‘Most ads try to get us to buy in on the idea that some part of our creative process is boring, laborious, or tedious.’
I think this is a key point that many tech leaders misunderstand. The creation process _is_ arduous, but very much worth doing. It requires a lot of thought, patience, and discipline, all of which are beneficial for human happiness. An AI generator may make a more polished ‘painting’ than a new artist, but it cannot give the same sense of satisfaction or peace.
YES, I agree! Many tech leaders misunderstand or gloss over the dignity of human creative labor. The misunderstanding is especially deep and willful in the ads these tech leaders hit us with, which take it for granted that the "thought, patience, and discipline" you refer to are really just a grind, and beneath us.
Anyone who has really tried woodcarving, Copperplate lettering — or, shucks — plein-air painting, knows different.
We simply don't know how the Pyramids were built, or how the Antikythera mechanism was made, or — more shockingly — in the US, we don’t know how many manufacturing processes work. Why? Because we stopped doing these things, let machines or other people do them for us, and so we’ve forgotten. That’s my biggest fear with AI: a future generation that has forgotten entirely how to create: how to write, how to paint. And if we forget how to create, that’s the end of everything.
The hopeful thought is that it will spark a powerful counter-movement that cherishes the methods and mindsets of those lost & dying arts — just as the internet itself sparked a revival of hand knitting (as RogueToaster has also said here).
To me the scary Black Mirror side to what you're saying is that such counter-movements, and perhaps even human creativity, will become illegal, just as cars made it illegal to be a pedestrian.
Human: <Why am I under arrest?>
Robot: <I AM NOT ALLOWED TO DIVULGE THAT>
Bystander, sotto voce: <Their brain scanners and keystroke scrapers caught you imagining without Midjourney, and you didn't speak the prayer "All Hail Altman."
I reckon that the impulse to create art is so deeply ingrained in the human psyche that we will persist in our creative endeavors as for long as our species exists. Unfortunately, the ability to find commercial success with via writing or painting is not so guaranteed. And if those economic opportunities vanish, I do share your worry that certain techniques could be lost over time, simply because there won't be as many artists doing them as skillfully and as often.
On the other hand, knitting, weaving, and other forms of textile-based crafts are so time consuming that they are rarely commercially viable compared to today's capable machines. People still do them because the doing is worthwhile, and sometimes because the output differs significantly. A machine can't crochet and an LLM can't paint a physical painting. While that is not much comfort to the people trying to make their living off of art and writing, it is a little good news for the soul of our species, I think.
The economics of art careers is one of the hardest things to predict. In 1980, who could have imagined a YouTube creator as a legit career aspiration? I've heard it's the #1 life goal and career goal if you ask today's kindergartners.
That's why my advice to graduating art majors is *learn every skill you can, both digital skills an analog skills, be light on your feet and ready to pivot.*
We have been jammed into the hussle culture. Constantly expected to perform for money. We aren't supposed to enjoy making something - we're supposed to focus only on the end product, which we should sell. Feh. Money certainly IS useful, but beauty, the pleasure of making something, is priceless.
YES! I am trying to get back into drawing and painting after far too long of not doing so. I noticed that while I am not happy with all the drawings, of course I won't be!, I am gratified to feel the eye/hand/mind muscles start to flex and remember how this is done. There is immense pleasure in doing this, even when I say "Ah, well that's not right, but this isn't bad." And of course, the more we draw and paint the better we get at it - and it is OURS. You are right - forgetting how to create is terrible, never learning in the first place is worse - they never know what they're missing.
I am a landscape artist. I do not ever see me using anything that would not be "my own" thoughts to do so. AI is something that I believe if those artists use it, "they" are no longer being creative... it is not totally theirs. I believe that AI may help in some careers not associated with the arts in any way, but I am worried that people will start looking at art and saying it is done by AI when it isn't.
Marsha, you have perfectly expressed the way my wife feels about all this. She's not interested in handing off to a machine the joy of her own thoughts and inspirations. She knows it's out there, but she just doesn't want to get involved because she knows it will chip away at what makes art satisfying to her.
