AI is us. I think that's one of the things that is being talked about. And I guess as it goes on and evolves and becomes smarter and smarter, smarter being, you know,

questionable term what it's becoming maybe we think of smart as becoming smarter humans, but I don't know that If a database becomes more complex if you would really say it's smarter I'm not sure if those are the terms we use to describe humans are really the terms that will ultimately use to describe AI and how it evolves I think ⁓ I Don't know I don't know the answer to that question.

You know, when my niece was very young, she got into the craze of painting rocks. And she would paint little eyes on the rocks and a little nose and mouth and sell them incredibly. And it was a fad, everyone, you know, pet rock. So humans are able to make things up and give those things personality. They're able to paint a rock, pay for it, and take it home and put it someplace.

and smile at it when it's smile and have this sense of, talk to plant. mean, we are able to project ourselves onto inanimate objects and believe that those inanimate objects are responding to us and feeding us, that we have a relationship with them.

It's a thought process. I think at this time, we're trying to find humanity in AI art. And I think we have issues when the work is made or it's said to be made entirely by AI. But when you dig down, somebody programmed that.

So at this point, it hasn't escaped us. So maybe to better answer your question, once it escapes us.

I don't know. It's our creation. It's totally based on us. So at some point, just as you and I can't not be human, I'm not sure AI, even if it grows and evolves, that it can't also not be human on some level. It wasn't created by a collision of stars and it actually, you know, boomed AI. We made it.

So I'm in the grand scheme of things. I'm not sure AI will ever entirely escape us because we will always be the foundation.

Rui (17:11)
I love your point about is there a real boundary between us and versus AI when AI is trained on the data that we produce ⁓ generated by the algorithm that we write into the program. So is there really ⁓ us versus them type of situation? I think it's more like

because it's abstract, think that's why people tend to dub it as they, the other side. And how do we think about us collectively? It's a very interesting thing to ponder I love that point. ⁓

Julia Morton (17:47)
It is so

interesting, isn't it, that we were able to, I mean, obviously this is something we've been moving towards for thousands of years. Writing, in a way, was a way of passing knowledge from generation to generation. And we've accelerated that now. And so AI really is just a continuation of that experiment, that process of passing knowledge, of sharing knowledge.

So where it goes, I don't know. mean, obviously, you know, we may be capable of going with it. You know, our consciousness. My husband, for example, has AI in his body. He has a computer, he has a bad back, and he has a computer in his back that has, I think, 42 probes that go up into his spine and attach to, I believe, like nerves.

so that when pain is coming up from his back and from his legs, those probes stop the pain, mess it up, so it can't get to his brain.

So what was interesting was that right after he got the, and he has to charge his body. He has a charger that he wears once a week or so that has to charge the AI in him, the computer in him. And when he first got it, he began to, he felt suddenly very emotional. He would cry on television commercials. You know, things that were very sentimental would really

Rui (19:26)
wow.

Julia Morton (19:31)
touch him very deeply to the point of tearing up or just having a different sort of response than I had ever heard from him. He would say, that's so beautiful. I had never heard that from him. Not that he's not a sensitive person, but he said to me, you know, it's changed me. And maybe it had to do with not being in pain all the time. Maybe it was that simple. But on the other hand,

Maybe it was changing the way his brain was wired.

Rui (20:01)
wow. This is an amazing story. whatever implant that the doctor put into your husband, ⁓ it may not fit into the traditional definition of what is AI, especially not fitting to what people have in mind today about generative AI, because it's a specific type of model architecture or algorithm. ⁓ But still, at the end of the day, it's about information it's

all about sensing that bits of information in your body and then react to it. It's no different than this giant collection of data plus this algorithm and then reacting to all of those signals. So you can argue a lot of things are just AI. And I really appreciate this example.

I love that.

