Art and AI

Thinking about the intersection of people and technology in the creative process in the AI era

Understanding art is challenging for lots of people, and it can often seem inaccessible. However, I have long been a lover of art (to the point where I almost majored in Art History in college) and eagerly seek out art to better understand human conditions past and present. As a result, bringing people to art and art to people is important to me. Conversations about generative AI creating “art” often focus on the fascinating and important issues of copyright, both in input and output, as well as other legal and cultural questions.

Today, however, I’m interested in thinking about the meaning of involving AI in the creative process. Perspectives on this topic run the gamut, from “AI will replace artists completely” to “anything involving AI can’t be art”, and I definitely don’t fall into either of those camps. The issues in this space still leave lots of room for discussion. (I am going to only be able to scratch the surface of the topic here—see the end for references of much more in depth articles on this subject from different angles.)

Defining Terms

It may help to start with talking about what we mean by art and what I mean by AI in this conversation. Regular readers will know I kind of hate the term AI, and try to avoid it for its vagueness, but in this case I’m specifically thinking about generative AI, or machine learning models designed to produce material that replicates the look/feel/sound etc of human creative output. So as we proceed, that’s what I’m referring to—not a random forest telling you the price of a house, and also not some imaginary kind of science fiction AI that doesn’t exist.

Defining art is almost harder, and there are whole books on the topic. I’m thinking mostly about visual art, music, or literature/poetry in this conversation — I don’t think anyone’s worried about AI replacing ballet. But the key to remember is that art is not about simple virtuosity — it’s about the creator having a message or attempting to communicate something to an audience, and that audience receiving this and adding their own emotional and experiential contributions to the interaction. Intent matters as well as effect, and neither one works without the act of art being an interaction between minds. Art is about emotional intent and connection between people.

Adding Technology to the Mix

There have been debates throughout history regarding applying new technologies to art, arguing about whether the nature of artwork was irreparably damaged by, say, inventing photography. By and large, I’m of the mind that art created by people employing technology can be interesting and valuable, as long as it doesn’t lose sight of the underlying task of emotional intent, communication, and connection. Most technologies, to me, don’t inherently threaten this. However, generative AI presents some new risks. We need to ask how the unique character of generative AI changes the whole paradigm, and whether that change is a step too far.

Intent and Human Connection

How much human involvement and direction do we need for the work (even if AI is involved) to still mean something? The objective of a generative model like GPT4 is to create output that the recipient will approve of and like. That’s how we train these models, to emulate human creation and specifically to produce the output that human trainers will approve, as that is the reinforcement these models get. On the other hand, art is frequently NOT about creating what people will “like”. At its best, it has a much more complex purpose around creating human connection, evoking emotional reaction, and communicating messages — even if the work is beautiful, it’s more than that. And, if the work is ugly, challenging, or difficult, that by itself doesn’t reduce its artistic value.

Beyond that, there’s a question about how much the human using the generative AI is driving the result. For GPT style models, the end product is a combination of the prompt provided by the user and the interpretation of that prompt by the model, using its pre-trained understanding of other existing works. It’s really hard to decide when the prompt is contributing enough to the process of creation to shape the result that can communicate artistic intention. I suspect that the more the model is driving the process, the less like art the result will be. As you can tell, the line between “art” and “not” is much grayer than a lot of arguments might make it sound.

It’s important to spend a moment on the point that generative AI doesn’t work unless it consumes other, pre-existing content. This isn’t the first time an artistic technique used other stuff as the raw material to produce a new work — Marcel Duchamp and Andy Warhol , among countless others, started from existing objects or creations to make their new works. They were challenged in their own times about whether this diminished their artistic value. But in both of those artists’ cases, their works were making a comment about art itself and about the meaning of reusing preexisting objects. The choice of medium was purposeful and meaningful for the act of creating. Commenting on other people’s work (or on the culture at large) is an important part of art through the ages. In the case of generative AI, unfortunately, that message is often absent. It’s worth questioning whether it’s acceptable to use other art or preexisting content if your objective is NOT to acknowledge, interrogate, or comment on the medium or something about it.

The Swamp of Cheap AI Generated Content

This doesn’t mean that application of generative AI can never be part of the artistic process, of course. But it does mean that the spam farm using generic prompts to churn out lousy imitation copies of works falls very short of this target. It also means that it’s a lot easier to create this kind of stuff, which can reduce the broad market for original art, and interfere with the sustainability of other creativity. In all cases, a human being needs to be using this technology as a tool to communicate a message, connect to an audience with purpose, and/or evoke emotional reaction. Just using the technology as a tool to make money doesn’t cut it, unless the artist is also trying to speak to us about the act of making money, for example. I think there needs to be an opinion and a perspective coming from the human creator.

Are Humans Still Necessary?

Ok, so I’ve assumed up to this point that the human touch is in fact necessary for art to be “art”. Should we question that assumption? I have given this some thought too. I find it very hard to envision art without the human, however. Many people argue that the first art came in the form of cave paintings created back when Neanderthals still walked the earth, because these were the first time we have evidence of human beings creating works to communicate ideas and tell stories, or even to represent selfhood and identity.

Selfishly, I don’t want to consume art that doesn’t connect me in some way to another human being. I like art because it lets me see someone else’s perspective, reflect on their experiences, or understand their emotional space a bit better. It seems like when human beings are no longer involved in the creation of works, or when those works no longer facilitate the kind of connection I’ve described, then it stops being art.

In conclusion, I think there’s no substitute for art created by a person, not because the pixels or notes are necessarily completely different, but because the person is the point. The person is what makes it art, not the design on the screen or the paint on the canvas.

You can find more of my work at www.stephaniekirmer.com.

References and More to Read