And that last point you made — "people will start looking at art and saying it is done by AI when it isn't" — is a powerful one. It's why I don't want to judge art competitions anymore, especially ones with digital-only submissions.
Thank you for your comment to me... and your wife said it perfectly as well... "handing off to a machine the joy of her own thoughts and inspirations" is not something I want to do, and hope other creatives will feel the same way.
First off, I just want to say that Dinotopia was one of my favorite books growing up. I looked at those pictures for hours at a time.
I saw the groundwork for AI as an art product being laid by online clipart farms where, for a subscription, corporate clients could use thousands of really generic and anonymous images to supplement their internal and promotional content.
The same thing happened with media outlets leaning hard on Getty images instead of providing actual photos or commissioned illustrations for news articles. The irony is that the generic clipart now has more character than the incredibly polished output of LLMs.
As a professional artist myself, I felt the impact of those image databases much more acutely than what’s happening with AI now. The market was already completely debased by the time AI showed up.
From a creative standpoint, there was a very brief sweet spot with AI where the images were hilariously crude. Do you remember that? Everything it produced looked sort of like a Francis Bacon painting. Facial features were smeared. Limbs were awkward. The art actually looked a little like handmade collage.
Because of how rough it was, and because you could kind of see the reasoning crudely playing out in the image’s construction, there was a kind of wonder to it. It had the same frailty as any other new technology, which gave it a lot of charm.
But of course it was only a matter of time before that charm was replaced with slickness. And I guess for me that’s the real dealbreaker for AI from the standpoint of personal taste. Art has always appealed to me because it documents our struggle to depict things that are impossible to pull off with perfection. I need to see the cracks and the flaws. Those little signatures of human error in a work of art are what inspire me.
Yes,I remember the early days of AI ,with all its wonkiness. I suppose the systems can always go back to some of that. It reminds me too of the early days of desktop publishing, with it's grunge fonts. Thanks for reconstructing the travails of clip art. That really did affect the field of illustration.
I admit, I greatly enjoy California's Gavin Newsom's media person's hilarious, over the top obviously AI lampoons of That Sulky Orange Guy.
I only rarely get caught by AI images, but that's because I drew and painted from a very early age and I'm very good at pattern recognition. I have been fooled a few times with weird flowers, but most of the time after a few minutes staring ... ah, yeah, AI. Yes, it's quicker than photoshopping, but it does have its telltales.
I feel that my imagination and creativity are a muscle I’ve spent a lifetime strengthening and I have no intention to let that muscle atrophy. I can’t find a single good reason to use AI for my art that can’t be described as laziness. AI art skips over the journey you must go on create something and the results are soulless.
Hi James. As a Luddite/Dinosaur, I am watching the world pass by with its "superior" technology and it's making me tired. Society is handing over its power to THINK in order to have whatever is faster/easier. My countless hours spent learning to draw/paint/knit/bake bread took perseverance and courage which are human qualities. Each failure was an opportunity to learn and each success was glorious. The main thing I'm creating is ME; I have to be able to look at myself in the mirror and know I didn't take the easy way out.
Well said, fellow "Luddosaur". We all worked so hard to get here. We're not all going to drop our backpacks and hop on the party bus. Let the bus take them where it will; and let's get back to the hiking trail.
Some of the points you mention are very important!
I'm a graphic novel artist and illustrator, and I don't use these tools. I may be a little old-fashioned, but I have to use my hands in the creative process – drawing is thinking, typing a prompt isn't.
To tell the truth I'm a bit scared that my job will be replaced by AI (not really the graohic novel part, but the illustration part). Some of my collegues lost some jobs, because some publishers are starting to use AI for book covers or illustrations, or some people use IA to produce (bad) posters and ads…
I share the exact same fear as you, will I be able to have an art related job in 10 years? But we have to remember that the number of people who appreciate art created by humans vastly outnumber the number of big tech company executives and the people pushing for AI to have a place in the creative process. The people hold the power and they will do their best to make us forget that. They want us to be divided and distracted by arbitrary things that really don’t matter while they take away things that truly matter and are important to increase their profits.
