My stance on using AI in art
This post should take about 2 minutes to read through.
In creating art, the creator is expressing a fundamental part of themselves. In striving to create art, the creator hones their skills, learns to accept failure, discovers what they have to say and what is meaningful to them, and this process is more important than having a piece of art at the end of it. In essence, in striving to create, the creator discovers and improves his or her own self.
To create is what makes us human. Humans invent things, humans wonder, humans change. Learning ourselves, discovering what we carry inside, good and bad, is so important that it is the core of all philosophies, of all religions, and this is accomplished, in part, through creation. Not the actual process of dragging a pen across a piece of paper, but the process of striving for something.
When a person writes a prompt for an AI model, what they do is as creative as the pulling of the lever at a slots machine. The person is in no way a creator at that moment, but a consumer of a product, the product being the AI model's output, and at the same time, they are the product themselves, as their interactions with the website is being used to further improve the capabilities of the model.
The text, image, or video being created is being created by something that has nothing to express. The model is not improved by this creation, it is not discovering its self, it is not changing, it is not expressing anything because it is not in a way that a human is. The output of such a neural network can never be art.
One could say that a human mind is a neural network, but this is a very simplistic way of seeing a human. We are more than our brains, and our brains are more than a digital neural network. No computer can simulate the complexities of neurotransmitters, neurons, and the constant change of the brain, even if that were all that a human was. Of course, one could say that no computer could simulate a human brain yet, and that one day that will happen. When that happens, I'm sure we'll discover something interesting, one way or another. For now, to use AI in art means to stop creating art.
To use AI in the brainstorming phase damages this phase as one stops trying to create and instead one simply consumes. To use AI in the drafting phase damages this phase for the same reason. To use AI even in proofreading, in checking for grammar mistakes, in rewriting an awkward sentence, damages this process. The creator, instead of seeking to improve their craft, simply takes a ready answer—that is often wrong.
Art is by humans for humans. To involve AI in any step of any creative process destroys the very meaning of the process, and the result.
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