Let's Find a Way ⬆

The creep of A.I. won't ever stop, and when you mention this technology and art in the same sentence it rightly freaks people the fuck out.

What is it that the overflow of options has done for us but lower standards and complicate the quality of art?

Would this devaluation of the very things that make us human have already been on the path to a death of taste without A.I.?

The Concept of A.I. "Art"

Unfortunately, in our race to simplify everything and deconstruct processes down to be completed with the press of a button or even an hourly routine, the latest and perhaps greatest casualty is the labor of art.

Whether a person is using "A.I." (which is now the standard term for stuff that isn't A.I. but it does fancy stuff) to write a novel, or generate a fantasy picture, or create a song, there is a very odd thing that we run into. What exactly is the art? Is it the product, the final result? Is the creation able to be enjoyed objectively, and if you had not known a model generated it would you appreciate it?

I think there is a good argument to appreciating art in any form it is - the bend of and angle of trees in a forest creating a very beautiful pattern, captured in a photograph, is art right? Of course, a human chose the exact thing to photograph. But what if a drone went through and randomly just took one shot of that spot, would the photo still be art?

A.I. Prompting is NOT Artistry

The social problem in addressing the complex and philosophical question of whether art generated through machine models is actually art or not is that there is a very real social apathy to art in general.

On the middle ground, the majority of people lack skills to appreciate art and while they may have specific relationships to art, like a favorite painting or an artist they learned a lot about in a museum, they don't much interact with it on a daily basis. These people may have either opinion on A.I. art, supporting or rejecting it, but in general don't have much a tie to art in general.

On the largely growing fringe are a group of people influenced by the utilitarian ideology of A.I. - computers will eventually do everything for us and anything we do to argue against it is both futile and also irrelevant as a machine can do the exact thing but in whatever way I want it to.

These people view any process generated through A.I. as a true work and result of their idea, as they view the prompts as the thing that sparks life to the result. But here I think is where the best analogy comes to help assist with whether A.I. art is truly art. As someone who prompts an A.I. image generator to generate images, do they think that since there is only their input and only output without the process visible, they are the creator of this image?

Take this example of a wealthy patron, or maybe a king, commissioning artists for a piece of art. In this scenario he tells them each to paint their own version of the following: "A bird flying in the sunset," and they each paint their own. At the end, he sees only one that he likes - this artist painted the scene on a beach. He requests all of the artists to paint the same scene but now to include a beach. At the end, the same happens - he finds only one he likes, and the process continues. At the end he finally has the result he wants and proudly hangs the painting.

So, prompting the model to generate an image does not make you an artist. Is there possibly creativity in the creation of the sentence that you give to an artist to paint? Sure, but that does not make it art.

Is it the Labor?

So prompting isn't art - but that still doesn't help distinguish what amount of the process being done by a human makes it art?

What about a process that heavily involves A.I.? What if a new writer asks the A.I. to edit and restructure their book for them - is the end result still art? What if entire chapters are removed? A new character inserted into the story? At what point does the process of creation of it stop being called art? And the end product? Is that book a piece of art? Where does the final crossover mean that there was not enough human input to consider it art?

I think this new challenge is going to be the fine line on drawing the assistance of tools to them completely doing processes. But is it really? What about a producer who creates a track and submits it to an A.I. mastering website which adjusts the overall sound of the music to be more palatable and fuller?

Even as those who hold steadfast against the onslaught of A.I. and its attempts to take over real world marketplace opportunities, we still have to contend with our own principles and to what degree we utilize technology in our work. Does using A.I. to smooth out and save hours animating take from the craft?

The Scary Truth

The ugly part of all of this is that it is happening at a time where we are overdosed with options. From the days of internet piracy cheapening the product of music or film, sharing books and all kinds of things drove down some collective understanding and appreciation for art.

As the number of people interested in expressing themselves in art grows, and with it a greater economic access to tools and specialized niche equipment and community, there are more artists now more than ever.

Did this growing pool of unknown artists also bring down the value of art that we used to revere, to study? Is everyone picking up a guitar and playing in a band diminishing what bands are? That's a really tough thing to argue because it also greatly increased the audience pool too, but it isn't something you can measure.

Nowadays everything is free - or accessible by a $15 streaming service. And while that is an amazing thing, it also has consequential effects. Beyond obvious results to this like the steady death of the movie theater, it seems that the social understanding of art has changed very rapidly and in a very poor direction.

With this happening simultaneously with the rise of A.I. art, I find a troubling future ahead of us where the slow and steady slide into what is accepted as art starts to dwindle and fade. Even if we as a society reject A.I. art, this cheapening of the human experience of art is still accelerating faster every day. And if we don't address it soon, it could be really, really, really, really fucking bad.