True, jobs will disappear because of this But I have faith new opportunities will open up, whether we use old fashioned tools or some composite methods. Be ready to adapt and evolve.
Soul. That's the indefinable quality we just 'feel' when we are in the presence of an original piece. That is what actually connects us, a spirituality, one person's mind, imagination, that speaks to us. That is simply not present in an AI piece and we know that instinctively.
We recently came back from a visit to the Irish National Gallery and spent a lot of time looking at old master paintings. The quality of soul that you mentioned really comes through, and as you say, when you're seeing an original piece. Do you feel that quality of soul can come through from a printed or scanned piece? What if a person feels genuinely inspired by an AI generated piece?
Yes, to a degree, there is a fundamental difference between something created entirely by AI and a copy of an original piece. It is not simply viewing the technique or skill, it is being in touch with the intent, the emotion the creator felt. However inadequately expressed or unskilled the viewer should’feel’ what was the intent. By definition there can be no intent or emotion from an AI piece, therefore the viewer cannot ‘feel’ what isn’t there.
Exactly.If you reduce visual art to it's simplest form,AI could NEVER capture the wonder,wise innocence,or confidence and sense if design of the average child's drawing!
AI is a dangerous slippery slope. Not only does it's technology pose a huge threat to power grid stability but the amount water needed for cooling the server farms is drying up more important uses of water, like in farming or sustaining life for all creatures.
As for the BS marketing of AI, while these Tech bros let folks use their tech (for a fee) in all manner of "creativity," there's a few facts that creatives need to be aware of. While the individual can't copyright AI generated images or text, there's nothing stopping the AI companies from claiming that those same images are intellectual property of the AI companies. The legal implications of all this is mind boggling.
Sticking to making art made with my own hand and mind seems like the more logical, more sustainable course of action.
I just finished a painting for a friend. I wasn't special but it had great meaning for him. I wanted to capture an image of his summer home before he sold it. Over the years we spent many years enjoying summer at his little cabin but he is reaching an age where he can't travel all the way to the cabin and so he wishes someone else can enjoy it. That said I had memories of our time there and a few snapshots I had taken over the years but nothing resembling a descent composition or of any detail to make a rendering for a person who was more familiar with the cabin. I toyed with the idea of traveling all that way (a 12 hour journey) to sit and do some sketching and to take some reference shots of details that I didn't have in my head.
In the end I used my limited snapshots, some still from a youtube video I found that someone had shot about the area that had my friend's cabin in the back ground, and of all things, some screen grabs of Google Street View and Google Earth. I created a composition in Photoshop with all of these references and then I used this comp to make sketches from and then a final painting from the sketches.
In my mind the piecing together of the reference material from Google and Youtube was synonymous with an AI tool processing references that I didn't create. It felt wrong in some way but it was time consuming and laborious and I might have been able to put in prompt into ChatGPT to accomplish the same thing quicker but I felt like that was cheating on an even grander scale.
The sketching and painting that happened after the original composite was on par with any of my paintings but it somehow felt not great. The end result was fine and my friend really enjoyed the painting which was more important than how I felt about creating it ... I think! :)
I'm a software developer for my day job and I know a tiny bit about how AI tools work and I felt like my process was exactly the same as ChatGPT's process only slower. Create a composite image of a cabin located at x-y-z from such and such a direction. My reference like ChatGPT's was scraped content from the internet not created by me and it feels a little bit like stealing. Therefore the end result felt a little bit lackluster.
If a person who was not a painter had entered a similar prompt into ChatGPT and got a passable image out the other end would that have been a bad thing? I'm not sure. From the non-painter's perspective they created something that they wouldn't have been able to create otherwise. I think it would be much more rewarding for someone to actually learn how to paint or take photographs and to create the image themselves and my biggest fear is that no one in the future will be bothered to lean how to paint and create art.
