Putting the Art in Artificial Intelligence

Art thou Art?

Author

Bobby Brazen
October 22, 2022

Here's your daily briefing:

  • In this Substack essay, writer, coder, and "doomer techno-optimist" Jon Stokes discusses the implications of "creative AI" and it's effect on our evolving understanding of creativity itself:

The bottom line: There’s much debate right now about whether we can describe the output of generative machine learning models as “creative,” but now that AI content generation is entering its utility phase this debate has become purely academic. On a practical level, you will purchase objects made of both bits and atoms that were designed by an AI, and you either won’t know or won’t care that the “creative” mind behind these designs is a giant wad of math.

  • There's a whitepaper going around by Tony Zador, Surya Ganguli et al which argues that "neuroscience has long been an important driver of progress in artificial intelligence (AI)" 🧠 and proposes "that to accelerate progress in AI, we must invest in fundamental research in NeuroAI." For a slightly more readable discussion of AI/neuro interdependence, check out this blog post which goes into more depth about the "intertwined quest for understanding biological intelligence and artificial intelligence."

  • In the spirit of our ongoing (and increasingly desperate) investigation into the ways AI is putting us lowly human writers out of work, we offer you this thread from marketer Kieran Flanagan:

Where were we? Oh yeah. That very simple, easy to answer, non-controversial question as old as the cave wall: 

What is art?

One definition, according to the OED, is "the use of the imagination to express ideas or feelings, particularly in painting, drawing or sculpture."

As we know, humans have augmented their art-making abilities with tools since time immemorial. But what happens when those tools, like DALL-E 2 and Stable Diffusion, evolve past the point of helping us to create our visions to all but creating those visions themselves?

Are we at the very beginning—a prehistory, if you will—of a new era in art? 

"charcoal drawing of a robot on a rock wall in the style of prehistoric cave drawings" by DALL-E 2

Some say yes. Exhibit one:

An A.I.-Generated Picture Won an Art Prize. Artists Aren’t Happy.

“I won, and I didn’t break any rules,” the artwork’s creator says.

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/09/02/technology/ai-artificial-intelligence-artists.html

Jason Allen, a video game designer from Colorado, entered a piece he made using Midjourney into a digital arts competition and won.

And then Twitter heard about it:

Needless to say, opinions are mixed (at best) as to whether or not AI art constitutes "real art."

In this CNN article, painter Erin Hanson discusses the uncanny feeling of realizing that her work was used to train Stable Diffusion, which could produce outputs as similar to her work as this:

The above "painting" was created by Stable Diffusion with the prompt: “Oil painting of crystal light, in the style of Erin Hanson, light and shadows, backlit trees, strong outlines, stained glass, modern impressionist, award-winning, trending on ArtStation, vivid, high-definition, high-resolution.”

"Crystalline Maples", a 2021 oil painting actually painted by Erin Hanson.

The jury is still out on whether or not AI art is Art with a capital A. But what's becoming increasingly clear is that illustrators, designers, and other technically-proficient craftspeople are concerned about the implications of AI art on their work and career.

In a piece in The Atlantic, cartoonist and writer Matt Bors told Charlie Werzel:

“Technology is increasingly deployed to make gig jobs and to make billionaires richer, and so much of it doesn't seem to benefit the public good enough,” he told me. “AI art is part of that. To developers and technically minded people, it’s this cool thing, but to illustrators it’s very upsetting because it feels like you’ve eliminated the need to hire the illustrator.”

Is it true that AI art is only making "billionaires richer"? Or is it the case that, since these tools already exist, it's in everyone's interest for them to be as widely distributed as possible? Could democratizing the ability—and human drive—to express ourselves and helping millions overcome previously limiting issues of skill or education be...a bad thing?

We definitely see the merits to the argument that the more humans with the ability to make "art," the better. Even if it means a lot of that art will be made with the help of AI.

What do you think?

Until next time, we leave you with this:

"a robot typing on a typewriter at a desk on a beach" or the future of this newsletter??? 😬