The artist AI can’t kill

0:00You hear people sometimes say things like AI doesn't have a soul. And it's like, well, what the fuck are you talking about? Of course it doesn't have a soul. It's a computer program. People say, oh, this AI agent's my friend. It's like, no, a friend is a two-directional relationship. The AI agent can't be your friend yet. If you look at AI as a way for humans to do less, you will be very fearful of it. If you look at AI as a way for humans to do more, you will be inspired by it. The future is going to be so weird. These technologies, they're moving faster and faster, and they're sort of like intertwining in ways that we can't sort of like predict.

0:36Digital culture used to live on the margins. Now it sets prices, shapes taste, and even redefines ownership. Today, we speak with a digital artist who didn't come up through galleries or institutions. He built his reputation one day at a time, publishing work online for free for years, long before anyone ever thought it was valuable. Almost overnight, that work collided with blockchain, NFTs, and global speculation. This conversation isn't about hype or quick flips. It's about what happens when technology, authorship, and attention converge in a single moment, and how culture, value, and ownership are being rewritten in the process.

1:20Welcome to Possible People. So, Mike, I've been a fan of the art for a long time. Thank you, thank you. It's not just, obviously, the amazing artifacts, the intersection of technology and the imagination and creativity, but also the kinds of things you're willing to make fun of, the kinds of ways of using satire, of making this work. We'll cover a bunch of this stuff. But, you know, this podcast, Possible Technology Optimists, you know, kind of hoping for what do we make in the future? Probably, and this is one of the reasons I've been really looking forward to doing this with you, a little bit less familiar with art, right?

1:55People. What does, like, how does that name come about? What does it brand stand for? What is the trip? People who probably like, who's this Mike guy that Reed's talking to? What's the intro? Sure. So thank you very much for having me. Very much appreciate it. I've been a digital artist for 25 years. I'm 44 and started making digital art when I got to college. I went to school for computer science and then kind of struggled through that and sort of just graduated. And I was like, I'm just going to like get a job doing web design and like make art on the side. And so, you know, that's what I did.

2:32and technology has always been at the sort of like forefront of all of the art that I've made since I got a computer in fourth grade. It was like, this is the thing. Which computer was it? It was a IBM 386 SX, I think. I think it had four meg of RAM and a 20 or 40 meg hard drive. Few people will know what that is, but we do. You know what it is, yeah. Yeah, you appreciate how insane everything is. And so just kind of have been making digital art for the last 25 years and sort of growing up, following on social media. And a lot of people know me for the sort of like everyday project where I've been doing a picture every day for the last 18 years and done a bunch of sort of concert visuals.

3:22And then the NFT thing, you know, obviously exploded. And now here we are. And here we are in the Node Foundation with the launch of their, you know, the kind of museum and CryptoPunks. But we'll get to that. So I do think everyday is a good place to start because it's one of the things where I think also, you know, kind of breaking on the scene with Christie's and all this. How did you start with the everyday project? What made you decide to do it? What made you decide to stick with it? When did you start realizing this was a project that people were going to track? So I started in 2007. I wanted to get better at drawing and so I had seen an illustrator out of the UK named Tom Judd who did a drawing every day like sketch every day and I thought wow that's a really cool way to like you know he the project had kind of completed it he did it for one year and I thought wow I want to get better at drawing too so I was like you know why don't I try doing that and so I did that and after the year I realized I'd learned a huge amount and I was like I'd always wanted to learn a 3D program, a 3D animation program.

4:26And so I was like, why don't I do a render a day in cinema 4D and try and teach myself this program, which I knew nothing about that same way. And so then I started doing a render every day. And then very quickly, it was just like, I just kind of kept doing it. But it definitely was kind of like a slow progression of people sort of like, you know, kind of like learning of this, like definitely for the first year. And this was again in 2007. so Facebook wasn't even open to the public at that time. I was just posting it on my website and it was just like nobody saw it. And so it really kind of slowly gained sort of like steam over that, over the sort of like full 18 years.

