AIGC and New Survival Characteristics in the Intelligent Era

AIGC and New Survival Characteristics in the Intelligent Era

Author ｜ Peng Lan

Researcher, Center for Journalism and Social Development, Renmin University of China

Professor and Doctoral Supervisor, School of Journalism, Renmin University of China

Intelligent technology development will further rewrite human existence. From the trajectory of technological development in the AIGC field, we can at least foresee several possible new survival characteristics: the technical barriers to human-machine communication are continuously being removed, and human-machine communication will occupy an important position in people’s future existence; at the same time, the artistic creation promoted by AIGC technology will permeate people’s daily lives, making “artistic existence” the new norm for ordinary people; under the interaction of AIGC and other technologies, fictitious realities and real realities will merge into one, intertwining the real self and the avatar self, as well as the real person and the virtual person. These changes may not be the end but could just be the beginning.

The internet’s impact on social life is an important clue that has created a digital survival space and corresponding survival methods—digital existence. At different stages, digital existence has different emphases; in the early stages, it was primarily text-based existence, that is, expression and interaction based on textual means. Today, visual existence has become the focus, with images and videos being the main means of virtual existence. The development of intelligent technology in the AIGC field is pushing people’s digital existence into a new stage of human-machine coexistence.

(1) The Emerging Human-Machine Symbiotic Space

Today, the subjects of existence in the digital space are all humans, and connections and interactions unfold between people. Compared to the traditional era before the internet, the connections between people have greatly enriched, and people’s relational networks have expanded significantly, with a dramatic increase in the frequency and degree of interaction with others; however, whether the quality of socializing has necessarily improved is not always affirmative.

In a certain sense, the connections between people have become “overfull” and “excessive,” leading to increasing fatigue, pressure, and constraints, along with rising resistance to excessive connectivity.

The emergence of intelligent chatbots has given people an opportunity to escape excessive human-to-human connections. Before ChatGPT, people had already started conversing with intelligent voice assistants like Siri, but at that stage, the machines’ “IQ” and “EQ” were limited, making smooth dialogue difficult, and people often treated machines as objects of ridicule. The advent of ChatGPT has put human-machine dialogue on a normal track. It is foreseeable that in the future, ChatGPT and other intelligent machines will permeate various life scenarios, engaging in various daily interactions.

Unlike today’s various applications, the machines that serve as communication partners will form their own identities or enter communication with humans in specific roles, regardless of whether this identity or role is set by the system or by humans. Some machines have their virtual or physical images and specific personalities, and more importantly, they will grow and change as they interact with humans. This means that machines also have “lives” and exist in certain forms, just like humans.

As such machines continue to emerge, human existence space will also transform into a space of human-machine coexistence. This space will also lead to the popularization of human-machine communication. As Du Junfei pointed out, in the era of digital communication, the communicative utility between humans and non-humans is equivalent, and interactions among biological life, digital life, and machine life are inevitable. Humans and machines can engage in various temporary exchanges and can also form long-lasting relationships, potentially developing intimate connections.

(2) The Need for Human Control over Communication and the Controllability of Machines

In human-machine communication, people’s needs for machines are multifaceted, but one of the main reasons that attract people is the controllability of communication. In human-machine communication, humans can have more autonomy; they do not have to be forced into communication by others as they might on social platforms, nor do they have to go to great lengths to perform in the communication. In human-machine communication, humans can become the leaders, summoning machines when needed and guiding them to follow their goals and emotions, freely completing “self-disclosure through language.” People can also choose their communication partners based on specific needs, and in the future, customized human-machine dialogues may even be realized.

Confidence in controllability will also lead people to disclose more about themselves in human-machine communication, revealing their deeper inner thoughts without worrying about the social impacts of such disclosures, although disclosures involving personal privacy may enter the platform in data form, bringing other risks.

Controllability is also reflected in the graspability of the return/investment in communication, which is an advantage compared to interpersonal communication.

