When the flush of a newborn sun fell first on Eden's green and gold,
Our father Adam sat under the Tree and scratched with a stick in the mold;
And the first rude sketch that the world had seen was joy to his mighty heart,
Till the Devil whispered behind the leaves: "It's pretty, but is it Art?"
I’ve been pretty bored by the AI Art debate or conversation until very recently. I think
AI Art marks an important rupture in our perception and our appreciation of art, enough to call
it a revolution. As you’ll see, this rupture has existed for a long time, but AI Art will
make this separation, if it hasn’t been done already, unrepairable.
In a nutshell, AI generated art consists of prompting an artificial intelligence to make
an image. From a database of an inimaginable amount of images, it’ll produce several
which will correspond more or less to your prompt.
Now that’s fun and all, but some concerns have been raised. Questions about the ethical
collection of data to feed these AIs, or the ethics of using people’s artworks to feed
this AI. What about companies using AI generated images to replace the work of artists? What
if the artist, who needs a wage and money to live, is replaced by a cheap AI? This
last question might sound a bit ridiculous, but works made by an artificial intelligence,
at least digitally, can be indistinguishable from works made by actual artists.
What does that entail? What does it mean for the future of artists
and art? I obviously don’t have answers to all these questions and the opinions I
will share here may change eventually. Knowing how contentious this subject is, I invite
you to change my mind in the comment section if you disagree.
I’ll get some of the questions out of the way rapidly:
What about the ethics of data collection for AI? Data collection online is not a problem
specific to AI generated art. It’s a problem, but I think the AI Art debate would still
happen even if the data collection was completely ethical. It’s deeper than that.
What about the ethics of using the artworks of artists to feed your AI? The history of
art is the history of copying and making reiterations of previous artworks. I would argue that human
progress is the history of people building upon the progress of their predecessors.
The problem with using the work of artists to create new artworks, which has been a common
practice throughout history, is because AI generated art is free, or very cheap, for
corporations to use them. Artists who want to be able to feed themselves now don’t
only need to compete with other artists, but with a cheap, instant AI who can produce any
art in a fraction of a second.
The question here is: Do we want to live in a world where the job of artists is replaced
by AI?
Technology and automation have always been an issue in terms of eliminating jobs. That’s
what automation is designed to do.
Automation is a good thing. Any society in the history of humanity would gladly cheer
for automation. Less necessary labour means a better quality of life, right?
Well, not under capitalism. For capitalism, automation is a bad thing because if robots
do our jobs, if they, for example, harvest food for us, then how will we be able to afford
food? It’s a paradox under capitalism: if production is automated, then nobody will
be able to afford these products because most will be unemployed.
Automation is a good thing if we assume that the labour made by machines is going to be
for the benefit of humanity, not for the profit of the machine owners.
But for art, there’s something different about automation because we really want the
human touch. Most criticism of AI art I found online boiled down to a gut feeling of discomfort
to the idea that machines could make artworks indistinguishable from the ones humans make.
Why does AI generated art provoke this fear? I think we might be afraid that automized
processes might make art less soulful, less human. However, I’m not entirely convinced
by that. Disney’s Alice in Wonderland was hand painted frame-by frame. Nowadays, many
animation techniques such as tweening or rigging have computers do most of the heavy-lifting
for animation, at least when compared to frame-by-frame. One could say that animation lost a bit of
its soul when it stopped being painted frame-by-frame, but the issue wasn’t the introduction of
computer software or semi-automation, which became a tool for animators. The issue was
that this tool became somewhat obligatory because of the profit-motive, because of capitalism.
Capitalism obviously has tremendous impact on art and we tend to forget about that because
of capitalist realism, or the notion that we can’t imagine anything outside of capitalism.
To best illustrate the impact of the profit-motive on cinema, we can turn to George Lucas (for
my younger audience, he’s behind Star Wars and Indiana Jones).
What makes art soulless isn’t the fact that it’s generated by a machine, but the fact
that it’s commodified. The worrying thing about AI generated art is that corporations
will use it and make art even more stale, devoid of any innovation, of any soul. But
that’s not new, that’s been happening for years. For a system that supposedly encourages
risks and innovation, capitalism has been doing quite a terrible job culturally. Let’s
stick to what sells and reproduce it, repackage it and resell it as long as its profitable.
But that’s not the only negative impact capitalism has on culture. For artists who
need to make money to survive, they need to work for, usually, corporations. Many artists,
just to afford living, just to justify their existence, need to sell-out, need to make
art they don’t necessarily like or necessarily want to do. That makes for soulless art.
Artificial Intelligence can be an incredible tool for artists, but, under capitalism, it’ll
become a requirement which, instead of enabling new ways for artists to express themselves,
might limit and stifle their creativity.
Perhaps one day I’ll make a video on the impacts of capitalism on art, but let’s
get back to AI Art.