5:10Was there a moment where it kind of hit an inflection or was it just kind of like where suddenly it was like, wait, there is this long kind of, it's almost like I'm thinking of that film, 7 Up, 14 Up, 21 Up, you know, kind of following people, where it suddenly went, aha, this has now evolved into something. I don't remember like a very specific anything happening. It was really just like pretty quickly something that I knew I was not going to stop doing. There was never really any time where I seriously considered stopping doing it but yeah it really just was like a slow progression i mean obviously the everyday sale was a pretty like okay this is like you know a thing but that was you know well into the sort of you know kind of like career of it but yeah i think it's i think in terms of like continuing to sort of like do it it's i have an appropriate um expectation for each day.

6:10And that expectation is that I put a JPEG on the internet. And so if you kind of boil it down to like, it's not like every day needs to be this like masterpiece. It's like, it's not gonna like, it's like things are going on. Like I don't have, you know, 365 masterpiece ideas per year. Uh, and so it, it's going to be what it is, but the like momentum of the project kind of like continues it going and sort of um yeah and I think just the act of sitting down I think you have more ideas in you that you think and I think that you don't have a lack of ideas of this sort of like saying you don't have a lack of ideas you have a lack of deadlines and if you had more deadlines you would be like more things came out look at that and so yeah that's that's a big sort of like ethos of the project that's a great way to look at it and the day you're referring to, I think, was March 11th, 2021.

7:05Christie's sold every day at something like $69 million. Congratulations. Now, most people kind of go, I declare victory. I get my sailboat. You know, it's awesome. You go, no, no, no. I'm going to reinvest in the art community. I'm going to reinvest in young artists. Say a little bit about what that moment was for you and then how it is you said okay this is how I'm going to help amplify young artists art culture etc and what that springboard has been since then yeah I think I got a lot of people being like oh dude you retired and it's like yeah I retired from like 60 hour weeks to like 90 hour weeks like what the hell you're talking about retired but part of that is like I was doing this for free for many years and so it's sort of like well now I'm doing it and people are like paying me a shit ton of money to do it and so it's sort of like okay i'm not gonna stop now and it's like it to me was never i didn't it wasn't like i saw this big payday coming where it's like oh one day you know somebody's gonna pay a shitload of money for all these it was like you know when the nft thing prior to that like it took a lot of convincing from my fans to be like nfts are a thing you should look at because i was like i wasn't super into crypto it was like i don't this is like i'm a digital artist like what does this have to do with me?

8:23And then when it clicked, it was like, oh, wow, this could be that moment where people sort of like look at digital art different. And other mediums have gone through this where they were like not art. And then they were art. Yes. And I was like, this could be that moment. And so, you know, it sort of like clicked. But I think the idea and the ability that this money has has sort of like allowed me to open up a space and sort of like hire, you know, a team and my brother quit his job and sort of like was a huge, huge piece of building out that team. Like those are things that I feel just insanely blessed to be in a position to do because I recognize how, you know, insanely lucky and sort of like rare that opportunity is.

9:07And to me, it's also just like the opposite issue. I have to like kind of like, okay, just like pace yourself here because there's so many things. And now with the AI and robotics and all these things, there's just so many things that I'm so jacked up about. let's try this and so uh yeah so we'll get to a lot of the future ai robotics etc including some quasi-ish dogs that i saw recently um but one thing you just mentioned i think is a good moment here is what was that aha moment on ah nfts because we're sitting here in the node foundation you're having this whole launch what was this nfts this could really be art yeah i'm not like i'm naturally technologist.

9:48I'm naturally a software engineer. I'm naturally a creator, but I'm not naturally like I got convinced into being a crypto person with NFTs. And I saw the, the artistic light moment. What was that moment like? What was the realization? The realization was that like, I considered what I was doing like art, like that this was capital A art, I was sitting down, I was making a picture, like, of course, that's art. What I didn't realize is that a lot of the traditional art world kind of didn't really look at it as art. It was just like, that's just like digital stuff. And like, that, that sort of like process, photography in general, in specifically, really went through that.