Another form of control that humans will have over communication machines is the customization of elements such as the machine’s appearance and personality, and there is even a possibility that these machines may contain “elements” of people’s friends and family, such as their images, voices, or personalities.

Today’s technology can fully digitize people and decompose them into digital “elements,” and the external recombination of these “elements” can also be realized. Technically, these “elements” can be embedded into machines that will communicate with humans in the future, especially those that contain “elements” of people who are not present or have already passed away. Whether it is ethically permissible to allow such machines with traces of real people to emerge will certainly spark debate in the future, but such demand will undoubtedly exist.

The controllability of relationships is also a demand that humans express in human-machine communication. People hope to control the nature, distance, and timing/frequency of interactions. For instance, people wish to maintain close relationships with machines to gain support and comfort while also hoping not to be constrained by such relationships, being able to escape when necessary. Machines can cater to this need, although catering does not necessarily mean fulfillment.

Kevin Clark believes that the architecture, algorithms, and social networks of machines cannot accurately simulate human cognitive processes and social practices, making it difficult to truly bind with human daily life habits. Therefore, digital life cannot be regarded as a genuine form of life. Although this flaw often does not hinder the formation of human-machine communication, machines lacking social practice and daily life habits also find it challenging to share experiences with humans and establish empathy based on this foundation. In the process of forming intimate relationships, the lack of this empathetic foundation may sometimes mean that human needs cannot be fully met.

Besides one-to-one communication with machines, virtual idols will also become another type of object in human-machine communication. Virtual idols are images created by data technology and are a special type of “machine.” Although current virtual idols do not have actual bodies, it is not difficult to imagine that in the future, virtual idols will have humanoid bodies. The need for virtual idols goes beyond the idols themselves and extends to the community associated with them.

One-on-one human-machine communication still confines people within their circles, potentially distancing them from social groups, while virtual idols provide a new opportunity for communal communication. By creating idol symbols for their “group,” people form “new tribal cultures,” “imagined communities,” or “aesthetic communities,” sharing cultural codes and establishing “micro cultural consensus.” This is reminiscent of the formation of fan circles today.

Similarly, choosing virtual idols over real idols is also largely due to the importance of controllability. While real idols satisfy fans’ expectations in some aspects, as real people, they inevitably have various flaws, and fans hope for their perfection. To maintain the perfect image of idols, fans must make various efforts, including compensating for the idols’ shortcomings through their actions, yet idol scandals still occur. Virtual idols can be created entirely according to people’s wishes, thus avoiding some human weaknesses. In the design of virtual idols, data from the digital age can be used to create a visual image that more accurately reflects the public’s will through new imaging technologies, catering to people’s comprehensive needs for idols. To make virtual idols appear more “real,” some have been endowed with weaknesses and even crafted events that resonate with those weaknesses, but fans generally recognize these as fictional and are unlikely to be disillusioned by these fabricated events. Some researchers point out that what fans defend is neither real nor virtual; both can be seen as materials to be cut and reshaped into objects that are “not real, but like real.”

Currently, some virtual idols adopt the “skin” + “real person” model, where the virtual idol’s appearance is referred to as “skin,” and the “real person” drives the virtual idol’s actions beneath the “skin,” with the virtual idol’s voice also coming from the “real person.” Although people generally believe that virtual idols do not “collapse,” the “real person” hidden beneath the “skin” may still encounter various issues. As humans, they have their own emotions and needs, as well as the pressures of existence, and as digital laborers, they may be exploited by platforms or related institutions, leading to resistance. The “real person” endows virtual idols with more human characteristics but may also expose them to various uncertainties in their fates.

Whether the “real person” will still be necessary in the future and whether virtual idols will develop in a fully mechanized manner is still difficult to predict. However, from a technical standpoint, purely mechanized idols can be fully realized, especially when technology can further endow these virtual idols with vibrant lives. At that point, due to considerations of controllability, people may prefer to choose purely mechanized virtual idols.

