Fighting the slop ghouls
The new human-crafted Apple Music brand matters in an AI world
Opinion: In a world of AI slop, showing the human hands making things helps.
Credit:
Apple
Credit:
Apple
Apple just revealed a new brand identity for Apple Music, with the expected turn to Liquid Glass. I’m not much of a fan of their new design language in general; this is where I admit that I’m still running MacOS Sequoia and have grumpy things to say about rounded corner radii and text legibility.
It’s just a trend, it will pass, and at some point I’ll probably cave and upgrade when it starts actually affecting my ability to get work done, or more importantly get security updates. Once I adjust, I’ll stop noticing it, and life will go on.
As such, I wouldn’t normally find an obvious rebrand like this notable, much less feel like I had much to say about it. But then I happened to catch Apple’s behind-the-scenes video in my YouTube recommendations, and I realized I did have thoughts.
It’s a short clip, respecting your time at just a little over a minute long if you want to watch for yourself.
Let’s get the obvious part out of the way: It’s pretty peak Apple. More than a little pretentious, with all the resources a $5 trillion market cap can bring to bear on every problem.
There’s a design agency (TBWA/Media Arts Lab), a pop hitmaker music producer (Fred again.. and yes, that’s how you spell it), a whole crewed set with cameras and lighting, and a mineral oil tank equipped with a transducer to effectively transmit audio signals into physical ripples.
They shot a ton of footage of the oil (chosen for its higher viscosity) interacting with the branding printed on transparent panels. Fast Company has a nice detailed breakdown of the technical aspects if you want to dig in more.
It’s a little eye-rolly with the narration, but honestly also lovely in the execution and care. And it made me realize how much I think we’re all going to value this kind of hands-on, human crafting in an era where anything can be generated out of a prompt.
Like many Ars readers, I have feelings about generative AI imagery. It’s feeling increasingly impossible to avoid in daily life. My new favorite term is “slop ghouls.”
One really unfortunate side effect of that persistence is a new natural tendency to be suspicious of everything you see. Was that picture you just saw hand-drawn, or did someone prompt it into existence with styles stolen from human artists?
I see us increasingly place genuine value on not just human-created craft, but seeing the process behind it that shows the hands at work. This Apple video was a neat bit of promotion, but it also provided the receipts. Real people did real things in the physical world to make the final images and videos.
Apple
Credit:
Apple
The final effect is obviously cleaned up and post-processed. But when I look at it now, I don’t just see Liquid Glass; I see the humans and their time and energy and creativity. To me, at least, that matters. Showing your work, proving the time you put in—I appreciate it. I’m slightly less grumpy for it!
Generative AI is likely here to stay. There’s no stuffing the genie back in the bottle. I probably need to find some peace with that, though I reserve the right to still yell at clouds about it. In the meantime, I think we should do more to celebrate human involvement in things and not be shy about showing the process and behind-the-scenes work.