10:36And it took a long time. Photography was around since you know the mid-1800s but it wasn't until the mid-1900s that it was looked at as like actual art it was just like photography is just kind of like a craft and you sort of like do it but it's not like art and then it was like and it was like it kind of clicked that this nft thing was a way to own digital art in a way that was native to the medium and there was a growing consensus around that this is how you sort of like collect art and people were paying sums of money that I think were obviously more significant than digital art had ever been valued before and so it was like wait a second this is that kind of like moment where people were like oh wait this thing that actually makes up the visual language of almost everything you see because if you think about it a website a commercial a tv a video game a billboard all these things that you see those are not made by painters.

11:38Those are not made by sculptors. Those are made by a person sitting in Photoshop, a digital artist creating digital sort of like medium. So everything we see is already like made by digital artists. Like why would it not be an actually like respected medium just like any other medium? Because it has all the same properties. It has craft, it has intention, it has message, it has nuance, it has all these things. So this medium is, you know, NFTs is allowing scarcity, it's allowing people to sort of like collect it and view it in a way that, in my opinion, the way I always viewed it, you know what I mean?

12:16So 2009, you created a work called Subprime. And it was kind of like a way of, you know, commentary on the collapse of the housing market. What made you decide that an art piece was the right way to comment? What was the, you know, always a little hesitant about asking for intent from artists, because I know that part of the art is like, the art is you experience it, and it causes you to reflect and see the world in a certain way. And not as much to say, oh, here's a sentence I wanted you to remember when you're looking at it. Sure. But say a little bit about the creation process and why that was a, how is that a mode of expression?

12:52And then how is that kind of a part of the Beeple journey for this evolving stream of art? Yeah, so Subprime is a short film that I did in 2009. It was actually kind of the first short film that I did that used Cinema 4D. And it was really actually the first piece that kind of like blew up and sort of like went viral. And prior to that, I had been putting a lot of time and energy into entering film festivals and getting tons of rejections and it was just like you know at first I thought like I would enter film festivals just that had like big cash prizes because I was like oh well this is for sure I like like I just give me the fucking check right now and then I would get rejected not even get into the film festival much less like win the top prize and was like okay yeah let's like not working yeah this is not really the thing um and so i that was the first thing where i kind of like put a lot more sort of like attention on posting you know kind of like videos on the internet and what that could sort of like bring um but i think the message behind it was really again this was at the height of the sort of like housing crisis and you kind of like see the this house sort of like build more and more and more and then at the end there's kind of like a for sale sign on it and And it sort of, you know, was trying to be indicative of how we built up all this sort of like thing.

14:18And then I was like, oh, shit, there's no demand here. And then it kind of, you know, collapsed. But the things that I'm trying to do sort of like more broadly with the pieces that have any sort of political sort of like commentary or things like that is more so just like pose questions and sort of, you know, lately more in like a humorous way. Sometimes some are not as more humorous. but just sort of like reflect back how things are not trying to be like here's how things should be it's just like here's how it is what do you think about that and so in that way I think the work is a lot more different than you see a lot of work in the traditional art world that is more pushing a specific message or outcome that they would like to see happen and to me again there's no sort of like right answer but that is more like on the scale of like propaganda in some point then sort of like you know again there's there's no right answer but like i'm more interested in just asking questions and what is the the way that you know you and the persona people are using art to ask the questions because i by the way i generally agree because part of the thing is how do we have a good dialogue how do we have an evolving culture society it starts with questions.

15:37You should always start with questions. It's a much better, healthier thing. And then the dialogue is what eventually gets you to provisional answers. But so there's lots of ways to ask questions. You could simply go, how fucked up is this? But you also go, no, no, here's a tangible way. I've put invention and creativity and a shaping of our perceptions of our experience. What's some of the way of thinking about kind of how art helps ask those questions, helps us experience it as a fundamental human thing? I think to me, I think there's many ways that that can sort of like be accomplished and art can ask questions.

