A.I. and The Age of Average

"The age of average" is a great recent article by Alex Murrell about the trend of conformity.

https://www.alexmurrell.co.uk/articles/the-age-of-average

Surprisingly, the article doesn't mention generative AI, which is widely (and rightly) critiqued for creating text and images that are the average of the data it was trained on. So in what style do gen AI tools (in this case Midjourney) default to, for those described in the article? I put it to the test!

Below are 100% AI generated images, using the simplest possible text prompt (no coaching from me!), to see if they would match the examples in Alex's article.

An example of a simple prompt is “Photo of an AirBNB interior”, and “White SUV car photo from the side”. The images are what the AI system (in this case Midjourney) thinks is a good example image for that prompt.

I think that Midjourney nailed the averageness and conformity in all but one image (the kitchen "shelfie"). So yes... AI absolutely reinforces The Age of Average, and as Alex describes in his article, the AI will Zig, unless we force it to Zag.