Vibe Media and AI Augmented Experiences
Where will we all vibe? Could generative AI make the human experience more meaningful?
Augmenting the human experience through generative AI
Now that it is a matter of text-to-x, what does it mean for art, storytelling, movies, sports, entertainment, and social media?
Simon de la Rouviere writes “Inside all of us is a desire to feel like we belong (shallow context + broad understanding), but we also have a desire to be understood (deep context + niche). What matters to each person: whether they want to belong or be understood, differs.”
It seems so simple: the feeling of belonging + being understood = ultimate human experience.
He goes on to explain how AI content plays out on both ends of the spectrum. It enables both more shallow context content that big culture will embrace, as well as deep context content that niche groups will cherish. All of it points to generative AI augmenting the human experience on the edges.
Let’s take an example. If you go to watch Barbie and it is easy to put yourself in a scene with Barbie as a take-home clip, everyone would want to do it - big cultural pressure. It would be as essential as watching the film itself. If you did not do it, it will seem like you did not experience the full thing. No one goes to Disneyland without getting their picture taken on the biggest ride. On the other extreme, if you are super into something niche, for example, rammed earth and eco-houses you’ll likely turn to generative AI for ideas and inspiration to share with friends.
We’ll do it, not only because it is now possible to do, but because it resonates with a core human desire to belong and be understood.
BUT! Simon goes a step further to say that we are misplacing the fear of AI threatening what we enjoy to belong. Instead, what he thinks is far more likely is how we embrace generative AI to accelerate niche desires to being understood. This is an interesting contradiction he makes that even in the context of big culture, we will tip the scale to being more niche.
What is Vibe Media?
In a follow-up article, Simon introduces the idea of Vibe Media, “It’s media of vibes. There is no need for a story, it’s just supposed to make you absorb the whole of it.”
So, what does this future look like? Expanding on the examples above, maybe this means, that instead of all of us getting a go-home-clip with Barbie, we want to go take a picture having tea with Barbie on the stoep of your rammed earth house. But what do we call this mash of big culture and niche-ness?
So, I think generative AI will play a huge part in our lives not because it writes the story, but because it is a tool we’ll adopt to feel belonging and be better understood. It will augment the art, story, or film and not necessarily write it as we fear. If we assume this is the direction things are heading, where and how will we all vibe? At the moment social media appears to be torn between embracing and rejecting generative AI content. It does not exactly feel like a safe place to bring an AI pic to your favorite fanfiction Subreddit.
Given this torn, perhaps there is an opportunity for a new social media platform for people to just vibe. What does it mean to vibe?
Introducing 42fiction
I have been experimenting with an overlapping concept called 42fiction. The idea is that you join a universe that has a predefined theme. You create a post by uploading a picture and short text. The post is then converted to the theme of the universe, often with a fun and surprising twist.
In this example, I uploaded a picture of my fiancé’s cat to the Wizard Fireworks Art universe.
Obviously, the context is too shallow for anyone to really connect with, except for me who had fun creating the universe and seeing what it generates on the other side. On another occasion, I created a mini-story in the Intergalactic Scifi Universe where I took pictures of my car in the parking lot, drove the car, arrived at my house, and took a mirror selfie.
In light of Simon’s insights, I think a major shortcoming of the current version of 42fiction is that the universes have been predefined by myself - which means there is zero context for the user to vibe in. At best it may be entertaining to post once, but no incentive to return and augment your life.
What I am looking to do next is work with an artist or creator that would bring actual context to a universe. I want to see if they embrace the idea of giving a tool for their audience to engage with their content in an AI-augmented way. To take the rammed earth example further. My fiancé is working on an earth-building project and a very niche group of followers is enjoying her content. I’m wondering, what if her followers could turn their homes into earth buildings too? Would this make them experience her world in more interesting ways? Or just dilute and clutter it?
This is her Instagram feed for the Earth House project:
What if her followers could upload a picture of their house and turn it into an earth building? Perhaps now the context is a little deeper and the follower now (possibly) feels part of the building process.
What if you could take it even another step further and let the audience really vibe with the rammed earth theme as a second-order experience? What if you added a rammed earth fashion show? My fiancé did exactly that in her recent post on Instagram:
The other side of this experiment would be to explore world-building as fanfiction of big cultures/popular universes like Harry Potter or Star Wars to expand on things like brands, art, inventions, poems, and streets in that universe.
So now that we have a better idea of what it might mean to vibe with AI, what does a platform look like that welcomes this media format? I don’t know, but eager to keep experimenting to see if we can get closer to a meaningful level of context, whether on the edges of big culture or niche-ness.