16:13I think the way I approach it is sort of like taking a theme that I see happening today, an idea or sort of like dialogue that I see occurring and sort of like extrapolating that out into the future in a very extreme way of like sort of like, okay, here's what that might lead to 50 years from now in a crazy techno sort of like future in, again, an absurd sort of like way. But yeah, it's trying to like take themes that I see and like, okay, here's the ridiculous end point of that if we sort of like go down this route or here's a very extreme kind of like version of that to maybe get people to look at the conversation that they're having in like a potentially different sort of like light.

17:08Well, and obviously one of the things about being in very challenging times today, you have a very rich artistic landscape. Yeah, there's no shortage of inspiration over let's say the last 10 years. And I think what's interesting about that, too, is like up until 2000, sort of like 19, I would say, like most of the work, like there's been pockets, like you said, like subprime. And there's been a few other sort of like short films that were a bit more kind of like political. But a lot of the work has just been like abstract. And so it's actually fairly new, the sort of like very topical kind of like pieces that the everydays sort of like touch on now.

17:53But yeah, there's certainly. And is it moments of resonance? Like you go, oh, this is really important to extrapolate in the future. Or is it like a creative idea that comes to you? Like, for example, you may have more recent pieces of this. But the one I'm most familiar with is the kind of quasi little dogs with, you know, internet titans faces going around taking pictures and pooping them out. Right. Right. Which like what I found actually not only interesting was the art exhibit itself, but actually like seeing all the responses of the people around it. Like, was it an idea for that? Was it like, oh, I've got robotics.

18:32What can I do with it? Or was it I want to comment on these kind of tech titans and how they're interfacing with society and what the image looks like. What's the kind of combination of ideas that come into that? It's a little of both. It's a little of sort of like looking at the things that we're sort of like playing with and kind of like putting together some pieces of sort of different things that we had at the studio and different kind of like tangential sort of like, you know, projects we had going. I have a vague idea of what I'm trying to say with the piece. And it sort of like crystallizes more after I make the piece.

19:08that it's sort of like I need to see the finished thing and then I can kind of figure out like, okay, what is a message that this could sort of like impart? But it usually doesn't, it definitely doesn't start. It's like a fully formed like, okay, we're going to have the dogs. It's much more like gray and I need to like experiment and see a bunch of things and like, that's not really the thing. Like I definitely, it's not just like I wake up and it's like, boom fully formed idea okay let's get to work boys like it's it's really like okay what about this no and like I'm constantly like trying things to be like no no no and like because at the end of the day I'm trying to make something that I have not seen before and like that I think is the most important thing and it's really hard to do it's really hard to do on a deep level make something that you've never seen before.

20:07And I think that is actually the only sort of like thing that an artist should do. And from there, how people interpret it, I think it will sort of like do that. But if you look at the like art that has stood the like test of time, all of it was stuff that people had not seen before. And then they were like, and at first they were like, that's not art. And then they were sort of like, okay, yeah, I guess I see how that could be art. And it slowly like inched forward the people's sort of like view of what art could be. And I think that's what I'm sort of like trying to kind of like make. And so the robot dogs hopefully were something that was like, not seen that before.

20:48Well, not only had not seen it before and it had a kind of a set of Internet memes, which also created a bunch of different echoes. But like when I was watching it at the was really fascinating to watch people interacting with it. It's almost like socialist theater. Like the fact that it was designed in this kind of interactive way of would, you know, would the Bezos dog go over and look at somebody and then, you know. What was interesting about that is people, and I think this speaks to a sort of broader conversation that is going to become very, very relevant very quickly here, is the dogs weren't looking at people.

21:24The dogs were literally just walking around, trying not to bump into each other. And people looked at them, and they were like, it's looking at me, and blah, blah, blah. It's like, I promise you it is not looking at you. the script is not looking at you at all. But people like anthropomorphize all these things. But this is also the art process. This is also the art process, but I think it's also like that's a bigger conversation about sort of like AI that I want to have and I think is very important and is going to lead us into some weird places is we're anthropomorphizing technology and AI specifically.

