AI and the quest for less garbage
If a bear shits in the woods, can it still come to your baby shower?
A fun little video has been blowing around my corner of the internet lately: It illustrates how an AI photo editor can cut the need for party decor and, consequently, waste. It’s got me thinking.
This reel is specifically about a Photoshop editing program, but that’s hardly the only company that makes something like this possible. Instagram has its own tool that lets users lean on AI to generate backgrounds, and there are plenty of other platforms that do the same. This capability isn’t especially new, but this baby shower post is explicit in its claim that AI can keep us from filling up the landfill by creating “zero-waste” images.
My thoughts on this eco-recommendation are spilling — spiraling — out of Pandora’s Box. They go like:
Oh, I guess this is nice — people will buy fewer disposable party decor items because they can just edit a nice background in their photos.
But: Are people buying decor and the like for the sake of photos? Is the standard mom-to-be going to be fine with having a decoration-free baby shower, so long as the photos look nice after?
If yes, what does this say about how we experience time together? Is the point of beautifying a space or making a room festive about the image it conveys, not the moment to be enjoyed?
If this trend catches on, will it deepen society’s desire to “do it for the ‘gram,” so to speak?
What is the point of living?
No, managing the waste that comes from buying shit like streamers and balloons is not the world’s biggest problem right now, but… I don’t know, it’s something I struggled with myself when I threw a 1st birthday party for my own kids.
There is an undeniable pressure — and self-inflicted desire — to make things look nice when you’re hosting a party. Personally, I wasn’t thinking about the photos that would emerge from my kids’ party, but the vibe the event space would create in the moment: I wanted to make sure my guests were in a celebratory mood, and down the line, when my kids are conscious enough to notice things like streamers, I want to make sure they feel special and loved.
This AI “solution” isn’t perfect. For one, AI isn’t a low-waste invention: It requires resources, energy, and carbon emissions to exist (but for now, I think it’s the lesser of two evils when compared to physical items…maybe?).
I can see the photo editor coming in handy — it doesn’t have to be black and white. You can have some decor and also generate a giant, teddy bear shrub in the background of a photo to really send the message home.
AI is already playing a role in cutting waste in some measurable ways. It can crunch data to prevent food waste and it can improve supply chain operations to prevent excess and correct human oversights that lead to waste.
And yet, there’s something a little uncomfortable — existentially — about this particular baby shower photo solution that I can’t quite put my finger on.
What do you think?
This poses so many interesting questions including: "What is the point of living?" Great piece.
Using AI for this purpose (unironically) is quite sad. It would be one thing if it’s used in clearly fake ways like the hilariously large teddy bear bush in the above photo but it’s a bit pathetic if people are using AI for realistic editing/additions to pictures.
Reminds me of this Bo quote
“I look at the young people. Y’know, and I feel like I was born in 1990 and I was sort of raised in America when it was a cult of self expression, and I was just taught, y’know, express myself and have things to say and everyone will care about them. And I think everyone was taught that, and most of us found out no-one gives a shit what we think. So we flock to performers by the thousands ‘cause we’re the few that have found an audience, and then I’m supposed to get up here and say follow your dreams - as if this is a meritocracy? It is not, okay? I had a privileged life, and I got lucky, and I’m unhappy.
They say it’s like the ‘me’ generation. It’s not. The arrogance is taught, or it was cultivated. It’s self-conscious. That’s what it is. It’s conscious of self. Social media - it’s just the market’s answer to a generation that demanded to perform so the market said, here - perform. Perform everything to each other, all the time for no reason. It’s prison - it’s horrific. It’s performer and audience melded together. What do we want more than to lie in our bed at the end of the day and just watch our life as a satisfied audience member? I know very little about anything. But what I do know is that if you can live your life without an audience, you should do it.”
- Bo Burnham