To me if the painting was made from reference that I didn't have a hand in creating it is less of a creative endeavor and a far less enjoyable exercise. The end result, the painting, might be exactly the same but for me the process is more important than the end results, sometimes. :)
Using the digital tools is useful, of course, as are the photos. But what makes it yours are the sketches you work up from those - what you emphasize, what you don't. Your choices of lighting and the angle you felt was the best. You also were remembering that cabin and those memories made you think "this view, this time of day, this season."
I worked with tech for 23 years professionally. Over-promise, under-deliver is the clarion call of that industry.
I prefer the feel of charcoal on newsprint, the blend of greasy oils, the ringing overtone harmonics of the spruce top of my nylon-stringed guitar, the resonance of an old piano.
Analog is real, humans are meant to feel, smell, hear, touch, maybe not taste the cadmium though. I mentioned overtone harmonics intentionally because it's an easily reproducible example of the magic of reality that technology can't reproduce, the very life of art.
Beyond that, it is through studied practice that we master the arts. This very act makes us better, wiser humans. The lack of fulfillment in modern society is a direct result of the movement away from hard work and study. There's no investment, thus no reward.
At the end of the day, the arts are about sharing your unique perspective through sensory creations. AI isn't ever going to be able to do that, no matter how compelling the image. On the upside, it does lend legitimacy to taping a banana to the wall. That's impressive.
I think there will be a growing group of artists creating images and videos using a accommodation of very low tech, hands-on physical analog techniques combined with very sophisticated AI tools. Kinda like Laika did combining stop motion and 3-D printing.
"Analog is real" Absolutely! When you draw or paint something, real or imagined, you understand how it fits together, how it works. My day job is mechanical drafting, which morphed from board to computer over the years, and now 3D modeling and all. Part of the reason I am good at it is that I started from physically drawing the parts - so when they want a cable routed through a complex assembly that has only been built in software... yeah, I can do that. And keep coming back with "This connector won't fit through this sleeve. I don't care WHAT Mechanical told you, this ain't a gonna fit. Here is my proof, see? Here, here and here. Not gonna fit. So .. captive cables then. Oh that's gonna be "fun" to assemble."
My dad has passed, but I remember being amazed at his hands. He was a maker and an inventor, as well as being classically educated in literature and philosophy. When he would pick up an object in his hands, he would turn it over and study it in the most interesting way. If I were to do a portrait of him now I would want to make the hands a key part of the portrayal.
In a recent article in Realism Today, Daud Akhriev was quoted as saying “that the most important things in art are the subtleties.” When I started learning to draw and paint in a traditional method 4 years ago, I had no idea what I was getting into. “How hard could this be?” I once thought. Now I know how someone can spend a lifetime trying to capture what they see or imagine. Each attempt to create art involves every part of my person. Your points about AI pushing everything toward an average seem spot on. The subtleties that make art move us will be lost, and worse, those who seek AI’s help to make “art” may never develop the skills to recognize what subtleties are missing…. But I am certain they will feel their absence.
I am just going to "gripe" some more about the theft aspect. I love Roz Chast's cartoons, for example, and I hope she can keep working for many years, without her style being stolen by AI to make any silly fake idea someone dreams up, that looks like her work
One other thing I wonder about AI and art is how it will change artists’ connection to each other. Will young people feel it worthwhile to seek mentorship from masters, who can bond with them on their artistic journey? Or will they perceive AI to be an uber-master of all, and embark on solo, relationship-free journeys?
I’d just stay the hell away from AI in any part of my ARTISTIC practice.
Canva has an AI image generator which I _do_ use for volunteer design work in my town; “Santa’s sleigh pulled by Canada geese in an 1890’s style” is a whale of a lot easier with AI than with me trying to kluge something.
‘Most ads try to get us to buy in on the idea that some part of our creative process is boring, laborious, or tedious.’
I think this is a key point that many tech leaders misunderstand. The creation process _is_ arduous, but very much worth doing. It requires a lot of thought, patience, and discipline, all of which are beneficial for human happiness. An AI generator may make a more polished ‘painting’ than a new artist, but it cannot give the same sense of satisfaction or peace.
