Frankly, as someone who’s a bit of a techie – the advent of AI has truly felt like a watershed moment for humanity, much in the same was that Reduced Instruction Set Computing was for the PC revolution in the 1980s. However, I find that many of my artist compadres (including myself) are deeply unsettled by this new technology. And as generative AI only seems to be getting better, I find myself wondering what the point of pursuing a career (or even a side-job) in the arts is.
The other day, I was able to feed in a picture of myself, and have GPT 4o shit out the same image in the style of Caravaggio (per my request), and it was fantastic, amazing, no noticeable AI artifacts. I found a child-like part of me absolutely enamored with this new tech, and frankly pretty inspired. However, another part of me felt deeply disturbed by this. It was good… too good.
Part of me believes that this is all due to the poisoning of artistic expression by capitalism (commie much?) – the fact that, I felt, in order to be able to live the life I wanted to as an artist, I’d need to make money off of it. And this generative AI seemed to be destroying that very concept of being a working graphic artist. This is still not settled for me – however, it lead me to a realization: why do I make art in the first place? Really. What made me decide to pick up a pencil, or lets be real, dip my 2-year-old hand in a cup of paint and smear it on a canvas? I think the very act of creating is something that feeds my soul – something that AI will never be able to take away from me. That drive has never left me – to this day, I find the primary impetus to create art is not to be recognized (which is nice), is not to make money (also nice), not to be seen as a sophisticated artist who’s so in touch with their creative side – but for the simple act of expressing myself.
I often find that I’m making art for myself. I’m the #1 purchaser of my own shirts – they don’t sell for shit, but that’s okay. Because, frankly, this is all for myself. I don’t need anyone elses admiration, or validation. Because I like what I do. I like what I create. And no amount of generative AI will ever take that away because it can’t do what I do – which is create art myself. Even if it’s able to completely imatate my art style – that doesn’t matter, because it’s not the end product that I’m totally concerned with (though I certainly enjoy seeing it), rather, it’s the very act of creating art that I’m obsessed with. I can’t tell you how many works in progress I have, how many pieces that I’ve never finished. They all seem to point to the same concept – I LOVE MAKING ART. And I’ll never stop loving it. Even if it makes me no money. Even if I’m never recognized for it. Even if I never achieve success with it.
So this is all to say, bring it on generative AI. You may destroy the very idea of me “succeeding” at art from the perspective of capital gain, but you’ll never take away my ability to feed my soul though my own art – to decorate my own life with my expression – to depict the world and my ideas through the best of my ability. Because AI art is inherently soulless. AI doesn’t feel, AI doesn’t have life experience. AI hasn’t failed, hasn’t kept going in the face of those failures. Because AI doesn’t create art for itself.
I choose to see AI as just another tool. A fancy one at that, but simply no replacement for a human being. I’m not interested to hear what AI has to say about the things it creates – frankly I’m more interested in hearing from the human being who prompted the AI, what made them choose that subject.
At this point, I’m rambling, but I had to express my thoughts on AI. I don’t hate it, I don’t resent it, I don’t fear it. Because it will never replace the reason I’ve been making art my whole life.