AI and Art, Blog post #3

Maddy Morrison

In recent years, the abilities of artificial intelligence have been rapidly increasing. With the ability to create videos, images, music, and writing in ways that very much resemble human made work. Speculations on wether or not it is able to truly create art have been up for debate, however it is unable to truly create artwork on its own. Any piece of work is only an imitation or combinations of earlier work. AI can generate generic images as well as use many keys aspects of art such as patterns, color theory, and incorporate different art styles. However, it has yet to reach the ability to generate innovative or new ideas without the help of any generic images to help train or taking inspiration from the creativity used used to create these different art styles, medias, and concepts.

This lack of originality, though seemingly like many humans who take inspiration from other artists, is different because the “creations” being made are only combinations of earlier works. No new creation is truly created. It lacks key parts of the human spirit including emotions, intentions, understanding, beliefs, thoughts and lived experiences. Meaning it is missing what makes it meaningful. Real artwork is depress interconnected with the human experience, often even reflecting on the artist beliefs or experiences. The life of an artist creates depth and meaning within the art, even media and other artwork consumed affects the artist’s work. Often even allowing artists to draw inspiration, interpreting it in several ways through their own emotions, experiences, and intentions. They are still able to make it their own and transform these ideas into something new with meaning and intention behind it. Ai is unable to interpret its own work as well or conceptualize the ideas it is producing. As well as lacking any key components of the creative process such as reflection, revision, decision making, and taking the time to create the artwork. Instead, it uses its data and replication, to build of information it has previously obtained.

This use of generic images artificial intelligence uses from the internet to train massive data system, including countless images from many different artists raises many moral and ethical questions. In Kirby Fergusons YouTube video, Everything is a Remix, he asks the questions “Is it ethically right or at least acceptable that these artists images were used without consent”. He goes onto explain that though These artists were unable to consent to their pieces being used for this platform and have no way of knowing if their image has even been used, they are public domain. Many artists have even spoken up on how it is unfair and they do not want their work being used. With AI being entirely reliant on the creativity of others it is not possible for it to be entirely called the creator of its output. However, it can be a tool to guide artist and help them generate ideas. It is a helpful tool to use for brainstorming as well as creating cohesiveness among different pieces. I even used AI to help me generate ideas that work be cohesive for my sustain investigation for my art class last year, so that I could have help coming up with ideas that would work well together.

Overall, artificial intelligence can be a great tool and immensely helpful, if used ethically, however it is not a tool that can create real artwork. It can imitate art and often seem like it has created novel ideas and work, but it is not and cannot produce actual work. Artificial intelligence can only mirror and create a reflection human emotions, thoughts, and intentions. All qualities of artwork that only humans are capable of and is something no algorithm will be able to replace.