Some further thoughts on generative AI art
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.
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.
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