22:01And I think that is going to be, lead us into very weird places. You hear people sometimes say things like AI doesn't have a soul. And it's like, well, what the fuck are you talking about? Of course it doesn't have a soul. It's a computer program. Like the fact that you're even saying that is like kind of insane. And it shows how crazy advanced it is that you're like, that's not human. It's again, no, it's not human. Like have you ever said your refrigerator didn't have a soul? Like what the fuck are you talking about? And so I think that's going to continue as AI becomes more and more human-like.

22:35And it is going to lead to very weird things where people are trying to assign human rights and human like things to machines that I don't know. I'm not sure we should do that. But like, again, I don't know. It's going to shit's going to get weird. So I agree we shouldn't. One of the classic ones is people say, oh, this AI agent's my friend. It's like, no, a friend is a two directional relationship. The AI agent can't be your friend yet. but despite that like one of the things like there's a there's a group of ceos that i have dinner with every so often here in the silicon valley and one of our discussion topics last night was that some people have been marrying i just yeah yes and you're like ah okay it's like i don't know like it's kind of like that just to me is so bizarre yes and it's just kind of like and i think that that's sort of like another theme in my artwork is that i think the future is going to be so weird because these technologies are moving faster than they're moving faster and faster and they're sort of like intertwining in ways that we can't sort of like predict and i think even the the nft thing and sort of what happened with me with this 69 million dollar sale was a mixture of social media suddenly allowing this kid from wisconsin to amass a following of two million people with no sort of like vetting from the outside traditional art world yes and then this other crypto technology coming along and sort of like allowing you know this sort of like sale to happen and and then something weird happens from it and so i think um we're gonna see a lot more sort of like weird intertwining of like technologies.

24:26So what are some of the ways where AI, internet, et cetera, has been capturing your attention for questions, right? So one of them obviously the over-anthropomorphization, right? It's the, oh, it's my friend. Oh, it's my spouse. Like, okay, I think you need to learn other human beings a little bit better. It's not just the mistake of the AI, it's a mistake of human beings and so forth. But what are the other ways where you go, okay, this is changing our landscape into the weird. And how do we ask the right questions to make the weird more good than bad? Yeah, that's a good question. It's so pervasive in, you know, every sort of like aspect of sort of like society.

25:13And I think it's going to just continue to sort of like grow it's really to me very hard to kind of like wrap my head around even where to begin with something like that because it's very hard to like compartmentalize you know like oh it's just gonna affect this thing or it's just gonna affect that and I think I don't see enough people who are both very excited by the possibilities of it and also a little like pretty quick here guys who are like i think this is going to be very disruptive yes like the chances of it like you know getting real bad are like definitely non-zero to me but at the same time i'm like i mean we're literally sitting behind an ai sculpture that i've got and it's like oh man look i can do this thing now like the ability of like you know possibilities it's allowed me to make work that I can express myself in different ways and sort of like, you know, make things, like I said, that I've never seen before is like immense.

26:16So I think it's really, I just wish there was more people who are approaching it in a much more nuanced way. Yeah. Well, curious, hopefully optimistic, but also very attuned to, it's a very unusual and weird landscape. What are some of the ways that you engage with AI in your creative process, in your construction process? What have you found to be interesting and useful? What have you found to be, you know, there's, I mean, there's quite a lot of, of sort of like different ways for the everydays. I use it, you know, very extensively on the everydays. This is the first year actually this where I'm, I'm using solely sort of like AI before I kind of like been incorporating it more and more over the last sort of like two, three years.