Julia Morton (20:43)
⁓ a lot of material in there. I think that's one of the things that's interesting as well about AI in general. Again, we are animals. We are herd animals. We are safest when we're together. And other is always frightening to us. And

We have dreamed for a very long time of other whether it was going to be other the gods or immortals or mythical creatures and then space aliens as that became something more possible, monsters, you know, always this unknown was really frightening to us because, you know, human to human, okay, we get that, but

all of the different images of scary things that we don't exactly see, but we know are, you know, coming for us. So I think AI fills that also. And even giving it the term they, you know, there was, think a horror story called them about,

ants that became gigantic all the people could only say they were so terrorized, could say them. So in a weird way, AI is is them. It's they it's the other. So it definitely feeds a lot of fear, a lot of fantasy, a lot of all that stuff, because it is still so undefined, its shape is still developing and

and will continue to. as I say, we were these animals and we lived this simple life. We were nomadic. We moved around like herds. And all of a sudden do you have your phone? Are you plugged in? What's your internet? What's your download? What's your, you know, all of this new information that we don't just have to take in. We have to deal with it.

Rui (22:33)
Yeah, interesting.

okay. So my next, next question is you described AI generated film as feeling more intimate, almost like a work of art rather than a traditional movie. I actually saw a short clip from the Austin AI film festival and it reminded me a bit of the movie loving Vincent. one of those like five minutes, clip.

And with its shifting brush strokes like Van Gogh's Starry Night, the creator was just very smart in leveraging how the video used the generative AIS ability to create that subtle, varied frames to mimic the fuzziness of memory. ⁓ So the narration was almost like an essay or poem and it felt actually deeply emotional for me.

Rui (23:31)
So what have you noticed that that qualitatively differentiates AI aided films? I don't want to say AI created films because I'm sure there are a lot of people behind the scene and trying to make sure the film was done correctly. So I would prefer the usage of like aided.

Julia Morton (23:45)
Yes.

Rui (23:48)
So AI-aided films versus non-AI-aided traditional films.

Julia Morton (23:54)
Well, I think, you know, every time you put another human hand on a project, whether you're making code, you're building a company, or you're making a piece of art, each hand has a brain attached to it and the complexity of personality, character, and circumstance. And all of those things play into the complexity of creating a product. And I think

There is something to be said about the communal ⁓ creative process. The more brains you have, the better a product can sometimes be. On the other hand, it can also be watered down or shifted in ways that perhaps the original creator didn't really want, but found that under the circumstances and the expense, this was the best they could do. I have not made AI films.

based on things I've heard from the people like Matisse, who was one of the co-founders and Erin, who were the two co-founders of the AI Film Festival here in Austin. So we talked at length and these were some of their thoughts that I'm sharing back.

one of the great attributes of AI is fewer people. So you don't need a big crew.

You can create the lighting, can create the sound effects, you can do the motion of the characters. The creator has now the super obligation of creating the whole product. So in one way, this is very freeing, but in another way, it can be overwhelming before you could go to someone and say, well, what should the clothes be? What should the, well, now it's all new. You can look at references, you can grab things, but

you don't have the kind of feedback or the kind of professional thought process that goes into the creating of a standard film. You don't have the cost either. So in many ways, it does allow for a kind of super creative mind to ⁓ realize their vision in a more direct way. I think we feel that when we look at some of the work

like even the little short pieces, I feel like this has been that thing that we've kind of all, you know, through history thought about the idea that we could just pull our dreams out of our head and throw them out there for people to see. And this is a very, it's sort of a direct way of doing that. Many of the artists have talked about, ⁓ you know, the barriers being removed.

where you could simply create this thing and you didn't have to think, well, do I draw well enough? Am I good at color? Do I have, you could just imagine it and it would come to life. So there's, that's kind of a new and exciting thing. I think that this medium of AI ⁓ visualization is bringing us, it's allowing humans and often humans who don't have the actual innate skills.

You know, if you cannot draw, you can go to college, you can study all you want. You're never gonna be as great as people who just naturally draw. The same thing with music, the same thing with athletics. mean, with engineering, you know, there are certain people who just get it and it's something born into them. you know, so it allows people who have creative thoughts and who have creative visions.

but can't get past the barrier of their own inability. And so they haven't done them. And in the past, we haven't been able to hear those voices. I love, and I talk about it a lot, but I love the fact that we're getting to hear new voices that we didn't get to hear before. Photography did that first. Photography allowed you to pick up a machine. And that's why it was so much pushback on photography. was like, this is not a human. You didn't draw that.

you know, you just took a box and you pushed a button and look voila, you have a picture. But people who got good at photography, who really understood that medium, have created just phenomenal works of art, things that have transformed humanity way beyond just a picture.

