A.I. is Killing Art

The title of this AI developed piece is Théâtre D’opéra Spatial, Space Opera Theater in French. This piece was submitted for an art contest and won first place.

Emma Vlaski

The oldest pieces of artwork are around 45,000 years old. They were fingerpainted by humans on rocky walls. In every era that humans have lived, art has been created by them. A.I. is now beginning to become the one that creates art.

Technology has become an integral part of the modern world. It has been a catalyst for progress throughout the years. However, there lies an issue that is not seen at face value when it comes to certain technology. 

A.I. art apps, such as Midjourney and DALL-E 2, have taken the world by storm. Posted all over social media, people display art pieces with different aesthetics based on the words they input into a generator. While this may seem harmless, it is, in reality, stealing artwork from non-consenting creators. 

Jason Allan from Colorado won first place in his state art competition using an art piece generated by the A.I. art application Midjourney. Allan saw himself as an artist; while a beautiful art piece was created, there was nothing more to it. There was no soul, no hard work. Unless you count the title, Théâtre D’opéra Spatial (Space Opera Theater in French), it was a bunch of pixels thrown together in a couple of minutes with no passion put into its creation. 

After receiving backlash, Allan defended his win stating he never broke rules as he clearly stated in his name submission that he used a generator. The rules were as follows, “artistic practice that uses digital technology as part of the creative or presentation process.” The use of Midjourney was not part of the creative or presentation process; it was the entire process. 

What happens to the artist who has poured thousands of hours into honing their craft, learning and perfecting different mediums, and presenting a part of themselves for the world to see? What about the artist whose income comes from the art they create? What are they supposed to do when A.I. completely takes over?

Generators are not creating images out of nothing. They have been trained to go through thousands of images at a time to assemble an art piece in a certain style. This entails that art has to be stolen for A.I. art to be created. Artists who worked hard to create their pieces have all their work thrown away without their consent as A.I. snatches it to forge a lifeless art piece.

It is an issue of ethics. It would not be ethical to steal and cut up famous art pieces to make an art piece for yourself. So, why is it okay when A.I. does the same digitally? Those who used to commission artists will no longer need to as they can create a patchwork forgery for much cheaper as no skills are needed for typing words or pasting images into generators. Artists will begin to lose their source of revenue whilst others are gaining it from stolen artwork that they did not work for. 

This begs the question, have humans lost a battle against something we created? Inevitably, the looming presence of A.I. will only grow larger, and not much can be done to stop it. However, we can do our best to soften the blow by supporting local and online artists, and creating art ourselves.