I've already seen all the discourse surrounding that clipart fembot, but you want my take, that design can fuck off back to the dark depths of the uncanny valley. Give me someone like Aigis any day of the week:
Generative AI has helped me to understand why, in Star Wars, the droids seem to have personalities but are generally bad at whatever they're supposed to be programmed to do, and everyone is tired of their shit and constantly tells them to shut up
Threepio: Sir, the odds of successfully navigating an asteroid field are 3720 to one!
Han Solo (knowing that Threepio just pulls these numbers out of Reddit memes about Emperor Palpatine's odds of getting laid): SHUT THE FUCK UP!!!!!!
"Why do the heroes of Star Wars never do anything to help the droids? They're clearly sentient, living things, yet they're treated as slaves!" Thanks for doing propaganda for Big Droid, you credulous ass!
With that out the way, here's my personal sidenote:
There's already been plenty of ink spilled on the myriad effects AI will have on society, but it seems one of the more subtle effects will be on the fiction we write and consume.
Right off the bat, one thing I'm anticipating (which I've already talked about before) is that AI will see a sharp decline in usage as a plot device - whatever sci-fi pizzazz AI had as a concept is thoroughly gone at this point, replaced with the same all-consuming cringe that surrounds NFTs and the metaverse, two other failed technologies turned pop-cultural punchlines.
If there are any attempts at using "superintelligent AI" as a plot point, I expect they'll be lambasted for shattering willing suspension of disbelief, at least for a while. If AI appears at all, my money's on it being presented as an annoyance/inconvenience (as someone else has predicted).
Another thing I expect is audiences becoming a lot less receptive towards AI in general - any notion that AI behaves like a human, let alone thinks like one, has been thoroughly undermined by the hallucination-ridden LLMs powering this bubble, and thanks to said bubble's wide-spread harms (environmental damage, widespread theft, AI slop, misinformation, etcetera) any notion of AI being value-neutral as a tech/concept has been equally undermined.
With both of those in mind, I expect any positive depiction of AI is gonna face some backlash, at least for a good while.
(As a semi-related aside, I found a couple of people openly siding with the Mos Eisley Cantina owner who refused to serve R2 and 3PO [Exhibit A, Exhibit B])
SoundCloud's already tried to quell the backlash, but they're getting accused of lying in the replies and the QRTs, so its safe to say its not working.
Also there already is a bsky user with the username leoxiv, who makes from what I can tell final fantasy poses, some nsfw. Lol.
Being a bit more specific, its Final Fantasy XIV, which you've probably heard about from people using its free trial as meme material. Its also a better example of the metaverse than any actual metaverse out there, but that's a given for literally any MMO that has popped up for the last twenty fucking years.
And by "very safe", I mean "its technically already happened". Personally, I expect marketing things as AI-Free™ will explode after the bubble bursts - the hype will die alongside the bubble, but the hatred will live on for quite a while, and hate is real easy to exploit.
Possible upside of the AI bubble: getting high school English teachers the barest amount of respect from Administration.
And, arguably, the humanities as a whole getting some begrudging respect - even if only because STEM is looking unimaginably stupid by comparison right now.
This is honestly a pretty sensible take on this all. That it comes from somebody with a "fursona" shouldn't surprise anybody who has been paying attention.
I've already seen all the discourse surrounding that clipart fembot, but you want my take, that design can fuck off back to the dark depths of the uncanny valley. Give me someone like Aigis any day of the week: