While ChatGPT can’t pull off a perfect Miyazaki copy, it doesn’t really matter. The semantic apocalypse doesn’t require AI art to be exactly as good as the best human art. You just need to flood people with close-enough creations such that the originals feel less meaningful.
A well-known psychological phenomenon, semantic satiation can be triggered by repeating a word over and over until it loses its meaning. You can do this with any word. How about “Ghibli?”
No one knows why semantic satiation happens, exactly. There’s a suspected mechanism in the form of neural habituation, wherein neurons respond less strongly from repeated stimulation; like a muscle, neurons grow tired, releasing fewer neurotransmitters after an action potential, until their formerly robust signal becomes a squeak. One hypothesis is that therefore the signal fails to propagate out from the language processing centers and trigger, as it normally does, all the standard associations that vibrate in your brain’s web of concepts. This leaves behind only the initial sensory information, which, it turns out, is almost nothing at all, just syllabic sounds set in cold relation. Ghibli. Ghibli. Ghibli. But there’s also evidence it’s not just neural fatigue. Semantic satiation reflects something higher-level about neural networks. It’s not just “neurons are tired.” Enough repetition and your attention changes too, shifting from the semantic contents to attending to the syntax alone. Ghibli. Ghibli. The word becomes a signifier only of itself. Ghibli.
The semantic apocalypse heralded by AI is a kind of semantic satiation at a cultural level. For imitation, which is what these models ultimately do best, is a form of repetition. Repetition at a mass scale. Ghibli. Ghibli. Ghibli. Repetition close enough in concept space. Ghibli. Ghibli. Doesn’t have to be a perfect copy to trigger the effect. Ghebli. Ghebli. Ghebli. Ghibli. Ghebli. Ghibli. And so art—all of it, I mean, the entire human artistic endeavor—becomes a thing satiated, stripped of meaning, pure syntax.
While I agree with the point on satiation, I'm less confident in it being apocalyptic. I suspect AI will mostly change the rate at which we become satiated with things. We will always desire something novel, something more, something rare and find it meaningful, however brief.