Supply & Demand

Do you remember this poster? If you were alive in the 1980s, there's a good chance you did. It was the most successful poster ever printed in Britain and became a byword for kitsch. I've sometimes wondered if it were a limited edition print by a famous photographer like Herb Ritts or Bruce Weber rather than a mass-produced poster by Athena, would it have had more cultural value?

Something that becomes ubiquitous becomes devalued. Supply and demand impact not just price but also taste and cultural value.

With the emergence of generative AI image programs, I've been thinking about this question a lot more. Are we seeing AI-generated work become neurologically coded as trashy kitsch? Which prompts another thought: Will the ability of AI programmes to infinitely replicate, say, Disney and Pixar animation styles mean that style of animation will be perceived as worthless and disposable, much like the Man & Baby Athena poster?

Creators might want to think of their work as shares in a company. If you owned shares in a company, for example, and then that company issued millions of new shares, the value of your shares would fall relative to the amount of new shares available. Likewise, when a product or image is reproduced so much that it exceeds the demand for it, the value plummets. If Disney wants to protect the perceived value of their work it should do everything it can to keep it out of AI open training sets. The genie might not be able to get back in the bottle, though. The good news is that work more difficult for AI to replicate could see a resurgence. Perhaps we will see a rise in the popularity of stop-motion and hand-drawn animation.