Rui (28:27)
hearing actually a lot of very interesting things. First of all, the production team will be potentially a lot smaller. And we will hear a lot more new voices because the new medium basically eliminates some of the barriers that are gated by skills and long term training. ⁓

And we can potentially really see what's on a person's mind because they can directly sort of express what they have in mind if they have that language ability to manipulate that. ⁓ So in some way, in the future, you can dictate a film and the language becomes extremely important in that dictation. This is very interesting.

Julia Morton (29:13)
It also ignites

possibility. So if you're just a person and you do your life and you're doing your thing, and then you see this medium has come along and you begin to think, well, what would I do? So new medium allow you to do that. Very often, especially with early photography, for example, these were not people who were thinking about being artists because they didn't draw, they didn't sculpt.

Rui (29:18)
Hmm.

Julia Morton (29:43)
They didn't paint. And suddenly there was this box and this way, this technical thing that allowed them to frame the world in a very new way.

Rui (29:43)
Mm-hmm.

Julia Morton (29:54)
it frames the world for you. in a way, AI is now allowing people, all kinds of people from all walks of life to think, well, what would I do? is in my mind? I have an imagination.

Rui (30:14)
Fascinating. And how do you feel as a viewer when you watch all of those AI aided films? How do you feel differently than when you watch a traditionally made film?

Julia Morton (30:27)
I just read a great quote today about art, that art isn't just the object, it's the person behind the object. So when I'm looking at AI films, I know a little how they're made, and so I am thinking about the artist in much the same way, and I think this is really interesting.

that I do as a painting. So even though we're talking about AI is not painting, it's not like painting, in a sense it is because it brings me back, like I don't have any paintings in this room, but it's all AI and generative art around me, but if I have a painting, I'm always, no matter how old the painting is, I'm always thinking about who painted this. What were they thinking? What was their, what were they trying to tell me?

Rui (31:13)
the context.

Julia Morton (31:17)
And so, or what were they just saying for themselves, whatever, but who was that person? And so the AI is doing that too. So it's interesting that this thing we think of as so technical, so unhuman is in fact for me, bringing me back to the human in a much more direct way. Whereas when I see a traditional film, know one of my best friends is filmmaker. So I've been on sets. I know something about how that process works.

And it's just hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of people. I you see at the end of a movie the line of credits and it's like, how can all these people possibly have touched this film, but they do in some way. And this is a much more personal experience, one-to-one, human-to-human. So I think that's interesting too.

Rui (32:07)
Fascinating. I guess we talked about how AI is helping some of the filmmakers and artists to have new possibility. But one of the most debated questions about AI and art is also ownership. ⁓ This is not something new. think this is nothing new to AI age because even in fashion industry, there's

tons of lawsuits and just ⁓ debates about, did you copy my original thought, original design? So I wonder what is the new layer of nuance that actually introduced by AI

And actually you featured an artist who said that in art school, she was encouraged to learn from everyone, remix, borrow and create. So for her using what she sees isn't a problem because she transforms it into something new, although that boundary can be quite blurred, almost like diluting data into her own image in her mind. So from your perspective, what is consent in art?

look like and what's the minimum level of consent that should be required in this new AI hype

Julia Morton (33:23)
That's a really great question and certainly something we're going to continue to have to circle because I just finished a class on the Middle Ages, the legacy of the Middle Ages. The professor is Carol Sims, amazing. And curiously enough, that's when copyright started being an issue in, at least in Western Europe. It may have been an issue in Asia before because they were literate also. And it came up.

around writing. Who owns that work? And it came up around scribes copying. So this is your copy. It's the same text, but this is your copy of it. So that's your copyright. That's your vision of whatever book or whatever it is you're transcribing. This is your version of it. This is your translation.