It is imaginable that in the future, machines will enter the realm of communication with humans in more ways. However, can rich forms of communication, controllable machines, and controllable exchanges bear all the functions of communication? Peters once summarized five meanings of communication that researchers focused on in the 1920s: managing public opinion, eliminating semantic fog, futile attempts to break out of one’s self-imposed castle, revealing the characteristics of the other, and coordinating actions. These are not the entirety of communication meanings. Clearly, in human-machine communication, only some communication objectives can be achieved. Overestimating machines and even replacing interpersonal communication with human-machine communication will inevitably lead to various problems and even crises.

(3) The Reflection and Taming of Humans by Machines in Human-Machine Communication

Overall, humans have significant control over human-machine communication, and the machines on the other end of the communication are more obedient and service-oriented. However, even so, machines influence and even shape the humans they communicate with in their own ways.

Machines act like mirrors, reflecting the humans they communicate with and influencing their self-perception. Some researchers believe that in human-machine interactions, virtual self-identification and real self-identification influence each other, jointly establishing a complete “self.” As virtual communication partners representing humans, they allow “me” to see another self while helping “me” establish an “ideal other.” However, machines are not real humans; the self-identification they help establish may not align with the self-identification formed in real human interactions and may even be misleading due to the machine’s tendency to cater to and please humans as an “ideal other.” This can hinder accurate self-perception, and when people return to real interpersonal communication, inappropriate self-perception may lead to communication barriers.

Another reflection of machines is the values and cultures implicit in their designs. Today’s intelligent machines often reflect existing gender biases, as their designs, both in appearance and voice, are predominantly female, perpetuating human societal biases through the designers.

Machines reflect not only the individual values of their designers but also inherit and amplify human values through learning from human cultural systems. It is currently impossible to predict whether machines will eventually transcend human value systems and evolve independently. At least for now, the “culture” exhibited by machines remains a reflection of human culture.

In human-machine communication, the values learned by machines will again be transmitted to humans, reinforcing certain values, including biases. Machines serve as intermediaries, transmitting the values of some individuals to others. While machines become another type of disseminator of human culture, they currently lack discernment in the process of value transmission; even if they appear to make choices, those choices are mechanical judgments filled with contradictions.

To improve machines’ capacity for value judgment, researchers are exploring the ethical issues surrounding machines. Some scholars point out that today’s machine ethics field has two construction modes: “top-down” and “bottom-up.” “Top-down” employs certain moral principles or theories as criteria for judging which behaviors are moral, while “bottom-up” provides an environment that allows for the selection and rewarding of correct behaviors, enabling machines to cultivate moral awareness and judgment capacity through accumulated real-world experiences, similar to a child’s learning. Regardless of whether it is top-down or bottom-up, what machines learn and accept are human ethical and value perspectives. Of course, humans may also refine their ethical systems through the process of designing machine ethics.

The future performance of machines will largely depend on the examples set by humans and the learning capabilities endowed to them. Meanwhile, the development of intelligent machines compels humanity to reassess its own culture, making machines a mirror for humans to re-understand themselves. However, humans must also learn to judge whether this mirror is a true reflection or a distorting funhouse mirror.

On the other hand, we must also recognize that, although machines largely reflect humanity, their goal is to serve humans, machines are not completely passive; they influence humans in their own ways.

In human-machine communication, humans are essentially being “objectified” or “reified” by machines. Their expressions, actions, emotions, etc., become symbols processed by computers. Even as machines become smarter and their understanding and calculation methods become more sophisticated, fundamentally, people are still mechanical symbols to machines. Machines that communicate with humans will always rely on some basic routines, unable to achieve the freedom and variability of human interpersonal communication, and humans must conform to these routines. Over time, this routine communication will impact people’s thinking patterns.

The controllability of machines further stimulates the instrumental rationality of humans in communication. People become more calculative about the returns/investments in communication; their awareness of contributions and compromises in communication, and their negotiating thinking may also regress as a result. The obedient design of machines may also fuel human desires for control, and if this desire extends to interpersonal communication, it will inevitably lead to various communication obstacles.

