The Presumption of AI Artists
This blog post was not written by AI…
But it could have been. You can now pay a company to write blog posts for you. With a few simple ‘prompts’ to help capture the theme and the feel of your post, you can completely automate the writing process. Think of all the content I could ‘create’ if I could type less words than what I’ve just typed here, and had the AI spit out screed after screed of content on the daily!
Another productive Facebook thread.
The same thing is currently all the rage in the realm of visual art. Legit artists are feeling disenfranchised because the AI is doing in seconds what it would take hours or days to produce. Folks like me, who can’t draw worth a damn are creating content like this for mostly fun and possible profit:
• Acid-free, PH-neutral, poly-cotton base
• 20.5 mil (0.5 mm) thick poly-cotton blend canvas
• Canvas fabric weight: 13.9 oz/yd2(470 g/m²)
• Fade-resistant
• Hand-stretched over solid wood stretcher bars
• Matte finish coating
• 1.5″ (3.81 cm) deep
• Mounting brackets included
• Blank product in the EU sourced from Latvia
• Blank product in the US sourced from the US
I am no artist, nor do I pretend to be one. Where I worked hard to string sentences together in a somewhat coherent fashion, I did little to do the same with pen, pencil, cray-paws and paper. My interest in comic books was equal parts story and visual appeal—sometimes the visuals outweighing the story. Don’t judge a comic by it’s…content? I knew what appealed to me both in the artist as well as the writer. I’m embarrassed to say that it took me well into my late 20s before I was able to fully appreciate Neil Gaiman’s, The Sandman, because as a teenager I was too hung up on how it looked. My tastes matured. I developed—I’d like to think for the better.
I view this AI generated art similar to asking an artist for a commission. In my own experience this involves telling the artist my idea over 1-2 emails, paying them, and getting something in the mail. The artwork is that artist’s interpretation of my idea. Was my description too vague, too literal? How did the artist interpret my description? If I sent along an image and said “…in this style” it is up to the artist I’m commissioning to make a judgement call as to what the hell I mean. Does he follow the sample image to the letter or use is as a vague point of reference?
Sometimes the artiest gets it right. Other times it’s way off the mark and I’m left with paying for something I really didn’t want.
AI is the same way. You feed it a prompt and get a result. Nothing more. Only with AI you can tweak your prompt to get something closer to what you desire…or not.
If I had the capital to keep an artist on retainer, or if I were a company with an entire art department, I could achieve the same results through regular meetings, a plethora of visual aides, mood boards, etc.
And ultimately, through the human artist, I would get exactly what I’m looking for.
With the AI, in this current state, it’s a gamble. I may gut lucky from time to time with something that is visually compelling, but it won’t be exact. Which is why AI generated art is great for joe-consumer but not for anything professional in it’s current state.
Maybe one day it will be, or maybe one day I will learn how to manipulate the prompts just enough to reproduce what is in my minds eyes.
So what am I, if not an artist?
The cynic would say that I’m a master manipulator.
But I like to think myself more as a curator. I’m feeding the AI an idea and I’m assessing what it gives me based on my own unique tastes. What I find visually appealing is different from what you find visually appealing—in fact, depending on who ‘you’ happen to be, I might find it appalling! That’s how art—like writing, works—not everything is everyone’s cup o’ tea.
And that, my friends, is what ultimately makes art…art, whether it’s crafted by a human, AI, or a goat.
If you found value from this post, please consider contributing financially. You may have noticed that I’ve not written here in a while. This is in part due to life being busy. But money is always a great incentive and motivation in writing for reals instead of letting the AI do it. Consider becoming a Patron or even giving a one-time donation.
I’m going to keep writing and posting from time to time. But I’ll do it a lot more if I feel that someone out there is receiving some value from it. Thank you and good day.