Izzy Latture
I agree that art is an entirely human enterprise because there is a certain amount of emotion required in order to create art, and AI lacks the necessary feeling. Art is, in my opinion, entirely about perspective and the way that the artist views what they want to draw: a scene, a landscape, an image in their head, etc. and in order to truly capture what they see, they ground their art in the emotions their muse invoked. Everything about art is particular and selected for a specific reason. For example, a camera angle can determine
what is shown in the frame of a photograph and the light the audience sees it in; the brushstrokes of a painting can convey what the artist was trying to portray and add subtle nuance to whatever they are painting. Therefore, I believe that AI can create something that mocks art, but is not considered art.
When considering the fact that art, and just about everything in this world, builds upon what was previously discovered or already created, the use of AI might be justified. As stated in Everything is a Remix, “Everything we create is copied, transformed, and combined from our culture.” Whether it be an artist was inspired by another or directly plagiarized from another author, all work created by an artist comes from some form of preexisting art. However, the issue lies within what constitutes an art piece. AI learns from the data it is given, which, controversially, has not always been given voluntarily. AI only produces unfeeling jumbles of plagiarized art at any user’s command. Thus, the uproar about AI art comes from the fact that it takes from the real artists who spent precious time creating their art, and AI “creates art,” something laborious and greatly emotional, in a matter of seconds.
Another perspective arises when arguing against AI: can AI be considered an artist? The short answer is no. The longer answer begins with the logical fallacy at hand, which is that if AI does not create art, it therefore cannot be an artist. However, it goes far past that surface level observation. AI learns from others, it applies those learned concepts to its creations and constantly evolves as a result of the constant influx of data put into it.
Herein lies the contradiction: whereas an artist learns from practice and constant cycles of trial and error, AI can generate anything and everything with the correct prompt. The only trial and error involved with AI is a user adjusting their query to make the pseudo artist output what they want. There is no tedious search for perfection nor a severe overcorrection of what never needed to be fixed that comes with the humanity of the arts. AI simply generates over and over again without question. This is not the character required to be an artist, so AI is not an artist and does not create art. I did not use generative AI to write this essay.