I’m Done with Media Made After 2022
Everything is AI now. If you read my blog tracking every game developers using AI (or just paid attention to the news), you’d already know that AI already has its tendrils firmly wrapped around every aspect of artistic expression. I was working on equivalent blogs for film directors and authors, but both lists ballooned so quickly they were actually longer than the gaming one. It made me so depressed that I quit working on both of them.
I cannot stand this influx of AI garbage infesting every aspect of modern society. To escape AI slop in 2026 means taking drastic measures, and so that’s what I’m going to do. For the foreseeable future, I’m not playing video games, watching movies, TV shows or anime, reading any books, comics or manga, or listening to any music made after 2022.
The Dangers of AI
If the thought of generative AI taking over society doesn’t put you in a deep depression, you’re in the wrong place. I’ve written several times before about why AI is bad, but to put it briefly:
- It’s destroying the environment and wasting an unfathomable amount of water.
- It’s artificially propping up the stock market, making the rich richer, and when the bubble pops, the global economy will be in tatters.
- Pedophiles love it, and so do shitty ex-boyfriends.
- It was specifically designed to replace humans in the workforce.
- It’s proven to lower critical thinking skills and makes us less motivated.
- Speaking of which, it almost started World War III when it nearly convinced US naval commanders to attack a Chinese ship. (Not that the US military needs an excuse to attack anyone)
- It produces nothing but low quality garbage, and by its very nature will never be able to replicate authentic human-made art.
Sadly, none of that has stopped beloved authors, directors, game developers, and musicians from lavishing AI with praise and using it from everything to producing “stories,” “artwork,” and “films,” to scratching their asses for them. It’s almost impossible to find any book, movie, TV show, anime, manga, comic book, video game, or piece of music created since 2023 that doesn’t use AI in some way.
To hammer home how bad it’s gotten: I found this post by author Andy Weir in April 2026 in which he shared an AI-generated photo he "made" depicting his wife as a caveman. When I saw that, I felt a piece of me wither away into dust. When somebody feels comfortable doing that in public, and isn’t immediately canceled with an orbital laser sent from the future, it feels like we’re already doomed.
The Moment I Knew
The final straw was the Guyver: Dark Hero blu-ray fiasco, in which the cult classic film finally released in HD. Director Steve Wang ruined what should have been a triumphant moment by putting the whole film through an AI smoothing filter, making it look horrible. Incidentally, I emailed Toy Robot after posting that blog asking them why they didn’t disclose the use of AI and they didn’t respond.
It was then that I knew I was done with modern media. Done with authors who proclaim that AI is the future. Done with directors who say AI will "democratize" art. Done with game studios that partner with weapons manufactures to create the Terminator. Done with the tens of thousands of AI-generated songs uploaded to music streaming platforms per day.
I had no shortage of examples to choose from for that last paragraph, by the way. There are dozens of once respected “creators” throwing their reputations away by turning to AI. I can keep going. Here’s Ken Liu talking about creating his own AI model to write for him. Here’s Steven Soderbergh saying he’s going to use “a lot” of AI for an upcoming movie. Here’s WIT Studio apologizing for using AI art in the opening for Ascendance of a Bookworm. Here’s Epic forcing one of its studio to go “AI First” by scrapping all its human-made assets and forcing them to go 100% towards AI programming and art. Here’s Jacob Collier saying AI music creation tools are “almost too perfect to be interesting,” after having previously partnered with the perpetually evil Google on their AI monstrosity.
Okay, okay, I'll stop.
So: no movies, TV shows, video games, music, anime, manga, or books made after 2022. That also goes for all releases after 2022, not just new stuff. The Toy Robot Guyver: Dark Hero fiasco taught me the hard way that even old stuff isn’t exempt from AI slop.
Why did I choose 2022 as the cut-off? I first thought about making it 2020, fitting considering how that was the year the world as we knew it ended. That would be a little too early, I decided. AI wasn’t as rampant or as good at masquerading as human at that point. Setting it sooner is taking too much of a risk, and making it before 2020 would be silly. 2022 makes the most sense. Although, with how easy it is to get an LLM to generate text, I thought about making the cut-off 2020 for books. I chose to keep it simple in the end, and have it be the same year for everything.
No Escape?
There's no other way to escape AI-generated slop disguised as art these days. Come to think of it, a lot of it isn’t pretending to be art anymore. Regardless, I’m effectively freezing myself in a moment in time culturally, not allowing myself to experience anything new. I’m not too upset about that. There are plenty of books, movies, games, and songs pre-2023 that are new to me. I wrote last year about my growing interest in older media, and that’s still true. Last year I began collecting DAW books, mostly the old yellow-spined beauties from the 70s and 80s, but also running into the 2000s. I also started buying a lot of Criterion Collection films... though I’ve made sure to cull any of their releases after 2022 from my wishlist.
