Notes on taste and voice in the age of GenAI

The day you got the urge to express yourself and take on the arts, you probably went through a process similar to this:

You sat down, started working on the thing you wanted to create, and after a while you've realized, it’s fucking bad. Holy shit, this sucks. The thing you’ve envisioned in your mind and the thing you’ve created couldn’t be more different. You know this. You can see it.

You can see it because you have the taste to recognize it. This taste might have gotten you into the arts in the first place.

But what you lack is the necessary skills to make this thing good. Every beginner goes through this. I went through this. And no shortcut, no tool or technology, can replace the struggle it takes to get better.

Here is what Ira Glass had to say 16 years ago (emphasis my own):

For the first couple years you make stuff, it’s just not that good. It’s trying to be good, it has potential, but it’s not. But your taste, the thing that got you into the game, is still killer. And your taste is why your work disappoints you. A lot of people never get past this phase, they quit. Most people I know who do interesting, creative work went through years of this. We know our work doesn’t have this special thing that we want it to have. We all go through this.
― Ira Glass

This special thing, I believe, is your voice. It’s your own style, the thing that makes you you.

When we start in the arts, and I speak from the point of view of a writer, we emulate the masters. We try to be like Hemingway, or Picasso, or Hendrix, so we copy what they did, take on their style, and output subpar creations because, in the end, we are not them.

There is probably a scientific, evolutionary reason (something something mirror neurons), which makes it easy for us to emulate these masters. We all do this.

But over time, we start to change some things. Bring in something a little different. Do a thing that the masters did not, and very likely even frowned upon. We start to break some rules here and there, do things that feel almost forbidden. We add more of our own into our creations.

By doing this over and over again, by continuously tweaking a little thing here and there, we realize that we are not copying anyone anymore. Slowly, we see—I hope—glimpses of our voice.

But to be able to spot these glimpses, we need to build one more thing. We need, as Ira Glass put it, killer taste.

The taste that got you into the arts in the beginning, and the taste you need to discover your own voice, aren’t at the same level.

It has to improve. Like finding your voice, you need to find and develop your own taste. The way you do this is by consuming widely and broadly. By looking at a lot of things, especially outside of your arts, and deciding for yourself if this is any good or not.

I believe Elizabeth Goodspeed put it best:

I’ve come to believe that developing taste is not so unlike going to therapy; it’s an inefficient, time-consuming process that mostly entails looking inward and identifying whatever already moves you. It’s the product of devouring ideas, images, and pieces of culture not because someone you respect likes them, but because you simply can’t look away. Developing taste is an exercise in vulnerability: it requires you to trust your instincts and preferences, even when they don’t align with current trends or the tastes of your peers.

By developing killer taste, you learn to recognize your own voice. I know this because I have been developing both for the last 15 years. I have been going through repetitions upon repetitions upon repetition, constantly asking myself—both when I create and when I consume—is this any good? Do I like this? Does this move me?

Going through this is a long and at times painful process. You’ll feel like you are not moving forward, like you keep constantly failing over and over again, and no matter what you do, it’s all just fucking shit. You will doubt yourself, wonder why the fuck you started creating in the first place since you are obviously not meant for this. Maybe your mother/father/teacher/whoever was right, you should go work for random company X.

Keep persisting. Keep going. This is necessary. You need to kill yourself over and over again, fail repeatedly, do thousands of little repetitions and adjustments(!), and then you’ll get there.

But don’t expect to suddenly feel like you’re the next big thing. That won’t come. Fellow writer Ben Kuhn (emphasis my own):

I’ve noticed a lot of people underestimate their own taste, because they expect having good taste to feel like being very smart or competent or good at things. Unfortunately, I am here to tell you that, at least if you are similar to me, you will never feel smart, competent, or good at things; instead, you will just start feeling more and more like everyone else mysteriously sucks at them.

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All of this is hard. But it’s necessary.

And I fear we are losing it. I’ve been observing the creator space for years now, and people have forever tried to reach for shortcuts and hacks to not having to go through the motions. People are wasting their time, but they still do it.

Humans are naturally lazy. This is “energy conservation” at play. We want to avoid the hard work and the pain that comes with hard work, but still reap the benefits. In the past, what this led to was nothing. These people, except if they got lucky, went nowhere.

Now we have Generative AI. Now there is this thing that can emulate creation in seconds, spit something out that might be technically flawless, and so we perceive it as art.

And people have been jumping on it. (I did, too, by the way.) It’s the ultimate shortcut.

But it sucks. It’s bad. I don’t know how people don’t recognize this (Ben Kuhn was right), but most things that Generative AI spits out are pure trash (sometimes it gets “lucky”¹). It all has this sameness to it. It all lacks life. It’s devoid of anything creative, and instead is just this grey goo.

I see it everywhere. Maybe I'm paranoid, but so much art online now feels AI-generated.

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Yet despite all this noise and temptation, the real work of creation, the slow, vulnerable, deeply human process, remains as vital as ever.

Here’s the thing. I don’t care about the grifters and scammers and AI-bros who want to call themselves artists, because they can tell a machine to output something. Bravo, you are not an artist, you are an operator. The industrial revolution would have loved you!

But I fear for my fellow creators. The people who got into this because they have something to say. Because they have this urge to express themselves.

Don’t create with AI. You will not be able to build up your taste and find your inner voice.²

I am repeating myself, but I know this is hard. I know this is painful. When we create, we offer ourselves up to a higher power (you can call this god, I call it the muses). We stand completely naked in front of our creations, giving up our whole being to this process that leaves us raw and vulnerable.

But it’s so fucking worth it. From The Collected Regrets of Clover, by Mikki Brammer:

To observe someone swept away by the thing they’re most passionate about, most skilled at—what some call “flow”—is one of life’s great privileges. There’s an energy that emanates, a magic. As if they’re opening their hearts up completely and letting themselves communicate with the world in their purest form—unencumbered by insecurities, stresses, and bitterness. Like time is suspended and they’re simply allowing themselves to be.

So allow yourself to be.

Sit down, create your thing. Copy the masters, then change a thing here and there, and slowly bring in more of yourself. Consume widely, figure out what you like and what you hate. And no matter how much you think it sucks, keep going. Keep GOING! Over time, you’ll find your own voice, and you'll develop “killer taste”. Don’t try to conform, don’t try to create for the masses, don’t try to do things you think everyone will like.

Especially don’t try to do things everyone will like. I believe that when you create you have to piss people off. You have to make them angry. Because when people experience strong feelings, no matter if positive or negative, you know you are onto something.

Keep doing that.