We’re getting increasingly embedded into machinery. The future is almost certainly cyborg, flesh and circuitry melded together. It is already happening but will occur on a rapid scale.
What about art? Why shouldn’t art be the same?
We’ve already seen this trend. Even before generative AI, many/most artists were using advanced digital tools like Adobe Photoshop and Illustrator. Writers were using grammar and spelling checker tools embedded into word processing software.
You can make the case that with gen AI nothing has really changed. Others are already making the case by just doing the thing; putting out art that is obviously AI generated.
I saw a recent post in a sword-and-sorcery Facebook group by an author promoting a new book with the most generic AI cover I’ve ever seen. I’m not going to link to it, but it’s obvious, and terrible. A search of said author’s website reveals everything about it including text is all AI.
Points for brazenness?
What’s so wrong about generative AI, anyway?
My personal belief is that using AI in heavy quantities no longer makes the art yours, nor you an artist. At some point the credit must go to the machine. And the machines are not a neutral piece of technology. Nor are the companies programming the AIs and their leadership, who make very suspect ethical decisions.
Beyond these very real concerns is an even bigger underlying question: What is the purpose of AI generated art itself?
The question I have for heavy AI users is, do you see the same problem as I? Why do I need to bother reading (or certainly paying) for your art when I can just log into ChatGPT and have it create images and text that I prompt?
Maybe that is the future of art—we just create our own, staring into our screens and having it create exactly what we want, when we want it.
I don’t love the thought of this future.
When I view art, part of the experience—for me, it might differ for you—is engaging with the artist, too. What motivated them to create this piece, this way, with this mood, this viewpoint? How did Tolkien’s WWI experience influence The Lord of The Rings, how did the Texas landscape influence REH?
I like engaging with unique visions from the minds of individuals. The Mad Max films look and feel a certain way, say certain things, because of George Miller.
It makes art unpredictable. Sometimes I don’t like the output, but that’s part of the experience.
All of this is lost in the slop of a machine, which is a giant aggregator. We’re no longer engaging with a unique individual, or a discrete group of individuals (cast, director, and crew). We’re engaging with machine modeled output and algorithms.
For all its limitations and mistakes generative AI is a massive leap forward from the tools described above.
So what of its output?
I don’t like it. If it has a unique character, its soullessness. I will never, ever buy a book using obvious generative AI. If I’m being fully honest, I think less of people that publish it. It is giving me serious pause about buying anything written after 2021, which makes me sad.
It also makes me angry, because it’s an unearned and lazy shortcut.
If you can’t write well, you must learn to do so. If you can’t draw, learn the skill. Or, pay a fellow professional. If you can’t pay them, offer up some service in exchange they can’t perform. Bartering is profoundly human, accepting the output of a machine, Faustian. You’re undercutting the whole enterprise of art when you do this. Because again, art produced so cheap and easily is not worth consuming.
But being kind, and on the backend of a long career in publishing, I also say, YMMV. I might be wrong about this. Perhaps gen AI is bringing a new type of art into being, man-machine art. Perhaps it gives people without the means to publish the ability to do so. Perhaps we all might be using generative AI every day with the same ubiquity as email.
I have used and continue to use AI for certain tasks in my own work. I know its power, I know its limitations. And I continue to wrestle with the morality of it all. To quote Danny Glover I’m perhaps too old for this shit. To understand it, to embrace it, to appreciate it.
But I don’t think I am wrong. I believe there is something deeply wrong here.
6 comments:
My brother uses AI to make cute drawings for my niece to color. It is good for that. However, there is always something missing from AI art. I think it as you suggest that it lacks the personal element of the artist.
Hey Matthew, agreed, I have no issue with using AI for fun and personal entertainment. We share memes at work created by AI. But the lines get a lot murkier if, for example, your brother were to make a bunch of AI drawings and sell it as a book under his name.
Excellent, thought-provoking post, Brian. Been thinking about it all morning.
Two things come to mind. First off, I think “we” look at all art- images, writing, music- in a fashion shared by what I suspect is a minority of humanity. Most people I’ve known outside of the artistic/academic sphere tend to look at art as something to be enjoyed and dispensed with casually. I have an old friend who compared all narrative entertainment (fiction/film) as being “like a stick of chewing gum- I chew it, get some flavor out of it, and when it’s done, I spit it out.” Music plays in the background. TV shows much the same. Movies that took the creators years to assemble are brushed off without any engagement beyond noting they sucked. In short, people who don’t much care about art are all around us. And they’ll accept AI art with no issue at all.
Second, even among those who enjoy art as something beyond wallpaper or a momentary distraction, there is an impatience (for lack of a better word) with much of the art they actually imbibe. Read modern readers/film viewers comments online criticizing even the work they like. Lots and lots of “this would be better it…”, “I wanted more of…” “I hated this part and skipped it.” Then read posts on Reddit looking for recommendations and you’ll find a bewildering number are bizarrely specific. “I want a vampire story like Anne Rice but science fiction and dystopian.” If this sounds like I’m joking- I am not.
So yeah, when you wrote “Maybe that is the future of art—we just create our own, staring into our screens and having it create exactly what we want, when we want it”, I fear you nailed it. Why would we struggle with a strange work by someone we don’t know that may or may not even make sense to us, much less ‘pay off’ in a fashion we find rewarding? What happens when I can ask my technology to whip me up a novella (or, shortly, a film) that can meet my momentary, mercurial mood perfectly? I want a slow-burn romance between Samoan cyborgs in a steam-punk world with zombie villains and there’s cute corgis and a happy ending. Presto- you got just what you asked for. Not only is this the way we are headed, I don’t think we can stop it.
John Hocking
John, first of all, thank you for leaving such a thoughtful (and profoundly human) comment here. When you said, the way we look at art is in a minority, I paused for a great while. Because I think (and fear, but know) you are right. I think art has become cheap and disposable. For many! Not for all of us. And also agree with point 2 man. It's for me, alien and odd to think that way. I like being exposed to new ideas, to unexpected stories, uncommon framing. But many do not. They want something that is pacifying, safe, expected.
Appreciate the comment.
I am reminded by the quote by Jeff Goldblum in Jurassic Park when he said: "Your scientists were so preoccupied with whether or not they could, they didn't stop to think if they should."
It's absolutely wild right now... companies are falling over each other, ignoring every safeguard and ethical consideration, in the attempt to be first--and no one cares, the government has punted on it too.
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