When AI art first appeared on the scene a year or two ago, I thought it was a rather interesting novelty and nothing more. I did not even consider that it would ever come close to replacing real artists like myself. However, as the technology has progressed and more people have used it to create images, I began to be afraid that I, like so many, might be replaced by a machine.
Like many others in my field, I responded with anger. No, not anger; rage. I felt the heat of a boiling mass of hot hatred for all things technology burning a hole in my chest. And I wasn’t the only one. Many others in my circle of the internet felt that same rage.
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">🔥 AI art is the distilled feces of bugworld sewage. It takes human creativity and warps it. It's Sauron deforming the elves into Orks.</p>— Alexandru Constantin ☀️ ☕ (@dacianwanderer) <a href="
14, 2022</a></blockquote> <script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
After anger came despair. My career was just dawning and already it seemed as though it was over. I don’t wish to reverse course; changing careers mid-stream seemed like a bad idea, however, mine seemed to be headed inexorably toward a cliff.
What was I to do?
Since I didn’t know what else to do, I turned to my creative friends. Many shared my anger and frustration over the AI menace. They were afraid for their own artistic careers, and more, what the technology meant for the devaluing of the human spirit. That’s more of a metaphysical/philosophical element of the discussion. Art is possibly the highest expression of the human heart and soul; if a machine can do it, what does that mean for us?
The truth is, a machine can’t create art any more than a machine can tell you the meaning of life. It can only regurgitate the works of human artists, sometimes in corrupted and ugly ways. Can that rightly be called art?
Cartoonist and animator Doug TenNapel compared the difference between AI art and man-made art to the difference between porn and sex:
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">AI is like porn. It's an art placebo. <a href="
16, 2022</a></blockquote> <script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
Others, however, pointed to comparisons with technological developments of the past. In the 1990’s and 2000’s, CGI began to replace traditional special effects, such as stop-motion animation, puppetry and miniatures. By the 2010’s, ebooks became widely available and traditional bookshops began closing their doors.
However, these technologies did not replace their analogue counterparts entirely. People still largely prefer print to ebooks. While many traditional bookstores closed, others remained open. There are hundreds of thousands of used bookstores all around the country which are doing well, thanks in part to the internet. They can sell their wares all over the country through sites like Thriftbooks and BookShop.
CGI, while it is widely used and has done much to change special effects, is still not as crisp or lifelike as practical effects. Many moviegoers can easily tell the difference. The most recent iterations of Star Trek and Star Wars used practical effects to create many of their creatures for a reason.
As I said, a computer cannot create, it can only regurgitate. We still need human artist, perhaps now more than ever. AI doesn’t get everything right, because it’s just a computer. As good as it has become at imitating humanity, it’s still only imitation. Anyone can tell that, just by looking at the way it handles hands and feet.
Furthermore, when we reduce creativity to a bunch of 1’s and 0’s, we essentially devalue our own spirit in the process. I’m in favor of industrialization to a point; heck, it’s how I’m communicating to you now, but the more we mechanize EVERY aspect of our lives, the more we erode what truly makes us human. We become machines, without souls, without ambition, without value. Is it any wonder that so many are depressed and suicidal nowadays?
I believe in traditional skills, not just visual art, but other things, like woodworking, gardening, and animal husbandry. I have to believe others care about those traditional arts as well and that we will fight to keep them alive.
I am doing my best to remain optimistic about the future of art and my own future as an artist, but I have a feeling that finding work is going to be even harder now.
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