YES, I agree! Many tech leaders misunderstand or gloss over the dignity of human creative labor. The misunderstanding is especially deep and willful in the ads these tech leaders hit us with, which take it for granted that the "thought, patience, and discipline" you refer to are really just a grind, and beneath us.
Anyone who has really tried woodcarving, Copperplate lettering — or, shucks — plein-air painting, knows different.
We simply don't know how the Pyramids were built, or how the Antikythera mechanism was made, or — more shockingly — in the US, we don’t know how many manufacturing processes work. Why? Because we stopped doing these things, let machines or other people do them for us, and so we’ve forgotten. That’s my biggest fear with AI: a future generation that has forgotten entirely how to create: how to write, how to paint. And if we forget how to create, that’s the end of everything.
The hopeful thought is that it will spark a powerful counter-movement that cherishes the methods and mindsets of those lost & dying arts — just as the internet itself sparked a revival of hand knitting (as RogueToaster has also said here).
To me the scary Black Mirror side to what you're saying is that such counter-movements, and perhaps even human creativity, will become illegal, just as cars made it illegal to be a pedestrian.
Human: <Why am I under arrest?>
Robot: <I AM NOT ALLOWED TO DIVULGE THAT>
Bystander, sotto voce: <Their brain scanners and keystroke scrapers caught you imagining without Midjourney, and you didn't speak the prayer "All Hail Altman."
I reckon that the impulse to create art is so deeply ingrained in the human psyche that we will persist in our creative endeavors as for long as our species exists. Unfortunately, the ability to find commercial success with via writing or painting is not so guaranteed. And if those economic opportunities vanish, I do share your worry that certain techniques could be lost over time, simply because there won't be as many artists doing them as skillfully and as often.
On the other hand, knitting, weaving, and other forms of textile-based crafts are so time consuming that they are rarely commercially viable compared to today's capable machines. People still do them because the doing is worthwhile, and sometimes because the output differs significantly. A machine can't crochet and an LLM can't paint a physical painting. While that is not much comfort to the people trying to make their living off of art and writing, it is a little good news for the soul of our species, I think.
The economics of art careers is one of the hardest things to predict. In 1980, who could have imagined a YouTube creator as a legit career aspiration? I've heard it's the #1 life goal and career goal if you ask today's kindergartners.
That's why my advice to graduating art majors is *learn every skill you can, both digital skills an analog skills, be light on your feet and ready to pivot.*
We have been jammed into the hussle culture. Constantly expected to perform for money. We aren't supposed to enjoy making something - we're supposed to focus only on the end product, which we should sell. Feh. Money certainly IS useful, but beauty, the pleasure of making something, is priceless.
The young generation has already forgotten. When given a rotary dial telephone, they don't know what to do with it
YES! I am trying to get back into drawing and painting after far too long of not doing so. I noticed that while I am not happy with all the drawings, of course I won't be!, I am gratified to feel the eye/hand/mind muscles start to flex and remember how this is done. There is immense pleasure in doing this, even when I say "Ah, well that's not right, but this isn't bad." And of course, the more we draw and paint the better we get at it - and it is OURS. You are right - forgetting how to create is terrible, never learning in the first place is worse - they never know what they're missing.
It's amazing how much knowledge resides in our hands.
I am a landscape artist. I do not ever see me using anything that would not be "my own" thoughts to do so. AI is something that I believe if those artists use it, "they" are no longer being creative... it is not totally theirs. I believe that AI may help in some careers not associated with the arts in any way, but I am worried that people will start looking at art and saying it is done by AI when it isn't.
Marsha, you have perfectly expressed the way my wife feels about all this. She's not interested in handing off to a machine the joy of her own thoughts and inspirations. She knows it's out there, but she just doesn't want to get involved because she knows it will chip away at what makes art satisfying to her.
And that last point you made — "people will start looking at art and saying it is done by AI when it isn't" — is a powerful one. It's why I don't want to judge art competitions anymore, especially ones with digital-only submissions.
Thank you for your comment to me... and your wife said it perfectly as well... "handing off to a machine the joy of her own thoughts and inspirations" is not something I want to do, and hope other creatives will feel the same way.