The introduction of AI art sparked a conversation about what art is. And to understand what
art is, I’d like to quickly explore the reasons why we make art. And, specifically,
why would we make art in a world where artificial intelligence can do it for us?
I’ve been watching the Stalker directed by Andrei Tarkovsky, written by the Strugatsky
brothers, where a writer, as they take a break in their journey, gives a monologue to a science
professor:
The writer not only positions humans at the centre of art, he also argues that it’s
our purpose to create art. And while he says that all this technology is a crutch, I see
it as a way of slowly liberating ourselves from the necessity to labour for survival.
The less we need to labour for survival, that is to labour to feed and shelter ourselves,
the more we can labour for personal and collective growth, that is the more we can put work into
creating art, into understanding and exploring art.
It might sound like a foreign idea today as most people’s purpose in life becomes their
jobs and most people’s appreciation and understanding of art is the consumption of
entertainment.
You might see where I’m going with this and you might not like it. Narrowing the definition
of art is something very scary to many people. Separating Art from Entertainment, or “high
art” from “low art”, is an exercise that can lead into elitist territory. However,
I believe Ai Art forces us to narrow the definition of art. That, to me, is the Ai Art revolution.
Ai Art is going to increase our standards as to what art is. From now on, there will
be art and illustration.
The conversation about the definition of art has been sparked many times in the art world,
perhaps most famously with Marcel Duchamps’ Fountain where Duchamps presented a urinal
and claimed it to be art. He argued that, by forcing us to treat this object as art,
it became art the moment we engaged with it as art.
This object, without the artistic intent, was not art. With the artistic intent, it
became one of the most influential artworks of the 20th century.
One of my favourite terms coined by Duchamps was “retinal art” or the idea that some
artworks just appeal to the eye and nothing more. He was quoted famously for saying: “I
was interested in ideas – not merely in visual products, I wanted to put painting
once again at the service of the mind.”
This distinction between the painting at the service of the mind or the eye, the idea that
culture is aimed at growth and not entertainment, creates a divide, a divide exacerbated and
confirmed by Ai Art.
This divide brings me to think: Not every drawing, not every painting, not every sculpture,
not every picture, not every image is art. The same way not every text is a novel, a
poem, or art. The same way not every video is cinema, or art.
“It’s pretty, but is it art?”
AI art is finally making many people realize that art isn’t beauty. Something can be
very beautiful, yet not be art. A sunset isn’t art, though it can be beautiful. A tree isn’t
art, though it can be beautiful. However, these can become art if contextualized and
conceptualized as art, as Duchamps once did with a urinal.
I think AI generated images are the same. They can be beautiful images, but not art,
because beauty is not enough anymore to make an image art. You can paint a beautiful landscape,
or a really cool-looking character, but if it doesn’t create an engagement with an
audience in any way aside from creating a sense of beauty, if it acts as entertainment
or just appeals to the eye, then, to me, I’m more comfortable calling it illustration.
Art requires something like a social conversation, a broader reflection a deeper meaning or intention.
This is why Scorsese calls Marvel movies “theme parks” rather than cinema. I’m applying
that to the visual arts, which is why I’m ok with calling retinal art “illustration”
rather than art.
And as long as AI illustration can’t give deeper meaning or engagement to an image,
no matter how beautiful it is, it’ll remain illustration. It’s pretty, but it isn’t
art. If you make images just because they’re beautiful or cool-looking, without deeper
meaning or engagement, you’re making illustrations which, by the way, isn’t necessarily a bad
thing. I will enjoy a landscape painting which doesn’t have any other meaning than “this
is a cool landscape” the same way I’ll enjoy a sunset, or a really nice tree. But,
just like the sunset, I won’t consider it art. However, if you want to make art, be
thought-provoking, share an experience, contribute to people’s understanding of the world,
use an image as a tool of communication, not merely as a tool of entertainment.
As an artist, you have to think of the writer in Tarkovsky’s Stalker. If our purpose is
to make artworks, how can you fulfill that purpose? Ask yourself, is it enough to appeal
to the eye as would a tree, stars, mountains or AI generated images. I don’t think it
is - not anymore.
Ai generated images is not the death of artists, and even less so of art. It might be the death
of illustration, or illustrators.
Photography killed a whole industry of artists once it became popular. People who drew products
for advertisements, people who painted portraits, etc. lost their jobs. However, photography
also pushed artists into modernity, forcing them to create new ways of expressing and
interpreting the world around them, new ways of engaging, and having others engage, with
the world. AI art will force artists to stop making art for the sake of making pretty or
cool images. Ai art will force artists to make specifically, precisely and authentically
human artworks, artworks designed to be engaged with, designed to contribute to a social conversation,
designed to communicate. An artificial intelligence can recreate beauty, but can’t recreate
the thought, the meaning and the intent behind an artwork. That, I hope, will lead us towards
a wave of more thoughtful, meaningful and intentional artworks.