And I disagree with John Gruber. Kind of.
Mathew Inman the artist behind The Oatmeal recently wrote-drew an essay expressing his feelings on AI art.
I want to start with a simple observation: When I consume art, it evokes a feeling.
Good, bad, neutral – whatever.
When I consume AI art, it also evokes a feeling,
Good, bad, neutral – whatever.
Until I find out that it’s AI art. Then I feel deflated, grossed out, and maybe a little bit bored.
To which Gruber reacts:
If your opinion about a work of art changes after you find out which tools were used to make it, or who the artist is or what they’ve done, you’re no longer judging the art. You’re making a choice not to form your opinion based on the work itself, but rather on something else.
And then further:
If an image, a song, a poem, or video evokes affection in your heart, and then that affection dissipates when you learn what tools were used to create it, that’s not a test of the work of art itself. To me it’s no different than losing affection for a movie only upon learning that special effects were created digitally, not practically. Or whether a movie was shot using digital cameras or on film. Or whether a novel was written using a computer or with pen and paper.
I have two observations to make here.
First, I think Gruber misinterprets what Inman means by the term “AI Art.”
The way I see it, Inman is ranting against “art” generated purely by typing a few lines of prompt and choosing the prettiest option the AI throws up. When art is created using this process, then the AI is not being used as a tool at all!
Second, I don’t think the art is separate from the artist or the process used to make it. Separating it, commoditizes art and is what most tech products seek to do.
Suppose you walk into an art gallery and admire a piece of art on display. Would you value it more – emotionally, first, and then by how much you are willing to pay for it – if you knew that the artist took, say, six months to think through the work and made deliberate choices, large and small, to arrive at the final piece of work as opposed to writing five lines of prompt and put up whatever an AI tool churned out without modifying it even a little bit?
Let’s take another example. Suppose you come across a beautifully designed pair of expensive shoes. Then you learn it is made by a sweatshop in Bangladesh – all legitimately, without breaking any local laws. Does that change how you feel about the shoes?
I believe that the story behind what we create matters. That’s how we become fans of artists or why a Banksky is cherished far more than generic work of graffiti.
But I agree with Gruber that we shouldn’t judge people based on the tools they use. But the key term here is “tools.” Inram too has no issues with people using AI as a tool of art.
When you use AI as a tool, it’s akin to using Lightroom to process your digital photos as opposed to developing a photo film. It doesn’t reduce effort as much as it enhances it or allows you to work with entirely new mediums. And here too I agree with Gruber when he says, “Good art is being made with AI tools, though, and more — much more — is coming.”
Leave a Reply