AI artisans threaten humanity of creative process

Graphic by Jad Alzoubi

Human vs Machine. This quintessential modernist conflict has proven the unparalleled rivalry of the modern 21st century. We have watched as machines beat world champion chess players, package items faster than the most experienced workers, and complete dangerous jobs in place of human rescuers. Yet, if there is one victory that has always been assured for the human race, it has been art. People have long assumed that machines are incapable of adding the intricacy of emotion and creativity to pieces. However, with the recent rise of AI art, humans may be in danger of losing their last vestige of sovereignty. 

Recently an onslaught of AI art programs have ravaged the internet, creating many trends and challenges for people around the world to take part in. These programs include AI art generators that create powerful images just by typing words or phrases into the program and AI that transforms images into paintings from different time periods and aesthetics. But what does this mean for originality, creativity, and ethics within the art community?

Before discussing ethics, the debatable part of AI, it’s important to understand how it works. The first successful AI program was created in 1951 by an American named Christopher Stachey and has since blossomed into a fascinating new form of technology. There are now different, more complex, types of AI, some recently making strides to be on par with human cognition.

But the AI that has caused uproar recently has been something called generative AI. This AI works through a process called Diffusion. Huge datasets are used to help train the AI, and through a technical process, technology creates something from these datasets similar, but not identical, to the original. For example, if the word “dog” is typed into this AI, it will, once it has ingested millions of pictures tagged with the word, create an entirely new image. This type of AI may have trouble generating body proportions or creating hands or legs that look human and are overall riddled with problems, but despite these imperfections, artificial intelligence’s ability to do this has introduced a new world of concern among artists. 

Although seemingly harmless fun, this innovation has sparked outrage amongst artists on a global scale. This completely justified outrage, sparked by the fine line between fair use and copyright, has begged the question of whether art made by artificial intelligence is even ethical. AI art draws from various artists’ work in order to make a so-called “original.” Although not legally wrong, AI is completely unethical.

The AI within these art programs takes bits and pieces from artists' work and calls it a “creative output,” making a sort of collage of other’s work. It may steal and recreate an artist’s entire style to make the art more visually appealing. This makes it possible for even beginners to create complex digital work, something only previously possible for skilled artists who may have worked their entire lives to create this output. 

Pedestrian pieces can morph into something eye-catching simply by just entering an artist’s name. A unique touch previously only given to the hand of a human can be generated by simply entering a few words. Entering something like “cartoon character in the style of Vincent Van Goh” would create an output looking eerily similar, almost as if he had painted it himself. Mimicking Picasso’s, or any artist’s, style, a process that would heretofore take hours, is now made possible at our fingertips. This gives a distinctly human trait to AI: the ability to create. 

 Although cobbled from other artists, this technological evolution truly creates new product, a nearly dystopian vision of AI’s rapid advancement as a technology. Advancing at such a rapid pace, it may advance too quickly beyond the grasp of human understanding or control. Artificial intelligence has been recently proven superior to humans through its ability to ingest datasets and create a predictive model, like ideal moves in games to win. Language models such as GPT-3 are beginning to generate speech, and AI is even beginning to write college essays. These strides made in the development of AI, including its newfound ability to create, trigger unease not just for the art community, but the world.

Art has been a rich part of human culture throughout civilization. It has been a defining feature in different cultures, time periods, and regions. Giving this ability to AI not only discredits artists, but strips humans of their true ability to create. 

by Delaney Smith and Anika Flores

Published January 30, 2023

Oshkosh West Index Volume 119 Issue 4