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Mary O’Leary explores the phenomenon of AI generated art and discusses its place in the art world in comparison to its digital and traditional counterparts.
From the cave paintings of Precivilization to the murals of the Renaissance, and from the Romantic period to today, art has evolved hand-in-hand with human technology. Art is often considered to have been the first evidence of human intelligence, with the first cave painting having been found nearly 73,000 years ago.
The creation and evolution of art are unavoidably in tandem with the story and development of humanity, so what happens when humans are no longer creating it? How do we define art when the process of creating compelling images is now as simple as typing an idea into generative AI?
We now have this creative ability through the use of technology, and it is the modern age that will now determine how we classify its creations. Though relatively new to the widespread populace, the creation of AI art can be traced back to the mid-20th century. However, it truly gained momentum in the past few years as users can avail of generative AI images as a way to ‘teach’ the AI new artistic techniques.
AI art is not the only modern form of ‘art’ which utilises technology and whose validity has been called into question by critics and traditional artists. Digital art has experienced a large amount of criticism, specifically for digital artists’ use of technology. This art is usually created through an online website or sketchpad, making it more accessible to the public compared to more traditional art forms.
For the past decade, digital art has dominated the online world with millions of people using apps like Pinterest, Instagram, and Tumblr to share their own digital art. However, despite its growing popularity it does raise questions about its credibility.
Digital art, unlike traditional art, cannot use the physical techniques needed for a real-life painting or drawing. It is, for all intents and purposes, meant to be copy and pasted without the significance of an ‘original’ copy to be hung in a museum. In that regard, both digital art and AI art find themselves subject to the same artistic debate. Both utilise technology, experience widespread condemnation, yet are also defended for their accessibility to the public.
With that being said, they can still be divided by one key difference that arguably solidifies the divide between the two; human creation. Whilst digital art is further evidence of the evolution of human creation, AI art cannot be classified as the same. Its creations are entirely replicated by the images its users have fed it, with most of those images being stolen from digital art itself.
Look to Pinterest, Instagram, and Tumblr today and you’ll find that communities that spread and center around both digital and physical art, are now almost entirely overrun with generated AI. As AI is fed more and more examples of human art, it continues to get better at replicating the kind of images it is being given. Very soon it will be almost impossible to tell whether or not a piece of art on the internet was created by a person or not.
Even more concerning, is how AI art will affect the job market for artists themselves. If creating original, non-copyrighted work is so easy, why wouldn’t an employer use AI instead of having to pay money for the work of a real-life person? Already there have been controversies surrounding the use of AI in advertisements, with Coca Cola releasing an AI commercial just last December. The question isn’t if AI generated art will take away jobs, but simply how long it will take for the artistic job market to be completely overrun by it.
The World Economic Forum has stated that “Research from Goldman Sachs suggests that generative AI has the potential to automate 26% of work tasks in the arts, design, entertainment, media and sports sectors.”AI art isn’t art, not because it isn’t created by human beings but because every image it creates is an imitation rather than the evolution of something designed by its own freewill. It may know every single artistic technique used in history and be able to replicate it to perfection, but AI does not spend the countless hours that a human does to get a drawing exactly how they want it. AI lacks humanity and can't feel the satisfaction or pride when it gets the smile on a painting just right.
Often, we as human beings do not appreciate the process it takes for someone to create art. We don’t see the generations of artistic evolution before us or the decades it takes for an artist to hone their craft. To many an image is just an image, but the lead up to the creation of that image and everything that is involved in the process is what truly defines what ‘real’ art is.