I’m all for technology if it provides safety. And necessary advancement. This includes AI. Let the cars drive themselves if people want that, because too many drivers are distracted or fail to take other people’s safety in mind (do what you want with your body, but don’t affect my safety). Let AI software scan millions of documents and offer guesses for ailments.
I am not all for AI being used when it comes to cultural stuff. Culture is solely tied to the carbon-based living organism. Of course there’s bias, being a commercial artist. I don’t want to be entertained by a cold, non-thinking, non-empathetic, non-autonomous, non-sentient entity that has zero respect for what came before or what’s to come.
Soul and funk are two of my absolute favorite genres of music. I recently heard a soul rendition of a popular rock song in the 90s, and I was taken back by the unique take. I dug it…until I discovered it was AI. There was no human creativity behind it, no practice to make perfect the emotional connection to the listener. Genius matters to me. It shows some of the best of humanity in that if a human chooses to take their natural curiosity and develop it to the best of their ability, that talent can provide awe-inspiring revelations and creations. Or at least contribute to a pool of great ideas and content. If soul doesn’t have emotion, passion, and hurt behind it, is it really soul music? For all the folks who like gospel music, do you want that beautiful music—developed by humans through a wonderous creative journey stretching over centuries of evolution to Gregorian chants and African rhythms—to be superficially mimicked from something that doesn’t even have faith in what it’s singing about? (by the way, I’m agnostic, and I love gospel). So, give me technology if it really helps save lives or frees us up to actually enjoy life more.
But the arts? Aesthetics? I just feel it’s more than grabbing from the bottom shelf. It really feels unethical, IMO. Especially when you consider the governments are in such a competition with one another over the growth of AI that they don’t bother to see who it’s already affecting. Over half the illustration gigs I see advertised now are really asking for people to make art to insert into the generative software as reference, or for retouchers to fix errors. Demoralizing.
I’ve had art directors tell me they’ll ask illustrators they’re working with if they can get approval to input some of their artwork into AI software in order to make more art in that style. The illustrators says no, of course…the art director does it anyway. Multiple times I’ve been told that.
AI is going to take so many jobs in the next 5-10 years. You retired folks or those near retirement might not care—that’s natural. Let the younger generation deal with the issue. Sit back and watch and be thankful of yesteryears or enjoy the amazing motorcycle art that comes out of this stuff. But there are SERIOUS economic, environmental, and societal concerns on the horizon, and if we don’t start actually considering a universal base income of some sort, we’re going to have a big problem. “Well, new jobs pertaining to the AI economy will pop up.” Sure, it’s already happening. But will there be a 1:1 flip of job openings to closures?
I knew we were a creative content-addicted society, but I didn’t think we were that bad that we lusted it so much that people are OK with throwing the human factor out of the equation. And I find that pretty disgusting. Who cares about the next great artist? What purpose do they serve?
But I’m a little biased. And I get that the gray swings one way or another with regard to the type of content for each person. I’m not as passionate on my opinion when it comes to graphic design, playing with shapes and layout. In my career so far, I’ve done packaging art, product art, book interior and cover art, logos, editorial art.
I like looking at objective, figurative art, or hearing a cool song, or reading an interesting article, and thinking “I REALLY LIKED THAT. I WONDER WHO DID IT. LET’S FIND OUT.” But I find it so incredibly insulting that this crap is made, mimicking a style of some commercial artist who worked their butts off to get somewhat successful, only for it to be stolen and regurgitated.
Technology improvement is one thing, but AI generation software is on another level, and I feel we’re just so dang giddy about it that not enough folks consider if it’s needed and actually helpful in certain arenas. Considering the arts and humanities, it’s destructive, IMO.
The piece below took 45 hours, btw. Completed a few years ago. This was the first traditionally painted piece I had done in a while; most of my color art is digital. The majority of my black and white art is traditional, but occasionally I’ll do it digitally. If I did traditional painting more often it would’ve been completed a little faster. This piece particularly impressed an art director I reached out to recently to see if they were interested in hiring me for freelance work. Thank goodness some companies and industries still support human artists over AI generated art, but they’re only standing tall on that hill because that particular industry’s customer base demands human-made art. My and other illustrators’ jobs depend on that type of customer base, otherwise the art director in this capitalist society would clearly go for the cheaper option, regardless of ethical consideration...
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