AI art: when will we learn?

This post was inspired by an event from December 2022, when artist Ben Moran was banned from r/art, a general-use art-sharing forum, for posting an image that too closely resembled art generated by an AI. for more context, plenty of articles go into specific detail about the event, but that will not be my main focus here. I want to talk about the fear of technology that has gone a bit too far.

AI art is just cool. We are at the stage of human development where we are not just creating media to entertain ourselves, but we are making things that are making things that entertain us. We have gotten so good at amusing ourselves that we’ve streamlined the process to this degree. AI art is a symbol of the progress we’ve made as a species. In my mind, it’s a beautiful thing; in concept, if not always in practice.

But it can also be a scary thing. This is not lost on me. If your livelihood were dependent on you crafting something that was being systematized into processes that a computer could do faster (and sometimes better) than you before your very eyes, I can see how that might worry you. Before long, it will be impossible to tell if a human or AI created a single image. But arguably, we’ve already reached that point; so if you’ll pardon the cliche, resistance is futile.

NFTs scared us, and in a world where the armies of people promoting and trying to make a quick buck off of a volatile and nature-harming fad have all but been beaten back, perhaps we’ve become a little overzealous in our attempts to battle the forces of technological advancement.

Maybe more cultural emphasis will be placed on physical mediums, like painting, in the coming years to reflect our need for tangible proof that the human element was involved in the creation of art (at least until robots have been taught to cross that bridge).

A common argument against AI art is that the AI is shown images that were created by “actual” artists that it will then use to generate its own image. This is, in essence, like saying that taking inspiration is wrong. The AI is essentially “inspired” by what it is shown, but so are human artists. After all, artists don’t invent every color they use, every technique they employ, or every tool they put to canvas.

Maybe the next time we see new technology, we will be better judges of the actual harm it can cause, and we can skip the step of harming real people in our efforts to crusade against it.