AI Art, Part 1: What is it, and who makes it?
This ended up much longer than I expected, so I'm splitting it into two parts (for now). I have a lot of opinions about (AI) art, and I wanted to discuss them.
This first part deals with what I think art is, and some of my frustrations about the fact that AI art doesn't democratize creativity so much as it democratizes the ability to potentially profit from art. I disagree with the idea that there is creativity involved.
The second part will be about why I was initially really excited for AI art. I used to think it had so much potential! And it still might, but not if we keep its outputs mass-marketable.
What is art, and is AI making it?
Everyone will give you a different answer to that first question, but the simplest answer I can give is that I believe that art is a kind of communication. I think it is also an essential part of being human. We have found paintings that were made nearly 50,000 years ago, and that's just what survived.
I don't just think paintings are art, but any form of creative expression. Sculpture, music, dance, poetry, anything. If you're seeing this definition and thinking, "That's way too broad! It includes things that we wouldn't want to call art," I'd like to counter that with a "so what?"
As someone who has heard the questions "What is art?" and "Is this art?" more times than I can count, I can tell you for certain that there are much more interesting questions to ask. I err on the side of things being art rather than not being art because I think that's a more fun world to live in. If you think something isn't art, though, I (probably) won't argue with you.
So, can a product of AI be art? Yes, I think so. AI can produce something that communicates a message, however muddled, and which is a human product, however overprocessed.1 But is there an artist involved? Is there creativity involved? I'm less sure.
Who gets to be an artist?
I have loved to draw for as long as I can remember. I consider myself an artist at my core. Among my creative friends, AI is unequivocally a menace, which is a feeling that often seems to be framed as jealousy by AI's supporters.
Of course artists wouldn't like that their craft is no longer exclusive. Now that anyone can draw, or produce music, or make a movie, we can all do what they can do!
Well... yes and no. Yes, artists do not like that AI is taking, or at least about to take, human jobs. People need money to live, and AI doesn't.
But what's more: the belief that what you, the prompter, get from the AI is your creation is false. The prompt was your creation, but the result was the product of the work of so many people that we probably couldn't accurately picture the crowd they'd form, if they all gathered in one place. You are lost in it.
Maybe, to some, it's worth losing the vast majority of their creative freedom in order to get a "higher-quality" product far more quickly. Maybe there is no joy in the process for them. I would encourage them to try again.
"High-quality" art
I recently read Sam Altman's blog post about Sora 2, and this line stuck with me (the emphasis is my own):
Creativity could be about to go through a Cambrian explosion, and along with it, the quality of art and entertainment can drastically increase.
The quality of art can only increase if you believe that the quality of art is quantifiable. Maybe this would be an interesting idea if it were genuinely investigated instead of taken for granted in a throwaway sentence, but we know the quantity he's talking about. We all know that low-quality art doesn't sell. Right?
There are a lot of people online who have agreed to call the output of AI "slop". Do I also agree? Yes. I admit, it makes me a little sick to my stomach sometimes when I see or hear something that's AI, and it's hard to place why.
I normally like art that makes me uncomfortable, or at the very least, art that's rough around the edges. I just find it far more interesting to look at something repulsive than to look at something conventionally beautiful. Like, okay, you have skill, you can make something lovely, but you aren't doing anything daring. When it comes to art, I have more respect for someone who tries and fails to do something new and interesting than for someone who plays it safe very well. It's a personal preference.
I think AI art efortlessly makes very conventionally beautiful things. It took out the one thing that was interesting about beautiful art: the process.
I will let you in on a secret that I learned while studying art history. You can lean in as close as you want to the paintings at the museum. As long as you don't touch them, no one will care. I've had my face inches away from some. Look at the individual strokes. Even in realistic paintings--especially in realistic paintings--You will see colors you would never have put there yourself. You will notice purples and yellows at the borders of shadows, greens and blues on human skin. You'll see the ridges of dry paint left by the brush, and you'll find yourself imagining the hand that put them there.
Notes
I'm open to the idea of non-humans (which includes animals, plants, machines, etc.) creating art, but I think it's a trickier thing to argue, and it's harder to know where to begin. To be little more specific, I think that art must be interpreted as art, which as far as I know necessarily involves a human to interpret it. So, even if a non-human makes art, that act would depend on a human interpreting what was made as art.↩