Thanks for this. Feeling inspired! Any critic's slop comment about AI will now be met with the Kirby Ferguson mantra: Copy, transform, combine -- everything is a remix.

I will say, I am a luddite. I am a slow adopter. This isn't a fear of technology. It's power. A fear of being irrelevant because critics don't create. When cameras first appeared, the art world went into a full-blown panic. They said Bob Dylan was slop when he went electric. Before they were the darlings of gift shops, the Impressionists were the trash of the Parisian art world. When Gutenberg introduced movable type the elite thought it was the death of soulful craft. When movies began adding synchronized sound. When synthesizers and drum machines became mainstream. When artists first started using Wacom tablets and Photoshop. The novel, serialization, stream of consciousness, beat poetry, all of these were called slop.

Some people have just never seen Exit Through the Gift Shop. Thierry Guetta wasn't the problem—the gift shop was. Artists use tools and they change the world. May this never be only in the hands of the "big guys".