This seems weird to me. Isn’t Japanese culture obsessed with aesthetics? Like when you buy fast food there it actually looks neat and clean like in advertisements, and you might spend a small fortune on a couple of strawberries but they’ll be the brightest, most flawless specimens you’ll see in your lifetime. Even cheap throwaway meals are packaged like a professional food stylist went over them.
That focus on perfection seems incongruent with the slop machine that churns out soulless, derivative, and often obviously flawed ‘art’.
Japanese creatives are now heavily split on LLMs. What with half taken to defend their work with watermarks and proofs of timelapses and manual processes, and there’s fierce loyalty for Miyazaki et. al. While others are either playing with dozens of LLMs to produce even animations, churning out thirst traps by the dozen, and still others “enhancing” game screenshots of their player characters in poses and skimpy clothing.
Having lived in Japan for over a decade, I think the west generally over-elevates/-mystifies Japan. Capitalists gonna capitalist. They can do more work with fewer people and make more money. Most Japanese consumers also do not care at all about generative AI. It’s in the train stations, city offices, and everywhere else as a part of the normal.
There’s a big difference between what’s happening in the commercial world and art circles. I can’t speak for food but with regards to the topic here, Japan has a huge creator market and that market responds very differently. A year back, their biggest creator fair had a few “artists” selling AI “art” but essentially no one was interested and they hardly sold anything while others had sprawling queues. This year there was pretty much 0 as a result.
Maybe they have high standards for what they generate, use the models as “fillers” or “finishers” (broadly adding details or patterns to a base sketch, then touching up on any errors or ungeneratable details), or rely on models they’ve vetted for consistent quality? I doubt they’re all using a piss filter chatgpt text to image gen.
you might spend a small fortune on a couple of strawberries
Isn’t that mostly because their farms are so far behind and producing such low volumes that they can only survive with artisanal hand picked/whatever products
Looking it up, while the high-end gift fruits are insanely expensive (hundreds of dollars), regular fruit seems to be widely available and costs the equivalent of a dollar or two. So it’s more expensive than in Western countries, but not exorbitantly so. They also tend to be unnaturally unblemished even on the low end.
I wonder how much produce gets thrown away due to a single bruise or spot. I’m hoping it gets turned into drinks or purée for desserts or something instead.
Anything that grows out of the ground is expensive in Japan in general, so it’s not just the strawberries. You can easily get a situation when making food at home where a simple vegetable salad is as expensive as the rest of the meal combined.
I bought a $5 apple for the kids when we visited. Damn fine apple. Bought one for me too because I got jealous. Made me actually appreciate fruit for what it is; rather than something bruised, brown, and taken for granted.
This seems weird to me. Isn’t Japanese culture obsessed with aesthetics? Like when you buy fast food there it actually looks neat and clean like in advertisements, and you might spend a small fortune on a couple of strawberries but they’ll be the brightest, most flawless specimens you’ll see in your lifetime. Even cheap throwaway meals are packaged like a professional food stylist went over them.
That focus on perfection seems incongruent with the slop machine that churns out soulless, derivative, and often obviously flawed ‘art’.
Japanese creatives are now heavily split on LLMs. What with half taken to defend their work with watermarks and proofs of timelapses and manual processes, and there’s fierce loyalty for Miyazaki et. al. While others are either playing with dozens of LLMs to produce even animations, churning out thirst traps by the dozen, and still others “enhancing” game screenshots of their player characters in poses and skimpy clothing.
So its really just the same “actual artist” vs “horny gooner dumbass” split that has plagued Japanese media for decades 😭
Having lived in Japan for over a decade, I think the west generally over-elevates/-mystifies Japan. Capitalists gonna capitalist. They can do more work with fewer people and make more money. Most Japanese consumers also do not care at all about generative AI. It’s in the train stations, city offices, and everywhere else as a part of the normal.
There’s a big difference between what’s happening in the commercial world and art circles. I can’t speak for food but with regards to the topic here, Japan has a huge creator market and that market responds very differently. A year back, their biggest creator fair had a few “artists” selling AI “art” but essentially no one was interested and they hardly sold anything while others had sprawling queues. This year there was pretty much 0 as a result.
Yeah, it does seem inconsistent with the view that anything AI touches must obviously look awful.
Self selecting bias. If all AI is bad, then if it’s good it’s not ai by definition.
My point is, probably a lot more content is ai than people think, but they don’t notice.
Yeah, if the AI gets curated, it is almost impossible to notice.
And all AI should be curated. A human has to check everything for halucinations.
Maybe they have high standards for what they generate, use the models as “fillers” or “finishers” (broadly adding details or patterns to a base sketch, then touching up on any errors or ungeneratable details), or rely on models they’ve vetted for consistent quality? I doubt they’re all using a piss filter chatgpt text to image gen.
Have you considered that wherever you’re from is the weird place? They are much more optimistic about AI in Asia.
Isn’t that mostly because their farms are so far behind and producing such low volumes that they can only survive with artisanal hand picked/whatever products
Looking it up, while the high-end gift fruits are insanely expensive (hundreds of dollars), regular fruit seems to be widely available and costs the equivalent of a dollar or two. So it’s more expensive than in Western countries, but not exorbitantly so. They also tend to be unnaturally unblemished even on the low end.
I wonder how much produce gets thrown away due to a single bruise or spot. I’m hoping it gets turned into drinks or purée for desserts or something instead.
Anything that grows out of the ground is expensive in Japan in general, so it’s not just the strawberries. You can easily get a situation when making food at home where a simple vegetable salad is as expensive as the rest of the meal combined.
I bought a $5 apple for the kids when we visited. Damn fine apple. Bought one for me too because I got jealous. Made me actually appreciate fruit for what it is; rather than something bruised, brown, and taken for granted.
How much of those are imported?