First off, I just want to say that Dinotopia was one of my favorite books growing up. I looked at those pictures for hours at a time.
I saw the groundwork for AI as an art product being laid by online clipart farms where, for a subscription, corporate clients could use thousands of really generic and anonymous images to supplement their internal and promotional content.
The same thing happened with media outlets leaning hard on Getty images instead of providing actual photos or commissioned illustrations for news articles. The irony is that the generic clipart now has more character than the incredibly polished output of LLMs.
As a professional artist myself, I felt the impact of those image databases much more acutely than what’s happening with AI now. The market was already completely debased by the time AI showed up.
From a creative standpoint, there was a very brief sweet spot with AI where the images were hilariously crude. Do you remember that? Everything it produced looked sort of like a Francis Bacon painting. Facial features were smeared. Limbs were awkward. The art actually looked a little like handmade collage.
Because of how rough it was, and because you could kind of see the reasoning crudely playing out in the image’s construction, there was a kind of wonder to it. It had the same frailty as any other new technology, which gave it a lot of charm.
But of course it was only a matter of time before that charm was replaced with slickness. And I guess for me that’s the real dealbreaker for AI from the standpoint of personal taste. Art has always appealed to me because it documents our struggle to depict things that are impossible to pull off with perfection. I need to see the cracks and the flaws. Those little signatures of human error in a work of art are what inspire me.
Yes,I remember the early days of AI ,with all its wonkiness. I suppose the systems can always go back to some of that. It reminds me too of the early days of desktop publishing, with it's grunge fonts. Thanks for reconstructing the travails of clip art. That really did affect the field of illustration.
I admit, I greatly enjoy California's Gavin Newsom's media person's hilarious, over the top obviously AI lampoons of That Sulky Orange Guy.
I only rarely get caught by AI images, but that's because I drew and painted from a very early age and I'm very good at pattern recognition. I have been fooled a few times with weird flowers, but most of the time after a few minutes staring ... ah, yeah, AI. Yes, it's quicker than photoshopping, but it does have its telltales.
I feel that my imagination and creativity are a muscle I’ve spent a lifetime strengthening and I have no intention to let that muscle atrophy. I can’t find a single good reason to use AI for my art that can’t be described as laziness. AI art skips over the journey you must go on create something and the results are soulless.
Amen to that. I sense a movement forming.
Hi James. As a Luddite/Dinosaur, I am watching the world pass by with its "superior" technology and it's making me tired. Society is handing over its power to THINK in order to have whatever is faster/easier. My countless hours spent learning to draw/paint/knit/bake bread took perseverance and courage which are human qualities. Each failure was an opportunity to learn and each success was glorious. The main thing I'm creating is ME; I have to be able to look at myself in the mirror and know I didn't take the easy way out.
Well said, fellow "Luddosaur". We all worked so hard to get here. We're not all going to drop our backpacks and hop on the party bus. Let the bus take them where it will; and let's get back to the hiking trail.
Some of the points you mention are very important!
I'm a graphic novel artist and illustrator, and I don't use these tools. I may be a little old-fashioned, but I have to use my hands in the creative process – drawing is thinking, typing a prompt isn't.
To tell the truth I'm a bit scared that my job will be replaced by AI (not really the graohic novel part, but the illustration part). Some of my collegues lost some jobs, because some publishers are starting to use AI for book covers or illustrations, or some people use IA to produce (bad) posters and ads…
You can check out this site if you'd like to learn more about artists losing their jobs: https://www.bloodinthemachine.com/p/artists-are-losing-work-wages-and
It's hard to know where we'll be in 10 years, it's hard to know if I'll still be able to do the job I love and it's really scary.
I share the exact same fear as you, will I be able to have an art related job in 10 years? But we have to remember that the number of people who appreciate art created by humans vastly outnumber the number of big tech company executives and the people pushing for AI to have a place in the creative process. The people hold the power and they will do their best to make us forget that. They want us to be divided and distracted by arbitrary things that really don’t matter while they take away things that truly matter and are important to increase their profits.
