AI Reshapes Titanic: Jack Lives, Rose Perishes

The ever-evolving landscape of technology is profoundly reshaping human life and societal interactions. Award-winning author Chang Kang-myoung, known for his “Science, Technology and Society” (STS) science fiction novels, offers a fictional glimpse into the peculiar realities of our near future, exploring how these advancements might manifest.

A New Era of Media Consumption

The generational chasm in how we consume media became starkly apparent during a conversation between Joo-young and her daughter. The daughter recounted watching a version of Titanic where Jack, not Rose, was the central character who tragically died in the ocean. This revelation startled Joo-young, who realized her daughter had not seen the classic film as it was originally released. Instead, she had experienced an AI-generated, gender-swapped version popular among her peers on a video platform.

The daughter’s viewing habits further highlighted the shift. Her engagement with Titanic involved a mosaic of short clips, explainer videos on the sinking scene, fan-made music videos for romantic moments, and an AI agent summarizing the rest at double speed. Her casual remark, “How can anyone watch a 3-hour movie from start to finish?” left Joo-young feeling disoriented, as if she had been struck by a sudden realization.

This phenomenon wasn’t isolated to Titanic. Another friend, Seonju, shared a similar experience with her own child. She was initially pleased when her child claimed to have watched Wong Kar-wai’s Chungking Express. However, upon inquiring about Tony Leung’s appearance, she discovered her child had actually watched a fan-made AI video. This unauthorized creation had spliced Tony Leung from the film Fallen Angels into Chungking Express, presenting it as “The Final Edition.” Her child had then consumed a summarized version of this manipulated work.

The Erosion of “Common Experience”

Joo-young, Seonju, and Hee-sun, three university friends who had reunited after many years, found themselves discussing these changes over coffee. All of them had become mothers in their mid-40s, a shared experience that once formed a common ground.

Hee-sun introduced a new term, “common experience,” lamenting its apparent demise. She explained that the concept meant accepting that the media one person consumes might be entirely different from another’s. What might be a deeply moving or life-changing experience for one individual could be irrelevant to another, especially as younger generations increasingly reject the notion of a singular, shared viewing experience. Those who insist on engaging with original content are now often labeled “purists” by this new demographic.

Joo-young expressed concern, viewing this trend as potentially harmful. She argued that the value lies not just in respecting the original work but in the shared experience and subsequent discussions it fosters.

Echoes of the Past in a Digital Age

Hee-sun offered a perspective that drew parallels to how media was consumed in the past. She explained that during her parents’ childhood, home video players were non-existent. Movies were primarily experienced in theaters or through television broadcasts, which often aired late at night, inaccessible to children. In such an environment, stories about movies were retold, often filtered through censorship and the imaginations of those who had seen them. This process of consuming media through intermediaries and retellings, Hee-sun suggested, bears a striking resemblance to how today’s youth engage with AI-edited or summarized content.

Joo-young countered that while children of the past might have yearned to see the original films, today’s youth question the necessity of doing so.

Hee-sun, in turn, pointed out that even adults often deviate from experiencing content as originally intended. She confessed to watching videos at 1.5x speed for over a decade, a practice she considered normal.

Joo-young admitted to also watching at a faster speed and using filters to alter visual elements she found disturbing, such as blood, which she preferred to see in black. However, she still considered herself an adherent to the original work, unlike the “purists” who might deem even these modifications as distortions.

The conversation then veered towards Joo-young’s own consumption habits. She mentioned needing to filter out blood from scenes like gladiator fights, citing an example from Ben-Hur. This comment led to a humorous exchange as Hee-sun and Seonju realized Joo-young’s memory of Ben-Hur had likely merged elements from films like Gladiator and Spartacus. Joo-young, blushing, vowed to check her AI assistant’s settings, muttering to herself that a film as long as Ben-Hur (a 1950s epic exceeding three and a half hours) was understandably difficult to watch in its entirety.

The exchange underscored a fundamental shift in media engagement, where the curated, summarized, and often reinterpreted versions of content are becoming the norm, challenging long-held notions of authenticity and shared cultural experiences.