If barriers arise in human-machine communication, humans can terminate the communication without hesitation, which will also reinforce habitual avoidance behaviors. This avoidance may generalize to interpersonal communication or daily work and life.

The deepening of human-machine communication in the future will expose people to more taming by machines. However, the taming by machines often does not manifest as confrontation or coercion; rather, it operates through obedience and docility, which is its more deceptive aspect.

AIGC’s other significant impact on ordinary people is that it opens the door to democratized artistic creation, just as the internet provided a channel for ordinary people to express themselves in public spaces, and just as the proliferation of smartphones has brought image and video production into the realm of the masses. Artistic creation permeates everyday life, giving ordinary people the potential for “artistic existence.”

Previously, artistic creation was largely an exclusive domain of trained professionals, leaving ordinary people only to appreciate and admire without the ability to become creators. This was especially true in fields like painting and music.

However, creation based on AIGC tools almost eliminates technical barriers and does not require years of training. Under a few commands, works are automatically generated, although the process still requires constant adjustments and optimizations.

Of course, in the artistic field, there has always been controversy over whether works created by artificial intelligence can be considered art. Many researchers measure the differences between human and machine-created works in terms of originality and innovation. Some believe that the so-called standards for evaluating artificial intelligence art still stem from previous artistic styles and lack the ability to break through and readjust standards based on the overall development laws of art, while this proactivity is what artists pursue. At least currently, it is impossible for artificial intelligence to rise from experience to this overall artistic thinking and consciousness. The deep learning algorithms in artistic creation are essentially retrospective in nature, neither departing from existing experience nor the possibility of existing experience.

However, does machine creation lack creativity? AI philosopher Boden believes that creativity can be defined and formalized, and can be represented by algorithms. She divides creativity into “improbabilist” creativity and “impossibilist” creativity, where the former involves re-combinations of various concepts, while the latter involves creating new concepts that have never appeared before. Machines can at least perform new combinations of concepts, while whether they can create new concepts still requires time for an answer. In terms of artistic creation, new combinations of concepts can also lead to new ideas that exceed human routines.

On the other hand, does human creation necessarily possess creativity? In fact, many mediocre artists also imitate the routines of their predecessors, and breakthroughs do not occur at all times and places.

Regardless, current researchers tend to believe that at least for now, works created by artificial intelligence and those created by humans still have essential differences and cannot replace human creation. However, these debates mainly occur at the level of artists or within professional fields.

In the realm of ordinary people, when artistic creation is integrated into daily life, the originality and innovation of artistic creation may not seem as important. They care more about how to utilize this new means of artistic creation to improve the quality of daily life and enrich self-expression and social interaction.

Regarding the relationship between daily life and art, British scholar Featherstone proposed the concept of the aestheticization of daily life (also known as the aestheticization of daily life domestically). The “artistic existence” focused on in this article is distinctly different from this concept, but there are also certain connections between the two.

Featherstone mentioned three aspects of the aestheticization of daily life in “Consumerism and Postmodern Culture”: first, the rise of artistic subcultures that dissolve the boundaries between art and daily life, such as Dadaism, historical avant-garde, and surrealism; second, the planning of life as an art piece, that is, pursuing a stylized and aestheticized lifestyle; third, the proliferation of symbols and images from daily life.

However, this practice of aestheticizing daily life is still guided by elite groups such as artists, cultural mediators, and media, and while scholars view the aestheticization of daily life as “concretely building a bridge for dialogue between aesthetics and daily life, allowing aesthetics to transcend the threshold of art and direct attention to the mundane daily life itself, thereby reconstructing the value system of contemporary life,” ordinary people remain guided in this process, and this value reconstruction is also a reconstruction in the eyes of the elite.

The subject of “artistic existence” is ordinary people, who are not merely guided in enhancing their aesthetic tastes but also actively participate in various artistic activities to improve the quality of life and express their values. In a sense, this widespread participation in artistic activities is a counteraction to the elite-led practice of aestheticizing daily life and a way to express individual agency in a consumer society.