Sometimes I have to ask myself: What was the need for which this technology was invented?
True, jobs will disappear because of this But I have faith new opportunities will open up, whether we use old fashioned tools or some composite methods. Be ready to adapt and evolve.
Soul. That's the indefinable quality we just 'feel' when we are in the presence of an original piece. That is what actually connects us, a spirituality, one person's mind, imagination, that speaks to us. That is simply not present in an AI piece and we know that instinctively.
We recently came back from a visit to the Irish National Gallery and spent a lot of time looking at old master paintings. The quality of soul that you mentioned really comes through, and as you say, when you're seeing an original piece. Do you feel that quality of soul can come through from a printed or scanned piece? What if a person feels genuinely inspired by an AI generated piece?
Yes, to a degree, there is a fundamental difference between something created entirely by AI and a copy of an original piece. It is not simply viewing the technique or skill, it is being in touch with the intent, the emotion the creator felt. However inadequately expressed or unskilled the viewer should’feel’ what was the intent. By definition there can be no intent or emotion from an AI piece, therefore the viewer cannot ‘feel’ what isn’t there.
Exactly.If you reduce visual art to it's simplest form,AI could NEVER capture the wonder,wise innocence,or confidence and sense if design of the average child's drawing!
AI is a dangerous slippery slope. Not only does it's technology pose a huge threat to power grid stability but the amount water needed for cooling the server farms is drying up more important uses of water, like in farming or sustaining life for all creatures.
As for the BS marketing of AI, while these Tech bros let folks use their tech (for a fee) in all manner of "creativity," there's a few facts that creatives need to be aware of. While the individual can't copyright AI generated images or text, there's nothing stopping the AI companies from claiming that those same images are intellectual property of the AI companies. The legal implications of all this is mind boggling.
Sticking to making art made with my own hand and mind seems like the more logical, more sustainable course of action.
I just finished a painting for a friend. I wasn't special but it had great meaning for him. I wanted to capture an image of his summer home before he sold it. Over the years we spent many years enjoying summer at his little cabin but he is reaching an age where he can't travel all the way to the cabin and so he wishes someone else can enjoy it. That said I had memories of our time there and a few snapshots I had taken over the years but nothing resembling a descent composition or of any detail to make a rendering for a person who was more familiar with the cabin. I toyed with the idea of traveling all that way (a 12 hour journey) to sit and do some sketching and to take some reference shots of details that I didn't have in my head.
In the end I used my limited snapshots, some still from a youtube video I found that someone had shot about the area that had my friend's cabin in the back ground, and of all things, some screen grabs of Google Street View and Google Earth. I created a composition in Photoshop with all of these references and then I used this comp to make sketches from and then a final painting from the sketches.
In my mind the piecing together of the reference material from Google and Youtube was synonymous with an AI tool processing references that I didn't create. It felt wrong in some way but it was time consuming and laborious and I might have been able to put in prompt into ChatGPT to accomplish the same thing quicker but I felt like that was cheating on an even grander scale.
The sketching and painting that happened after the original composite was on par with any of my paintings but it somehow felt not great. The end result was fine and my friend really enjoyed the painting which was more important than how I felt about creating it ... I think! :)
I'm a software developer for my day job and I know a tiny bit about how AI tools work and I felt like my process was exactly the same as ChatGPT's process only slower. Create a composite image of a cabin located at x-y-z from such and such a direction. My reference like ChatGPT's was scraped content from the internet not created by me and it feels a little bit like stealing. Therefore the end result felt a little bit lackluster.
If a person who was not a painter had entered a similar prompt into ChatGPT and got a passable image out the other end would that have been a bad thing? I'm not sure. From the non-painter's perspective they created something that they wouldn't have been able to create otherwise. I think it would be much more rewarding for someone to actually learn how to paint or take photographs and to create the image themselves and my biggest fear is that no one in the future will be bothered to lean how to paint and create art.