So, and curiously, this is before the printing press was discovered or created, ⁓ they ⁓ would write into the text, know, John Smith wrote this, you you can't take it. And then another copyist, one particular case, and I'm not using the right names, but would write something to the effect of, you know, I copied this. And so, you know, this is,

Jimmy Jones. so this is my work, even though in fact was a copy of the story that John Smith had actually written, but Jimmy Jones was saying, well, but I just had to recopy the whole thing. So it's mine. of course, ultimately we decided that, the original writer or painter or filmmaker or photographer, what got the copyright.

for certain amount of time, the musician, whatever. But so I think this is something now that we're gonna have to, just as they had to say to themselves then, well, Jimmy's right, John's right, but who's the most right? So I think we'll have to do that. There was a very interesting case recently, a couple of years ago now, I guess in China, where an artist had created a work of AI imagery and wanted the copyright.

and they said, well, you worked from these other medium. And he came back and won the case by saying, no, I can prove to you how much I changed what I worked from initially. And so there's where I'm hearing from lawyers and others, this is the fine line to cross. If you're creating something, I spoke with a lawyer, for example, who works with people

who are writers and they're making film scripts. And she's saying to them, you better document every section that you're creating because you're going to need to prove how much work you did to transform your original material. So I guess that again, that will be the case.

Rui (36:29)
Fascinating. especially the last part of like you have to document how much you have transformed the original work let's say you describe something, you give the AI a prompt and then it generated almost like a short fiction. Then from that point on, if you don't adapt it enough, maybe this is actually not even owned by you. This is like owned by whatever model that's generated.

this story. So then we end up having to be the person to edit a lot, putting the thoughts to organize, reorganize a lot of different things. Because this is no different than potentially you tell your friend about an idea and your friend actually took that idea and then putting a lot of work and executed that idea to the point where it's fully fleshed out. In that case, you couldn't really claim that you created that.

let's say that short fiction, it's your friend.

Julia Morton (37:26)
I think, what was it, the Winklevoss twins and Facebook had that lawsuit of who was the creator and they claimed they were the creators and that ⁓ Facebook took it from them. But as you say, Facebook took it from them and built it into a company and created a product.

who was the owner? Well, in the end, Facebook won that case, if I'm not mistaken. I think they settled or did something like that. But ultimately, they didn't destroy Facebook and they didn't get Facebook. ⁓ They had to admit that, as you say, that ideals are out there, you know?

And the AI is not copied. doesn't, the databases that fill the AI visuals, even for film or for anything, are not that complete. You know, it isn't the entire history of human everything. they sucked up bits and pieces, but they didn't get it all. So,

there are real limits.

even though it seems right now like, oh my God, the sky's the limit, it isn't, it isn't. And so what I'm hearing from the artists who did the AI Film Festival, for example, is that they're actually hiring actors and they're filming them. And then with some of the different softwares that are now available, they're then able to animate that character in 3D. And so they're actually having to build their own database of imagery, of ideas. And so again,

This isn't entirely unlike the way I worked as a designer. I would start with a mood board. I would have my drawings, I would get my fabrics, I would do, you and I'm sure that this is project planning. I mean, 101, we all begin by saying, okay, what are we trying to accomplish? What do we need?

Rui (39:21)
Yeah, we talked about how AI unlocked new entrants. People can share their perspectives a lot more easily. So on the one hand, If you're creative, you have a shot, because the barrier of entry is so much lower. At the same time,

Julia Morton (39:27)
Yes.

Yes. Yes.

Rui (39:42)
because of the barrier of entry is much lower, the ideas also become cheap. It's almost like everyone can become an influencer and everyone can become a podcaster. Why should one tune into your specific channel or

maybe you might have idea, but the most important thing is like how well you can actually execute and how much work you are actually willing to put in to generate that final output in the end, potentially it's the people who have very good creative idea and also exceptional ability to execute that can actually pull on the top in terms of being an artist and working almost like every field out there.

Julia Morton (40:27)
I might, curiously, I think the thing, the magic sauce or the, know, isn't the medium, isn't even how hard you work. I've known artists who just, their skill was just incredible and they had no idea what to do. They had no idea what, they would say to me, what should I paint? Well, I don't know what to do. And you know,

Rui (40:48)
Mm.

Julia Morton (40:57)
This isn't something you can tell someone. They're great musicians. They're great pattern makers. great. It isn't the thing. It's your ability to communicate with other people. Why was Bob Dylan Bob Dylan? They were all doing the same music. They were all playing the same instruments. They were all playing the same kind of rhythm. There isn't that much difference. But there was something in his poetry, something in his presentation.

Rui (41:27)
Mm-hmm.