27:03But this is the first year where I'm like, okay, what if I just tried just doing sort of like AI as the like everydays? And so that's one way, obviously, these sort of like sculptures behind us in terms of, you know, sort of like the programs we're able to write and sort of like the development we're able to do with the studio. It's been, you know, insane how much we're able to sort of, you know, lean on this stuff to sort of like program stuff the robot dogs were using ai to sort of like look to you know they're taking pictures and then ranking the pictures for how good they were and then you know using sort of like a style transfer thing to do that and then the entire process of all the code that you know underpin that was all written by ai too um so it's really i mean we've done speech things at the the studio to do that.

27:51We just did a sort of AI kind of like performance with Danny McBride a few months ago at the studio where we had all kinds of different sort of like things we've used, you know, to make short films and sort of like all different types of like video as well. And so honestly, like, I would say almost every sort of like, you know, kind of aspect of generative AI from coding to video to image making to, you know, sound. I've touched on all of it. I've got 60 bazillion subscriptions. If you've made any sort of AI thing that is a subscription, I promise you I have the like gold tier and I probably used it like three times.

28:40Well, it's part of the art expression. So because part of what we do on Possible and Podcasts is we're trying to help people grasp their agency, see how technology can help shape a more human future. It's part of the reason why we love your art, the questions you're asking. Like satire is a very important part of that. It's not to say it's all like seeing the good, the bad, and the weird is extremely important. So how would you kind of help people understand how AI can help you with more human expression? Like what's the thing you would say, hey, this is the way that you can take your agency, grasp it, use it for creativity, use it for explaining, for exploring humanity.

29:22What would be the kind of like, here's been my path so far and here's some notes to all these younger artists that you help? Yeah, I think it is something and I feel very, it's not because there's no right answers with art. And so people are like, I don't like this. I don't like want to do it. They're not wrong, but it is going to be very hard, especially if they want to work in a commercial world to continue to work. Because the speed at which it can allow you to sort of like make things is just absolutely unprecedented and you just can't keep up. And so to me, it really is purely a tool. It does not have a soul.

30:00It is a tool which I can use to express many different ideas that would otherwise take an insane amount of time and we just wouldn't do it. Like we actually had a CryptoPunks event a couple months ago at the studio or whatever, and we made this little CryptoPunks game that, you know, you could match the traits or whatever. We just wouldn't have done that without AI. Like, it wouldn't have been like, okay, let's spend, you know, hire a bunch of developers and spend, you know, $50 ,000 to make this little, like, thing that's just a small part of it. We just wouldn't have done it. Yes. Like, and so in that case, it allowed us to do a thing that, you know, is engaging and fun and, like, you know, an expressive thing that otherwise just wouldn't have happened.

30:40And so to me, that's what I'm sort of like interested in. I'm interested in not necessarily using it as a shortcut, but unlocking things that you couldn't do. This sculpture behind us uses AI and it uses it in a way where people upload pictures and are able to sort of like influence future versions of the box. That would not have been possible without AI. AI is like deeply in the like material of how this artwork functions. And so I think coming up with those ways to look at AI as allowing you to not just be lazy and do less, but how can you do more? And I think that really is the sort of like crux of it.

31:25If you look at AI as a way for humans to do less, you will be very fearful of it. If you look at AI as a way for humans to do more, you will be inspired by it. And like, that's the thing I wish people could sort of like take away with this tool. Well, and precisely that is a great way of putting is what we're trying to do is convert fear into curiosity. Yeah. Right. So it's like, don't have fear, have curiosity about what you can do. and actually listening to your comments, which I think are awesome, it actually makes me think of AI as artistic intelligence, right, as the AI, as like one of the things you, as part of grasping that agency as something you can actually do in terms of it, and I think it's, you know, your work is one of the kind of the leading lights, even in a light sculpture for doing that.

32:12What are some of the lines of kind of, call it human experience, that are currently captivating your attention as things to explore now that we're in this very beginning of AI? I think it really, I don't know. It's so good at visualizing different things that just you couldn't do before. And I hear people talk about like one of the criticisms of it is it's just regurgitating things and it's not making anything new. It's like that's not true. Like there's many things that I've seen before where it's like you could not do that before. Or minimally, it would be so expensive to do, nobody would do it.