To me if the painting was made from reference that I didn't have a hand in creating it is less of a creative endeavor and a far less enjoyable exercise. The end result, the painting, might be exactly the same but for me the process is more important than the end results, sometimes. :)
The story of how such human works were made will be important to tell in future. Be sure to capture making of stills and video.
Using the digital tools is useful, of course, as are the photos. But what makes it yours are the sketches you work up from those - what you emphasize, what you don't. Your choices of lighting and the angle you felt was the best. You also were remembering that cabin and those memories made you think "this view, this time of day, this season."
I worked with tech for 23 years professionally. Over-promise, under-deliver is the clarion call of that industry.
I prefer the feel of charcoal on newsprint, the blend of greasy oils, the ringing overtone harmonics of the spruce top of my nylon-stringed guitar, the resonance of an old piano.
Analog is real, humans are meant to feel, smell, hear, touch, maybe not taste the cadmium though. I mentioned overtone harmonics intentionally because it's an easily reproducible example of the magic of reality that technology can't reproduce, the very life of art.
Beyond that, it is through studied practice that we master the arts. This very act makes us better, wiser humans. The lack of fulfillment in modern society is a direct result of the movement away from hard work and study. There's no investment, thus no reward.
At the end of the day, the arts are about sharing your unique perspective through sensory creations. AI isn't ever going to be able to do that, no matter how compelling the image. On the upside, it does lend legitimacy to taping a banana to the wall. That's impressive.
I think there will be a growing group of artists creating images and videos using a accommodation of very low tech, hands-on physical analog techniques combined with very sophisticated AI tools. Kinda like Laika did combining stop motion and 3-D printing.
"Analog is real" Absolutely! When you draw or paint something, real or imagined, you understand how it fits together, how it works. My day job is mechanical drafting, which morphed from board to computer over the years, and now 3D modeling and all. Part of the reason I am good at it is that I started from physically drawing the parts - so when they want a cable routed through a complex assembly that has only been built in software... yeah, I can do that. And keep coming back with "This connector won't fit through this sleeve. I don't care WHAT Mechanical told you, this ain't a gonna fit. Here is my proof, see? Here, here and here. Not gonna fit. So .. captive cables then. Oh that's gonna be "fun" to assemble."
My dad has passed, but I remember being amazed at his hands. He was a maker and an inventor, as well as being classically educated in literature and philosophy. When he would pick up an object in his hands, he would turn it over and study it in the most interesting way. If I were to do a portrait of him now I would want to make the hands a key part of the portrayal.
Bravo! Well said ( or written). The indefinable spark of human creativity must not be quenched, denied or squandered.
In a recent article in Realism Today, Daud Akhriev was quoted as saying “that the most important things in art are the subtleties.” When I started learning to draw and paint in a traditional method 4 years ago, I had no idea what I was getting into. “How hard could this be?” I once thought. Now I know how someone can spend a lifetime trying to capture what they see or imagine. Each attempt to create art involves every part of my person. Your points about AI pushing everything toward an average seem spot on. The subtleties that make art move us will be lost, and worse, those who seek AI’s help to make “art” may never develop the skills to recognize what subtleties are missing…. But I am certain they will feel their absence.
I am just going to "gripe" some more about the theft aspect. I love Roz Chast's cartoons, for example, and I hope she can keep working for many years, without her style being stolen by AI to make any silly fake idea someone dreams up, that looks like her work
One other thing I wonder about AI and art is how it will change artists’ connection to each other. Will young people feel it worthwhile to seek mentorship from masters, who can bond with them on their artistic journey? Or will they perceive AI to be an uber-master of all, and embark on solo, relationship-free journeys?
Oooh, a good question to consider. We think of art skills as something passed down from human to human. What if we're all drawing from the same well?
I’d just stay the hell away from AI in any part of my ARTISTIC practice.
Canva has an AI image generator which I _do_ use for volunteer design work in my town; “Santa’s sleigh pulled by Canada geese in an 1890’s style” is a whale of a lot easier with AI than with me trying to kluge something.
Thanks for the comment, Charlie. I suppose each of us has come up with our own bargain with Techno-Lucifer.