Speaking of, after deciding on this, I spent a week going through my wishlists of books, movies, and games and researched their release dates. Not when they first came out, but when the versions I had my eye on came out. For example, Enter the Dragon came out in 1973, and its blu-ray released in 2013, so I know that is safe. The 4K version, however, came in 2023, so as far as I know is plagued by an AI filter just like Guyver: Dark Hero. Even after this culling, I’ve got a list of over 100 books, 50 films, and 45 video games, so it’s not like I’m starving for content.
I allowed myself one last modern thing as a sendoff: Metal Gear Solid: Master Collection Vol. 2. This will be the last post-2022 media I engage with for the foreseeable future. Turns out I made a terrible choice, because Peace Walker sucks and I never liked Metal Gear Solid 4 (I wanted to give it another chance, but no, I still hate it). Perhaps, in that regard, this is a fitting farewell to the age of AI garbage after all.
Will I ever interact with media made after 2022 again? Probably, I still have a lot of life left in me (hopefully), and I’m pretty sure time only moves forward. If/when I do, it’ll have to be with a writer, filmmaker, developer, or musician that adamantly rejects AI. I might even require proof, but good luck with that.
Any Exceptions?
There are a couple of exceptions to this. This boycott won’t apply to YouTube and Peertube videos (I have plenty of plug-ins to root out AI slop (and Shorts)). I love watching videos, and I can’t bring myself to stop. I have a list of trusted creators I’ve watched for years that I know won’t start using AI. Well, I trust them as much as I can trust any stranger on the internet, but you know what I mean.
Likewise, there are a handful of websites I’ll still visit on occasion, because I don’t want to completely isolate myself from the rest of the world. Yet. Articles on the internet are going the way of ethics and shame, and much of what is written online these days is, well… There are still a handful of websites and blogs that are worth visiting, so I’ll stick with them. I am going to cut my internet time back drastically, something I strongly recommend everyone do regardless of your views on AI.
It’s Like Raaaaaaaaa-i-ain
Isn’t it ironic for a writer, hoping to sell their fiction post-2022, to make a declaration like this? Yes, and that isn’t something lost on me. It’s yet another reason why the state of AI pisses me off so much. I don’t use AI in any way, but of course, there’s no way for me to prove that. Maybe if I drew art I could show early sketches, but a first draft of written text is just as likely to be AI slop as a fourth or fifth draft. I can point to my consistent anti-AI writing on this blog, but that’s not really proof either. The way I look at the 2023 release of Enter the Dragon and assume it uses AI is going to be the same reaction someone will have to seeing my book one day. And I can’t (and don’t) blame them, because why should anyone trust the words of a stranger on the internet?
I’m so upset by the AI slop machine that I’m considering giving up on writing. If I’m going to have to spend my career assuring people I’m not using AI, or being pushed to use AI from publishers, or my book getting some AI slop cover, or having to rely on an AI-powered algorithm to sell it, then I don’t think that’s a career I want to be in. Publishers are using AI more and more, that’s a given.
I’ve put all my fiction writing, including my book, on hold months ago, partially because I’ve been busy, but also because I’m thinking about whether I want to even bother continuing. That’s perhaps a blog for another day.
I wonder how many other rising writers, painters, programmers, filmmakers, and musicians have given up on their dream before even starting because they don’t want to deal with all this? How many great creators will we be deprived of because ChatGPT and Claude have run them out of the field, or convinced them to not even try in the first place? That’s going to be our future in a world of AI. That’s the real tragedy.
Thing of the Whenever
Metal Gear Solid 4 and Peace Walker may be terrible, but there’s one saving grace in Metal Gear Solid Master Collection Vol. 2, and that is the game that Konami have made absolutely sure nobody knew was in this collection. It’s not mentioned on the box, it’s not in any of the trailers, it’s not marked on the installation’s menu or icons, and I haven’t seen any reviews mention it.
That would be Metal Gear Solid: Ghost Babel, a Game Boy Color game released back in 2000. This is an alternate take on Metal Gear Solid, taking many of the same characters and the general story beats, but changing them up significantly. Colonel Campbell once again brings armed soldiers to Alaska to “ask” Solid Snake to come out of retirement to destroy Metal Gear, Mei Ling is there with her soliton radar, codec, and proverbs. There are even some surprisingly long cutscenes for a GBC game.
Ghost Babel is a great game, and I don’t understand why Konami tried to hide its inclusion. One of the first videos I ever made, before Triple Iris, was actually on this game, and I still have my boxed GBC copy. It’s worth a play, but I wouldn’t bother with this collection just for it.
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