Generative AI: The Cultural Dominatrix Indefinitely Extending Postmodernism

A popular tourist attraction near the author's residence is the Ballard Locks, which raises and lowers boats between Puget Sound and Lake Washington. The site also features a fish ladder, attracting over a million visitors annually. Recently, an interpretive sign at the lock complex has sparked controversy due to its generation by artificial intelligence (AI). While some view this as yet another invasion of AI into the human world, the author interprets it as a strong signal of something else: the current cultural period.

When the pope and a fashion brand, Harry Potter, and a prestigious university all become mainstream news due to generative AI, it reveals a lot about our cultural landscape. More strikingly, when the outputs of AI are so commonplace in contemporary culture that even the Army Corps of Engineers utilizes it for interpretive signs at tourist destinations, this demonstrates that AI is industrializing vast areas of cultural production through postmodern cultural logics.

Three postmodern philosophers' cultural logics are evident in the AI-generated cultural artifacts: the pope in a puffy jacket represents hyperreality, where simulations supersede reality; Harry Potter reimagined as Balenciaga models reflects the blurring of high and low culture; and the Vanderbilt University email, a paraphrase from OpenAI's ChatGPT, highlights the increasing integration of AI in cultural production. The AI-generated images at the lock complex signify that AI has permeated even mundane aspects of culture.

While the use of AI for creating amusing content may seem trivial, the author argues that AI's presence in cultural production is significant. As AI-generated content becomes ubiquitous, it pushes society closer to the concept of hyperreality, as described by Jean Baudrillard, a prophet of postmodernism. This suggests that AI is not just a tool but an industrial force reshaping cultural production in late postmodernism.