I agree
with Kirby Ferguson when he says that art is a human enterprise and the proof is there when you compare a piece of AI art to real art done by a human. Art comes from lived experiences and makes people come together and relate on something or makes them disagree, but many times there is an emotional outcome when you see the piece of art. With AI art there is not much depth to it and even if you plug in another artist’s work to train an AI model it still will never be as impressive as the original because it lacks the meaning the original art piece possesses. Ferguson explains, “The collective achievements of art belong to everyone. They are as free as the air”(“Everything is a Remix”). When an artist gets angry because someone is using their style or someone is using their art for inspiration it is a complex situation because the point of art is to build off of different material. It is difficult to start completely from scratch when you might have source amnesia from different artists you have seen inyour life. Ferguson then admits “Yes, there is some piracy going on in AI image generation. There’s some piracy going on everywhere. I’m doing piracy right now and you’re watching me”(“Everything is a Remix”). This video dives deep into the idea that each thing we do is never actually original because as humans we will continue to add on to each other’s ideas and inventions. There is also the truth that people like to experience things that they already have some sort of a basis on. So for example if someone is listening to music and it reminds them of a song they already love they are more inclined to listen to that song. Humans love to feel comfortable and part of something. This is also why when we learn we like to attach different ideas and build off of them to understand a subject better. So this is all why it is important to understand when you are creating art you are not just creating something made by you but you are contributing to art as a whole, and if you are lucky someone will use your art as inspiration to better tend to their audience. I do believe that you can also use AI as a tool for art and not just the creator. For example if someone is looking for something to create and they want to create it based off of a subject that they are not as informed about they may use AI to understand their subject better and look for ideas on how to incorporate this information into their artwork. As long as you are not just plugging an idea into AI and letting them create the whole picture, AI can be a helpful tool to understand better what you are creating. Overall, art is a large spectrum and sometimes the line between what is art and what is artificial can be blurry but it is important to pay attention to the amount of effort put into each piece and how AI could also be used for good in the art world as technology advances.
I did not use generative AI to write this essay.