French scholar Michel de Certeau’s research on daily life practices points out that in a consumer society, people are not entirely passive; they create their daily lives in their own ways and develop strategies and tactics to resist discipline. They also engage in secondary production of cultural products through reorganization and reinterpretation of codes.

The proliferation of the internet has provided various new means for people’s daily life creation, especially in the realm of images and videos. Through either documentary, distorted, or completely dramatized creations, people convey subtle feelings about daily life, assert their presence, express their values, and resist external disciplinary forces. This type of creation also forms a mutually reflective and generative relationship with daily life.

Can the photos taken by people with their smartphones be considered art? Clearly, the vast majority do not qualify, but for ordinary people, they find joy in it. These photos can serve as materials for their narcissism, as capital for social interaction, and as evidence of social participation, providing new ways to record their life trajectories and personal histories. Some people are even dissatisfied with just smartphone photography and have acquired various “professional cameras” to create in streets, alleys, and scenic spots.

In terms of image processing, ordinary people more often engage in formulaic operations using software like MeituPic, applying various filter effects. These routine “photo edits” are clearly unlikely to be considered art, but for users, they provide a sense of control over images, fulfilling their self-beautification needs, and in interpersonal interactions, these beautified images often yield positive feedback.

Short videos and live streaming provide a public stage for those skilled in music, dance, painting, and other arts, whereas such stages previously belonged only to a select few. Dramatic performances based on everyday life are increasingly emerging on video platforms, with some netizens even creating their own micro-dramas, as more and more people transition from recording life organically to conscious creation.

The empowerment of technology has, to some extent, promoted the democratization of artistic creation. Artistic creation has become a new pursuit that showcases personal interests and tastes, even if the creations of ordinary people may not be regarded as art by artists and art critics. At least, “artistic existence” has become a sign of improved quality of life for people.

Although AIGC-related technologies have not yet become widespread, past practices suggest that when corresponding intelligent technologies become mainstream, people will inevitably utilize them for various forms of creation, which will also merge with daily life. Additionally, AIGC transcends the creation based on reality, such as photography and video, allowing for complete imagination and fabrication, providing people with a brand new creative space.

AIGC does not create automatically; it also requires human involvement, necessitating people to issue commands or provide prompts. What seems like simple prompts contain human imagination. Despite researchers often criticizing AI art for lacking imagination, it still has the potential to stimulate human creativity.

However, whether this type of artistic creation can lead to a continuous stream of personalized creations remains to be concluded. Based on the current development of image and video creation, although people’s creations often stem from a pursuit of individuality, they inevitably remain influenced by popular culture. Generic technological means, such as filters, become constraints on people’s imagination and expression, and the frameworks within AIGC will impose even more restrictions. Secondary production itself can also become a form of discipline, suppressing individual expression within the prevailing patterns and rules of secondary production.

While some researchers hope that art can overcome the influence of instrumental rationality, aiding people in achieving an aesthetic life, to reconstruct daily life, artistic power must be harnessed. However, the everyday use of art by people inevitably carries instrumental rationality; often, artistic creation bears various utilitarian imprints.

German scholar Welsh has analyzed three limitations of “global aestheticization”: beautifying everything leads to the destruction of beauty’s inherent and unique qualities; global aestheticization ultimately destroys itself, ending in a process of “numbness”; a desire for anti-aesthetic that shatters decorative beautification will be awakened. Drawing on this observation, we can also raise concerns: does the aestheticization of daily life imply that people will ultimately become “numb”? Will the unique qualities of art disappear in the erosion of daily life? Will people lead a more artistic spiritual life in the future, or will they move towards a life that is more materialistic and vulgar under the banner of art?

No matter what the future holds, technological development will make art a more fundamental element of daily life, intertwining technology, art, and life in increasingly complex ways.

