OK, that’s overstating the case, since Tim Boucher wasn’t a “hero” as such, but I am nonetheless disappointed, to put it mildly, to discover what he’s been up to lately. I used to actually be quite a fan of Tim’s work a long time (20+ years) ago, back in the day when he was running the Occult Investigator and later Pop Occulture blog (can’t link cos they’re long gone), it was a goldmine for that sort of information on religious and cultish crankery. He put me onto the gnostic revival movement, which was certainly an idea I was and still kind of am sympathetic to.

And then it just… kind of vanished, and I spent years wondering where he’d gone. Every now and then I’d search for him online to no avail. Hoped he was happy and well, whatever he was or wasn’t doing. And then suddenly one day he reappeared! A few years ago I found his website (as linked above) and, having confirmed it was indeed him, I was quite delighted. Nice to know he was still out there doing stuff. (Also I discovered he’s Canadian and it’s boo-SHAY rather than BOW-tcher like I always thought…)

Then, a day or two ago, I found out what he’s been doing more recently…

Unfortunately the article is paywalled so I can’t link to it (or even read it myself), but… yeah. This is Tim Boucher writing about how he’s used generative AI to produce FUCKING DOZENS of “books” (they’re more like short stories buffered with a bunch also AI-generated images). And he’s been at it for a while now too: here’s Tim in Newsweek in May 2023:

My journey into a new realm of high-tech creativity and storytelling began in August 2022. Armed only with my imagination and a handful of artificial intelligence (AI) tools, I ventured into the world of AI-assisted publishing without any map or guide.
My goal was straightforward: To craft a series of unique, captivating ebooks merging dystopian pulp sci-fi with compelling AI world-building. Today, I am on the cusp of releasing my 97th book, and was recently featured on CNN—all within nine months.
The “AI Lore books,” as I’ve come to call them, are a testament to the potential of AI in augmenting human creativity. Each book features between 2,000 to 5,000 words and 40 to140 AI-generated images. Generally, each one takes me approximately 6 to 8 hours to create and publish. In some instances, I’ve been able to produce a volume in as little as three hours, everything included.
This unprecedented rate of production is possible due to AI tools like Midjourney (version 5.1) for image generation, and ChatGPT (version 4), and Anthropic’s Claude for brainstorming and text generation.
I sold 574 books for a total of nearly $2,000 between August and May. The books all cross-reference each other, creating a web of interconnected narratives that constantly draw readers in and encourage them to explore further.

Somewhere deep down I think that, for all his bluster about AI leading him to new storytelling opportunities and shit like that, Tim knows there’s something not exactly right about all of this. I sense a degree of defensiveness in statements like this on his site:

Using AI doesn’t make me an artist; being an artist is what makes me use AI.
Yes, I really think AI art is “real art” and no, I don’t think it is “stealing.”
Here’s a Matisse master copy I painted in acrylic, if you don’t think I’m a “real artist.”
Here’s an older artist’s statement (2023 – I need to write a new one) which outlines what my AI artwork is all about and why, and some thoughts on ‘reality-fluid’ art. (This podcast I made with an AI interviewer is also a good overview of how I think about my art.)
Most people haven’t dug deep enough to understand that my work actually comes from a place of profound unease about technology and its place in our lives (I use AI to critique AI). My personal & professional work has all been about attempting to find that right relationship, and often failing… But there is value in the grand experiment.

I don’t really know what I make of this. Obviously art has always made use of new and advancing technology and so forth, so Tim’s enthusiasm for AI as a creative is hardly anything new… the question is, to what extent is there actual creativity involved when the art is, frankly, more or less completely made from someone’s work?

I mean, we can go back to Dada a hundred plus years ago when Tristan Tzara came up with his idea for creating Dadaist poetry; however random the ultimate arrangement of the words, you, the “poet”, have still chosen the article from which you made the poem. Cf. also Kurt Schwitters’ collages. If none of the elements of his collages were made by Schwitters, the end result was by him. There are deliberate decisions involved. As for Tim’s Matisse-copying, he admits to using a projector to trace the thing, but it was still his hand doing that work. It was still his effort. That copy of Matisse was ultimately by him.

I feel somehow, though, this isn’t the case with his books. How much of them are, indeed, by him in this sense? What’s he actually doing? Can he legitmately call himself the “author” of these things? Certainly all the people I’ve seen responding to him on Threads have been volcanically negative, and, to be honest, I’m down with that myself. Cos fuck generative AI. I mean, I’ve used it myself and even posted an example of it here, but I’m certainly not making any claims for myself as an artist. Tim is, on the other hand, and even has an “artist’s statement” on that theme. Which he admits was also partly written with ChatGPT. HIS OWN ARTIST’S STATEMENT ISN’T EVEN FULLY HIS OWN WORK, for fuck’s sake.

Tim… son, I am disappoint. I suspect I might actually be less bothered if he were doing this stuff for free, but he’s not and that’s a part of the problem… by his own admission he’s apparently not making much money, but it bothers me that he’s making any. Whatever. I feel let down by someone I respected long long ago. I thought you were better than this, Tim.

And, parenthetically, Vivian Wilson (whose dad you know, of course) agrees with me: