Thanks to Artificial intelligence (AI), with just a few words anyone can be an artist, but does that mean they can create art? Speaking with the art community we find out.
AI generated art has caused controversy among the community, largely over the unauthorized use of their artwork.
Creatives all over the world are finding their work being used to train the AI to generate art using the right key words.
Mimicry is flattery
There are several platforms now available online, including Canva, ChatGPT, Gemini and DeepAI.
AI can take text prompts to create detailed art due to the billions of images models like Midjourney, Stable Diffusion and Dall-E are trained on.
It does this using Generative Adversarial Networks (GAN) or diffusion models, both aimed at maximising the quality of the image, through a two-way feedback process.
Award winning animator Marina Belikova pointed out that, “all of these models have been fed data, most of them with zero regards to copyright and consent of the artists.
“For most artists, it is impossible to even know if their works have been used, and how.”
Graphic designer and founder of Mill magazine, Paul Dickson, reflected in awe at what AI was able to achieve, stating, “I was at a conference yesterday and the host just typed into one of these programs, ‘girl in Poppy fields art painting.’
“And it generated what looked like a painting- it was a lovely piece of art.
“He put this next to a genuine piece of art, and he asked the crowd, which was which? nobody knew, it was a 50/50 split.”
The creators tool
Whether it is a paint brush or a stylus, tools have been an essential part of the artistic development away from cave painting and into the variety of styles and methods that exist today.
Marina reflects on this, highlighting that, “modern art has an incredible variety of forms and tools.
“It is not so much about a practical skill of a drawing or painting anymore, it is more about the intent, concept and idea.
“So, one might argue that AI is just another tool.”
She goes on to talk about its growing use in animation: “I have seen projects that involve AI as a tool to smooth things out, produce extra frames, apply some effects.
“In this sense AI can be used as another tool, like photoshop, but I have not seen people call photoshop generating a texture ‘art.’”
AI can produce quality work, that to an untrained eye, would be indistinguishable to the real thing.
Whether it’s the words typed into the engine, or the work it has ‘referenced,’ it still required human creativity to still make it work.
When asked, ChatGPT was able to replicate Da Vinci’s ‘the Last Supper,’ following the prompts of ‘modern-day setting with Jesus and his disciples at a restaurant, with ‘hippie’ dress code.
Copywrite- Yet to be determined.
The results were not bad for something that was free to use, and ready in seconds, but does it replace the mastery of Da Vinci?
And as Paul, highlighted when referring back to the ‘Girl in a poppy field’ AI painting, “That picture was phenomenal.
“The brushstrokes were perfect. It was a wonderful piece of art; If you saw it in a gallery, you would buy it, so, there’s nothing stopping the quality.”
What is art?
“What is a truly creative, individualised thing? If a computer can go through all of it that way and create something that’s very much mimicking it,” he went on to pondered.
This goes to the heart of the debate over what is considered ‘art.’
Virtually all new art movements have been accused of lacking the artistic merits set by the standards of the day.
The Impressionism movement gets its name originally as an ‘insult’ to the Paris exhibition put together by the now famous impressionist artist, Monet, Renoir, Degas and others, in 1874.
And when it first began, photography was accused of ‘lacking’ the human touch, believed to be too ‘mechanical’ to be considered art.
As AI becomes more integrated tool in the artworld, the same questions around art are being discussed again.
Marina believes that “art is not about things looking pretty and interesting, it is about the act, the process; it’s about taking decisions in every second of the process.
“We cannot do it any other way because we are people.
“This is what attracts people to our art, allows them to connect, and sparks their curiosity.”
The Human experience
Describing what art is, is not as easy as describing what it isn’t, however the general theme is the human experience.
The mucky and confusing experience that we have tried for millennium to describe through painting, dance, music and poetry.
Marina expressed that “as humans, and as artists, we do not just look at what has been done before us and reproduce it in a new texture / colour / shape.
She suggested, “there is so much more to the process than mechanical work,” claiming “it’s our life experience.
“It makes us see and feel things differently; our emotions, every small thing, in every day of our lives, it changes us and changes the way we see, feel and express things.”
She believes that art in its “purest form is a celebration of the complexity of the human nature, about self-expression, emotions, feelings and ideas and originality.
Which is why she reasoned that AI cannot create it, claiming that “it will never be a truly new and original thing.”
This was supported by Paul, who argued that “there’s no emotion in it! You’ve got to think that a designer like myself, has got 30 years of experience.
“I have knowledge of colour, emotional intelligence and empathy, which AI doesn’t have, that I can apply to my work.
“It doesn’t have the individual touch that an artist would have that makes their work special.”
The future of art
Art is subjective and the question of whether AI can truly create it, will be up for debate for years to come.
What is certainly true, is that AI will never have the capacity to understand the human experience and therefore create art by our standards.
Marina reiterates its lack of originality claiming, “it does not have a consciousness of its own to experience things and reflect on them.
“All it does, is just re-hash this data to provide new combinations of thing that have already been done.”
But, maybe in some future, if it ever becomes sentient, it will be possible that it could begin to use art to express its own lived experience, then that truly will be art created by Artificial Intelligence.
The answer: Set B (Artist- Aitor Moncho Tudanca)
