As technological change and advances continue to occur, AI-generated art grows easier to use, faster, and the results more sophisticated. But that doesn’t necessarily make those results any better.
Last December Forbes Senior Contributor Dani Di Placido wrote about some of the issues stemming from art created by AI and how it’s affecting living artists.
One of the issues is environmental. AI places a huge strain on the nation’s energy grid and the insane amount of water required to cool the required machinery is wasteful beyond belief. Throw in the need for constant supervision and troubling matters of copyright infringement, and it feels like more trouble than it’s worth.
Another issue concerns the role of the artist and the respect artists do — or do not — receive.
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“Generative AI threatens the livelihood of artists,” Forbes’ Di Placido, writes, “pitting their labor against the cheap slop produced by dead machines. The technology only benefits those who wish to produce content as quickly and cheaply as possible, by removing artists from the creative process.”
Remember: when you remove an individual’s human imagination and its unexpected and often surprising leaps, you destroy the act of creation. AI cannot create; it can only reshuffle. AI-generated art is lifeless.
And, as Di Placido, contends, it’s also boring. “Have you ever seen generative AI create anything even remotely interesting, beyond grotesquely amusing memes?”
Sarah Manavis in The New Statesman finds AI art a generator of only one thing: pessimism about the future. “It tells us that imagination and creativity have already been stretched to their limits, and our only job now is to endlessly tinker within those margins. It shuts us off to the idea of something we haven’t conceived before and suggests that, even if it’s possible, the best way forward is to shirk anything that feels different or new.”
Laura Pitcher at VICE.com spoke with a number of artists about how rotten AI-generated art is and came up with a most interesting twist on the subject:
“Throughout history, it’s been proven time and time again that art becomes more compelling (and profitable) with the right narrative. The reason AI art is so terrible right now is because it’s not being used as a tool to showcase a message – instead, it is the sole narrative. Let’s face it, a bunch of tech bros coding software that internet users have turned into a meme factory makes for weak storytelling. So, too, does the rise of brands using AI art as an edgy way to sell products. With this in mind, AI art will only become an innovative artistic tool once it’s actually used for artistic innovation.”
Those who belong to the “There’s-No-Bad-Technology-Just-Bad-Uses-Of-It” school of thought will be heartened by that conclusion. Others harbor grave reservations about the ethical, legal, and artistic consequences of AI art.
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It’s unlikely – for now – that AI will destroy humanity, as some have claimed. Don’t worry about machines becoming more human-like and taking over. Worry about human beings reduced to the level of competent, useful but unthinking drones whose lives are determined only by what is already known, expected, enjoyed, purchased. Technology may indeed be neutral – but the purposes to which it’s turned are not.
