This is the weekly dispatch from Bizarro Studios North, where I have been writing and drawing the Monday through Saturday Bizarro comics since 2018. My partner and friend Dan Piraro created Bizarro in the late twentieth century and continues to do the Sunday comic from Rancho Bizarro in Mexico.
Wayno
Last week the New York Times ran an insightful article by Peter C. Baker on artificial intelligence and its use in the creation of the recently released Beatles record "Now and Then." Baker is a fan of the group's music and enjoyed the heavily processed single and its accompanying promotional video, but the project raises questions about how A.I. could affect the arts.
I'm not here to critique "Now and Then," and have not heard it. People like it, and many find it profoundly moving, and that's perfectly cool.
However, the project also portends profit-driven corporations using A.I. to reuse, remix, recombine, and simulate existing "content" to the detriment of new creative works is at least troubling and worthy of discussion. Popular culture is already dominated by endless remakes and "franchise" entertainment. If consumers are continually fed variants of what they already like, and it can be pieced together from existing materials, it will become that much harder for new creative works to find their audience.
Perhaps doomsaying isn't called for yet, but the entertainment-industrial complex is already replicating footage of actors to fill in crowd scenes and the theft of visual art using A.I. is happening daiy.
A.I.'s facility in stealing existing art without permission and spreading disinformation is another matter, which we won't get into here.
Rather, we'll soothe our nerves with a somewhat mysterious pipe pic.
The following images of the week's Bizarro comics have no shortage of information, as your cartoonist loves to talk about his work; maybe too much.
Bonus Track
From the album Out of Our Heads
More Bizarro For Your Enjoyment
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Thanks!
Wayno's Weekly Bizarro Newsletter
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Dan's Tip Jar
Dan "Diego" Piraro's Peyote Cowboy Graphic Novel
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