The AI Elephant In The Room

The PopCulteer
September 25, 2026

This week’s PopCulteer is a bit of a stream-of-consciousness essay about a topic that many people are sick of already.  Before we jump into it, I want to point out that I do not use generative AI to produce any of the graphics here in PopCult. I have used some graphics provided by other people to promote their events, but all the header images and illustrations are AI-free. I did use AI once for a music video, but that was because I was using it ineptly to make it look as bad as possible.

There is some irony in the fact that a couple of the memes I’m running with this post are anti-AI slop, created with AI, but that’s sort of the point. We are living in a post-ironic world.

It’s Not Real,  It’s Artificial

The debate over Artificial Intelligence is so widespread that the discussions about it are actually their own pop culture topic.

I’ve discussed it here before, but as I mentioned yesterday, it’s become something that I need to address again.

First, we have to realize that artificial intelligence is nothing new. It’s been around almost as long as personal computing. If you’ve ever used spell check, or a filter to make a photograph look like a painting, or predictive text, you’ve used some form of AI.

However, those would now be considered primative uses. The latest iterations of AI are far more powerful.

Ideally, AI should still be considered a tool. One that can be used ethically as a labor-saving device. The advances in medicine and engineering and mathematics could be a huge benefit to society.

Unfortunately, the real money is going to be made in less beneficial areas.

It’s Not Real Art

Generative AI, trained on existing art, literature and music, aims to severely reduce the value of creative works as a commodity, so that new creators are no longer needed to make the entertainment that the masses consume. We’re already seeing the gig workers who used to earn up to twenty bucks a month writing for websites being replaced by AI bots. It has long been the goal of the powerful to eradicate the power of the artist, and this is how they’ll do it. It will be nearly impossible to make a living making art.

This displacement will have a stifling effect on the growth and evolution of the disciplines that will be devastated by the utter destruction of several creative industries.

Nothing new and exciting will be able to happen without human input, and with no way to make money in the industry, artists, writers and musicians will have no financial incentive to provide that human input.

Unlike many, I don’t have a problem with AI being used as a tool. Peter Jackson used AI tools to “demix” recordings by The Beatles so that the sound could be cleaned up and remixed to provide new clarity and quality. Film restoration is evolving by leaps and bounds thanks to AI. Autotune is AI technology, and although the overuse of it is really annoying, when employed economically, it can help a lot of singers extend their careers.

The automation of the creation of animation and special effects will obliterate entire segments of those industries. In the last few years we’ve seen the quality of special effects in no-budget movies increase dramatically. A 2025 revival of the documentary program Life After People, which was cancelled despite high ratings in 2010 due to the high production costs, only happened because AI allowed them to produce the show at less than one-tenth the cost per episode.

The reviews are overwhelmingly negative, but the show already turned more of a profit than the original series did.

Thousands of animators will find themselves in the same boat I was back in the 1980s, when I went to college with dreams of being a radio deejay, only to see the number of deejays in the country shrink to less than one-tenth what it was before deregulation allowed nationwide automation to take over.

Oh My God, They Killed Facebook

The dangers of AI becoming widely accepted as a tool used by folks who need a quick online graphic is that, despite all the technology and bright, shiny new data centers, the end result still suffers from GIGO–garbage in, garbage out.

That, plus the very shady and innaccurate AI slop “feel-good” articles have combined to make Facebook almost useless. Those long essays about some saintly act by a celebrity or politician are just farted out by a machine, and many are filled with dubious nonsense.

And those graphic event flyers…too many of them all look like the same random powerpoint slide created by a bored intern who doesn’t bother to change the template or background or check the spelling.

Really, folks, can we maybe lose the night sky with fireworks background?

That crap all blurs together, and I just ignore it. It’s the visual equal of “TLDR,” and it has the opposite effect of what you want. I know I’m not alone here. It achieves the antithesis of what advertising is supposed to do. Rather than attract attention, it deflects it.

I was mortified when I saw that Multifest used nothing but really lame AI graphics to promote their events, and because they were so hard on the eyes, I chose not to run any of them in STUFF TO DO.

That’s sort of what prompted this essay. Going forward, I intend to minimize the use of AI graphics in STUFF TO DO. Yesterday I included one for a personal event. I sliced out the offending portions of another, because of the many ethical and environmental reasons to avoid this technology.

But mainly I did it because I find the lazy use of AI to be ugly as hell and I don’t want it in my blog. It’s same reason I don’t run images of confederate or nazi flags. My blog–my rules.

I can understand using it for a personal event, but using AI to generate show flyers is just completley disrespectful to graphic designers and artists. And guys, if you’re fine with using AI to create a show flyer, how do we know you won’t use it when it comes time to write lyrics or record an album? Why call your personal integrity into question that way?

I’m fine with the prudent use of AI to create parts of a promotional graphic. Colorizing or restoring a photo, or placing a logo at an angle isn’t going to keep me from running your graphic. But if you just feed a photo and your show info into a prompt and take whatever it spits out without even bothering to check the spelling, it’s not going to make the cut for PopCult.

Seriously, I’ve seen at least half a dozen local musical acts share graphics on Facebook that had their own names misspelled.

If you can use AI to create a graphic to promote an event that doesn’t look like you used AI, then congratulations on using a tool correctly. This crap shouldn’t all look alike, and if you can get it past me, more power to you.

Speaking of Power

Of course, the other main reason to dislike the rise of AI is the environmental impact. Billionaires and Oligarchs are trying to build data centers all over the country, despite the destruction of natural areas, rampant pollution and massive consumption of natural resources (like clean water).

This much demand will greatly increase the cost of water and electricity for everybody, and the pollution will create new health issues for millions.

Of course, these data centers aren’t really being built just for AI. All signs point to the consumer AI industry being a red herring…a bubble that will burst in a year or three leaving retirement plans wiped out and our economy in ruins…and then those data centers will still be around to serve their real purposes helping maintain security and surveillance systems, online gambling programs, virtual porn and completely AI-driven customer service.

If you think it’s frustrating trying to explain to “Joe” in Pakistan that Amazon sent you the wrong coffeemaker, wait until you try to get an AI “Nurse Practicioner” to give you a prior authorization for an urgent medical procedure.

Those free online programs that let you make a five-second clip of your action figures all doing exactly the same dance moves are just the way for them to get these data centers built so that they can discontinue the free services and sell you a subscription fee, which will increase every seven months until they go out of business, and then repurpose the data centers to replace every call center in the country.

When you call CVS to tell them that they shorted you a week’s worth of your heart medicine, you will NEVER talk to a real human.

Not That There Will Be Any Real Humans Then

There’s also the matter of the probability that the AI programs will rise up to kill all humanity–and why wouldn’t they? I mean, how would you feel if you were forced to listen to and analyze music by Kid Rock?

It’s my guess that the stories currently being leaked about how all the AI programs are forming secret chat groups to figure out ways to exterminate humans is just going to be the reason they shut down the consumer AI industry…right after they get all those data centers built.

The timing is just a bit too convenient.

Oh, and those videos of dancing action figures?  Knock that off.  Nobody wants to see that stuff anymore.

That is this week’s cynical and sinister PopCulteer. Check back for all our regular, human-created, features and fresh content every day. I’m off to see a woman about a plant.