THE END OF ART?

How Ai Is Impacting Artists

WRITTEN BY CIERA CHILDS

DESIGNED BY ALLYSON LYNDAKER

All over social media recently, there has been talk about art made by artificial intelligence—a topic that is both complex and often controversial. While some artists celebrate the immense possibilities, others grapple with creative and ethical questions.

In Japan, Netflix’s use of AI for the background art of a new short film drew backlash from anime workers. In the U.S., artists debated whether an author owns the copyright to a graphic novel made of pictures generated from written prompts. In December, director Guillermo del Toro even slammed animation created with machines as “an insult to life itself.”

So, what exactly is AI Art? In short, it is artwork (visual, audio, or otherwise) generated by a machine learning process—that is, a machine has "learned" some information and used it to generate a new image. Humans may have collected the data or written instructions for the machine to use, but the process of creation is left to the machine.

It’s one thing to hear about all the controversy online, but what do Messiah University's very own art students and professors have to say on the subject, and how does it impact their lives?

Hong Huo, Assistant Professor of Graphic Design and Digital Media, sees AI art as “a matter of human and AI collaboration, that we teach the machine to create a certain type of imagery that looks good, and of course, with the unique computer algorithm, there will be some small surprises.”

In her Digital Imaging class, Huo uses DALL-E 2, an AI art software, to generate a concept drawing project themed “Computer meets Nature.”

“I think one of the best things about AI art that makes me think as an artist is what my hands can do that the machine cannot, and it actually brings more light to the types of work I do—work very closely and intimately with physical materials—which many times, do not involve much of a ‘machine learning,’” Huo said.

On the contrary, students seem to be warier about AI art and how it is being used today, including Evi Sargeant, a freshman Studio Art major.

“AI art loses the maker's ‘fingerprints’ or marksmanship. When a computer makes art, you lose the human behind it. The art becomes a ‘formula,’ rather than an original idea made by a person,” Sargeant said.

Anna Stempel, a sophomore Graphic Design student, believes that AI art has become so mainstream because of its accessibility.

“It’s easy. I think that people who don’t understand the whole process of art and what art is find it to be a cool, easy way to create something,” Stempel said. “Humans are always trying to find the easier way, so with this it cuts time down tremendously –though again, not really the point of art.”

In order to reproduce an image that the human eye would consider art, AI art algorithms are fed thousands of images from work done by human artists, then jumbles those images to produce something new based on text input.

This creates a situation where artists from all over the world are having their art stolen and sold at extremely high prices without receiving any mention of credit or compensation.

This issue has also led to increasing talk surrounding whether AI art will put current artists out of jobs and shrink the market for aspiring artists.

For Willow Rosypal, a junior and aspiring graphic designer, this concept of stolen art is a major concern especially given the battle digital artists already regularly go through for recognition.

“Now that AI art is coming back onto the scene, digital artists, like me, who fought so hard to be accepted by the traditional media artists, and escape the stigma of digital art being worthless, are facing that same persecution again,” Rosypal said.

“Our styles are being stolen, and people are neglecting to support struggling digital art- ists because they see no financial worth to something that they can make in seconds.”

Despite all the tensions regarding AI art, Huo argues that’s what’s most important is “that artists should see it as an opportunity to collaborate with the machine, and use it in a way that it celebrates diversity in creative expression with respect and dignity to other beings, and keep reflecting about the truth behind our art-making process.”

“It is unpredictable about how advanced the technology will get in the future, but I do believe that the good will always be good, no matter how the technology has changed,” Huo said.