Julia Morton (41:27)
something

in his willingness to be vulnerable and to speak more directly, there was something that worked. And it just, it worked so incredibly well with us. So what is that? you know, it's, so that's the thing. it isn't the AI. The fruit is lower. You can do it, but painting isn't hard. I mean, get some paint, get a canvas, slop it on. Boom, there you go.

Rui (41:55)
Right.

Julia Morton (41:57)
but to make a great painting, to make one that, you know, there have been paintings, even abstract modern paintings that are very simple, that I go into the museum and I wanna lay on the ground. I wanna just stop everything and just be in front of this piece because it's so powerful. It brings something so profound.

about life and the universe and existence to my mind. What is that? Is it that orange? Is it that blue? Is it the frame? it, you know, there's something between the artist and the audience that just clicks. And so there's the great mystery. And there's the reason I think that we're so enchanted, no matter what the medium is over time right now.

AI is very scary because it's new and there are lot of scary elements to it. But in the arts, seems to me as I, the longer I'm in it and the more artists I look at and the more artists I watch fall away, it got easy when they first started and they had boom, boom. They did all these crazy things and they were having so much fun, but it's now do it again. Do it 10,000 times and they can't.

They don't know what to do anymore. So that easy, fun, you know, like you say, you know, thing that was attractive at first, and we were like, wow, this is great. One hit wonder is what it's turning out to be because over time they don't have the fuel. They didn't have more than some cool things that caught our attention, but it's, it's the follow-up.

Rui (43:44)
Yeah, I love this. ⁓

I think my last question is, if you could wave a magic wand and change one conversation happening around AI and art right now, what would you change?

Julia Morton (44:00)
change anything but I would ask the question.

How different are you? How different is this? What as humans are we doing that is profoundly different than our forebears did? A long time ago, so I love history and I was also recently doing a class on Central Asia and the Kurdistan, Turkmenistan, Kyrgyzstan, places, and they found a grave of a boy.

They think he was a young prince. It's like 10,000 years old, something like that. And because it's very dry there, the grave was well preserved. And he was dressed in a gold outfit, a gold metal suit of armor, I guess, with this very tall hat and these just incredible objects, bizarre fantasy creatures, incredible workmanship, but also just so strange.

you know, that you would think that in this very barren place with very limited visual sensibility, it's a desert, they would create these profound visual stimulating fascinating images. And then, so that was one thing, and then they discovered in Western China ⁓

just, I guess, recently, but then dug it up and have discovered more, that there was an empire that they thought was a fantasy. They had read about it, but it's very, very ancient, tens of thousands of years old. And they thought these were make-believe. And there was a little bit they had of it, but they just didn't believe it was real. But now, all of a sudden, they're digging up these artifacts and they're finding these graves very well intact. And sure enough, it is real. They did exist.

and the bizarre, amazing creations are real. The things that we had read in later text about this mythic place, they're real. And again, it's just mind blowing. The creativity is, and then I come and I look at AI and I'm like, not so different. AI has unleashed.

fantasy. the fantasy of the human mind was really set free when they finally had the tools and the ability to start creating more complex things, adding color, know, pottery got better, all of their technology got better. So was kind of like AI to them.

was this moment, this breakout, breakthrough moment where they could suddenly do something with these raw materials. And so I feel like we're kind of back to that now with AI, where we're kind of at the new beginning, the 2.0, where we've got this long, fabulous history, but now we're kind of at this new place

And as it spread and the knowledge of what you could do with this and the sharing of the knowledge and then the multiplication of what that led to and the connecting of dots and of imaginations. So I feel like that's where we are now. So I think the questions that we need to have around AI right now are not good, bad. It's too binary. It's too boring. It's silly copy for silly, know, bait clicking.

The questions are far more profound. Who are we? What are we?

So that to me is, and that connections, these growing connections, again, the sense that we're gonna leave the planet, the sense that we're gonna write our own DNA, the sense that we're gonna merge with machines. I have metal in my arm now. I metal in this arm too. My husband has a computer in his back.

I don't want to be like happy optimistic, but I do think that it puts us in a new position of asking those really deep, ancient, profound questions. Okay, here we are. We can do this stuff. Now, what are we doing with it? Where do we want to go?