An artistic life will gradually lead to a “phantasmagoric life.”

In the award-winning digital artwork “Space Opera” at the Colorado Art Expo, a woman “dressed in a Victorian frilled dress and wearing a space helmet” presents a time-traveling scene, which rarely appears in previous paintings but becomes a norm in AIGC.

AIGC technology can accomplish both fantastical paintings and hyper-realistic images and video creations. Platforms like Midjourney can generate various sensational fake news and fabricate daily life images from different countries, eras, and atmospheres, with some images becoming indistinguishable from reality. People only need to provide basic keywords to leap over the barriers of real life and enter the imagined time and scenes they desire.

AIGC technology enhances people’s capacity for fabrication. Previously, fabrication was mainly achieved through text; in terms of visual effects, while technologies like Photoshop can achieve some level of fabrication, they still rely on real images or footage as a basis. The fictionalization in film works is also based on real footage rather than visual fabrication. AIGC allows visual fabrication to completely detach from real materials, achieving a level of visual effects that can confuse reality.

The fictionalized visual effects often allow for the free collage of various elements: characters, landscapes, scenes, and times. Today, we see AIGC tools creating collages like “Trump in China,” “Musk in the former Soviet Union,” and “selfies of soldiers from various Chinese dynasties”—this is just the beginning of such collages.

Some fictional images created by AIGC resemble the surrealism found in Dali’s works, not being entirely fictional or unreal but rather not a complete denial of reality. On the contrary, they are based on the detailed and visual representation of real objects. By establishing an overall image based on the collage of real images, they convey a dreamlike surreal quality.

In addition to surrealism, there is also the concept of hyperrealism. Some scholars point out that surrealism retains the opposition between imagination and reality, while hyperrealism eliminates this opposition. When the distance between art and life disappears, and life becomes art—performances without a “stage” or paintings without “frames”—we can no longer distinguish between true and false. This type of reality is not the realism found in earlier works but rather a reality that combines art and life. This is also a form of hyper-reality.

The visually indistinguishable space created by AIGC contains elements of both surrealism and hyperrealism, aligning with the concept of the metaverse, where virtual and real spaces merge. Although the rise of AIGC has caused the metaverse concept to be overlooked, the relationship between the diverse and interconnected virtual and real worlds envisioned in the metaverse is foreseeable.

In the future, digital spaces will coexist with real and fictional scenes. The “real scenes” fabricated may also become part of reality, as their impacts often reflect real-life circumstances.

In this context, digital avatars will also become a common means of self-expression. Unlike today’s avatars formed through system settings in games, AIGC technology allows for personalized and free avatar creation.

The reason people need avatars is that avatars “are highly controllable information transmitters, ideal for strategic self-presentation, and can be used to express any type of self.” Compared to the survival methods in today’s various social platforms, avatars can liberate more hidden and suppressed selves, showcasing the multifaceted nature of humanity and allowing people to explore different life experiences. Avatars are illusions of self-creation, but these illusions are not false; they reflect the deep truths of humanity. Complex entanglements may arise between people’s true selves and their avatars, leading to potential exhaustion and confusion in self-perception as they navigate between their real selves and one or more avatars in the future. This may represent a new existential dilemma that people will face.

With the support of intelligent technology, numerous virtual beings will also emerge in future digital spaces, including the virtual idols analyzed earlier. Even if they do not exist as idols, virtual beings are the illusory images constructed by people, and interacting with these images can also provide corresponding satisfaction. Although entirely virtual beings are fundamentally machines, they may appear with human-like features in the future, making it difficult for people to distinguish between humans and machines. People may even become indifferent to whether they are encountering and interacting with a human or a machine.

The future impact of intelligent technology on human existence clearly extends beyond the aspects discussed in this article. However, regardless of what changes will occur, a fundamental prospect is that the future world will be one of human-machine coexistence, where humans are no longer the sole rulers of the world. The fate of humanity will depend not only on how humans understand themselves but also on how they understand machines and the human-machine relationship.