When an artist uses AI to create art, is it still art? Yes, of course it is.
But some people strongly disagree. They believe using AI to create art is wrong. Inferior. Invalid. Immoral even. What's your opinion?
I’m old enough to remember when some people thought using a lightboard to draw is cheating.
And then they hated Wacom digital drawing boards, because drawing and painting digitally on a PC instead of on paper was considered cheating: “Coloring on the PC? Having the ability to imitate any brush and any type of color? Being able to undo a mistake? How dare you?!”
Some people looove to clutch their pearls.
Whenever there’s a new way of doing something, self-proclaimed “purists” bitch about it, to elevate themselves above others: “I’m better than you, because I think what you do is garbage!”
They love to pretend they’re morally superior and in a position to judge others.
There are still people bitching about CDs (and MP3s) because “music was meant to be listened to on scratchy LP records! The scratches add depth and personality! Digital music is dead and soulless!”
In the future, everything is gonna be AI generated. Just like today everything is done on the computer instead of by hand on paper. Progress!
AI is a tool, like an ipad. It makes some things much easier, and much quicker.
Being opposed to progress has always been the wrong side of history.
You think of a mouse or stylus pen as a normal form of communicating with a computer, to convey your intentions to the computer.
But computer developers have always considered the human-to-machine interface the bottleneck. People like Bill Gates always hated the keyboard and the mouse, because it takes so long to tell the computer what you want it to do.
For years, they have been trying to streamline the transfer of ideas from your brain to the PC, without the detour over your fingertips.
Finally voice recognition has become so good, that humans can communicate their ideas to a computer by simply saying them out loud, rather than clicking around with a mouse.
Is the work you create any less valuable if you communicate with your computer via voice commands rather than mouse clicks?
No, of course not.
If an artist takes a photo of a face, is it art?
Most people would say yes. There are galleries full of artistic photo exhibits.
But why is it art, when the machine did all the work, and the photographer just pressed a button, rather than paint the face with brushes and paint, by hand?
At one point, cameras were a brand new technology, and it replaced drawing all images by hand, which was the only way to create an image up until the invention of cameras.
If you tell a computer to draw each individual line, until you have a cube, how is that any less valid than if you click the mouse button a few times to draw the same lines, to draw the same cube?
If I tell a computer to draw a red cube that’s 4×4 inches, how is that cube any better or worse than if I click the mouse a few times to get the very same red cube that’s 4×4 inches?
If I use a calculator to add up 4+4, how is the result any less valid than if I add 4+4 by hand on paper?
AI is a tool, and it doesn’t diminish the quality or validity of the outcome.
AI art is real art.
You may not agree with me, and that’s ok. I’m not really trying to change your mind. I’m just explaining my thoughts on AI as a tool to create art.
Art is in the eye of the beholder. That’s why it doesn’t really matter to me whether someone else agrees with me or not. There’s plenty of crap in modern art museums that is not art to me.
For example, a canvas painted entirely in one solid color. That’s not art to me.
Or an empty picture frame hanging on the wall, with no picture in it. That’s not art to me. But you’ll find that kind of stuff in modern art museums.
The most ridiculous “art” to me is when an artist writes a few words on a piece of paper, and the audience has to imagine the art in their own heads.
Seriously. You’ll see a little note that says something like “a red square on the left, and a yellow circle on the right.” And then you’re supposed to imagine that in your head, and that’s the art. These notes describing imaginary art have sold for millions.
Invisible Art
An Italian artist auctioned off an ‘invisible sculpture’ for $18,300. It’s made literally of nothing
Anonymous buyer pays over $1 million for a piece of invisible art
Conceptual Art
Books used to be copied by hand, before the printing press was invented.
Monks would spend months, copying a book page by page, word for word, letter by letter, by hand.
Then the printing press was invented and a book could be copied in seconds. Not just once, but thousands of times. Almost instantly.
That was obviously a quantum leap in human civilization.
And nobody thinks that a book is not a “real” book just because it was printed by a machine and not transcribed by hand. Because it was never about how the book was made. It was always about the content, the message of the book. The thoughts the artist or writer put into the book.
We are living through a similar quantum leap in human civilization.
Things that used to take us weeks or months to do by hand can now be done instantly by a machine.
I’m sure when the printing press was invented, there were skeptics who felt that those printed books were somehow less valid than a manually transcribed book. Maybe “less infused by the divine spirit.”
The arguments of today’s skeptics are no less silly. They’re just bitching about the next new technology, like people always have.
Artists express themselves through art, the same way a writer expresses himself through words.
Does it matter if the writer used a feather quill, or an ink pen, or a pencil, or a typewriter, or a keyboard, or voice recognition to convey his message? No.
Does it matter if an artist uses parchment paper, or stone sculptures, or clay, or colored pencils, or water colors, or oil paint, or graffiti to express himself? No.
And AI is simply the newest tool through which artists can express their ideas. It doesn’t matter how the end result is created. What matters is the message the artist tried to convey through his art.
Have you heard of Joseph Beuys?
I remember the scandals around his work. One of his pieces of art was a dirty bathtub. Another one was a simple grease stain.
Is that art? Not to me. But his stuff is in plenty of museums and he’s a very famous artist. Art is in the eye of the beholder.
And if I create an image that looks exactly how I want it to look, but I used a new technology to visualize my idea in a few seconds rather than spending months painting it by hand, it’s still art.
Not everyone may see it that way yet, but sooner or later they will.
There is always resistance against progress, until it eventually becomes the new normal.
AI will change everything. Including how we create art.
When I don’t write articles about politics or make introvert comics, I use AI to create art, like the images in this article.
If you’d like to see more of my artwork, check out my art portfolio on Red Bubble.
Or you can follow my other substack, AI Comic, where I post all my comics, memes, and artwork.
Well said and great use of analogies and examples. Especially, the one of photography. I use ai sometimes, and just personal preference I like to hand draw and further edit images I make. Mostly because I haven’t made the leap into paying for anything just yet. I like how AI can help collect my thoughts at times and get me moving towards a finished piece I am happy with.
Sampled music was hotly debated in its time. These arguments will fade. All creative endeavors are art.