Generative AI can help overcome challenges in human creativity by supplementing the creativity of employees and customers, helping them produce and identify novel ideas, and improving the quality of raw ideas. This research adds to the growing body of work investigating how generative AI affects human creativity, suggesting that although access to AI can offer a creative boost to an individual, it can also be helpful and distracting, potentially inhibiting human creativity.
The authors examine how generative AI applications such as ChatGPT and Midjourney could change the nature and value of creative work in the future. They explore three scenarios: AI augmentation, AI-driven content generation, and AI-made art. Utilizing a dataset of over 4 million artworks from more than 50,000 unique users, the research shows that text-to-image AI significantly enhances human creativity over time. As AI gets more intelligent, it becomes more helpful and distracting, potentially inhibiting human creativity.
Generative AI models for businesses threaten to upend the world of content creation, with substantial impacts on marketing, software, design, entertainment, and interpersonal communications. AI enhances creative productivity in fields such as digital art and is a valuable tool for innovation and idea generation. While acknowledging AI’s immense potential, scholars also raise questions about maintaining the balance between human creativity and AI-driven content generation.
AI tools have the potential to support human creativity by providing explicit representations of relevant knowledge, knowledge structures, and ideas. While AI will not necessarily come up with our best ideas for us, it will greatly reduce the cost—in time, money, and effort—of generating new ideas. Large language models are getting better at mimicking human creativity, but the leading opinion is that AI cannot generate fundamentally new ideas on its own but can support humans by catalyzing human creativity.
📹 How AI is transforming the creative industries
Artificial intelligence is helping humans make new kinds of art. It is more likely to emerge as a collaborator than a competitor for …
How does AI affect artistic creation?
This article delves into the transformative impact of Artificial Intelligence (AI) on contemporary art, focusing on its integration into creative processes, its reception, and ethical implications. AI technologies are transforming artistic creation, collaboration, and interaction, expanding traditional boundaries. They offer new tools for enhancing creativity, automating production, and engaging audiences through interactive installations. However, this integration also presents challenges, such as authenticity and ethical implications of AI-generated art.
The article discusses AI’s role in augmenting creativity, its impact on art production, and the ethical dilemmas it presents, such as data privacy and intellectual property rights. It aims to provide a comprehensive understanding of how AI is reshaping the art world, influencing artistic communities, and prompting a reevaluation of art in the digital age.
Is AI a threat to human creativity?
AI algorithms for creative tasks may lead to a homogenization of artistic expression and cultural output, perpetuating biases, trends, and stereotypes. This could narrow creative diversity and stifle unconventional ideas that challenge the status quo. AI-driven creativity may prioritize popularity and commercial viability over genuine innovation and experimentation. Ethical dilemmas include job displacement, economic inequality, and the devaluation of human labor.
As AI technologies evolve, certain professions reliant on creativity, such as writers, designers, and musicians, may face obsolescence or commodification, potentially causing a loss of livelihoods and a hollowing out of cultural industries.
Can AI emulate human creativity?
AI’s ability to generate complex solutions raises questions about creativity and originality. While AI can mimic divergent thinking, it does not connect emotionally or personally with these ideas. This raises questions about the nature of originality, as it is intrinsically linked to human experience and emotional depth. AI’s ability to work with creative processes opens up new opportunities for cooperation between human instinct and AI’s processing speed.
For example, in web design, AI can create personalized user experiences and handle design tasks automatically, boosting productivity and allowing human designers to tackle more complex problems. This mutual relationship suggests a future where originality is not just the domain of human or machine but a result of their interplay. As we explore AI’s role in creativity, our concepts and comprehension of originality must change.
The ongoing conversation between human creators’ abilities and AI’s computational power is pushing us to reexamine the limits of creativity and the core of originality. This changing understanding aims to transform the creative landscape by mixing human emotional depth with AI’s analytical skill to break new ground in creative expression.
How does AI change human behavior?
Artificial intelligence (AI) has the potential to revolutionize health behaviors by personalizing complex interventions. Machine learning and AI approaches, like reinforcement learning, can automate decisions, providing personalized support programs that improve patient care and the lives of those who care for them. However, there are misconceptions surrounding AI, such as using the term “AI” to describe unrelated technologies, conflating generative AI with AI as a whole, assuming AI’s capabilities are overrated, and underappreciating its potential to change the world. It is crucial to clarify these misconceptions and ensure that AI is used appropriately to ensure its full potential is realized.
Why AI can t replace human creativity?
Creativity is a dynamic, ever-evolving, and deeply personal process that AI struggles to replicate. It is a testament to the infinite possibilities inherent in our nature. Instead of viewing AI as a replacement for human creativity, a more constructive perspective is one of collaboration. AI tools can provide valuable insights, automate repetitive tasks, and offer new exploration avenues. However, the true magic of creativity lies in the harmonious collaboration between human intuition, emotion, and the computational capabilities of AI.
While AI can augment and enhance certain aspects of the creative process, it cannot replace the profound, multifaceted nature of human creativity. The synthesis of human ingenuity and AI technology holds the key to unlocking new frontiers of creative expression, where the two can coexist in a symbiotic relationship, each contributing its unique strengths to push the boundaries of what is creatively possible.
Will creativity be affected by AI?
AI in art presents several challenges, including preserving the artist’s unique voice and authenticity, over-reliance on AI, balancing skill development, limited artistic intuition, and blurring of boundaries. AI-generated content can sometimes dominate the creative process, losing the artist’s individuality and emotional depth. Over-reliance can hinder creativity and innovation, while AI may tempt artists to skip traditional skill-building processes, leading to a decline in manual techniques and artistic proficiency.
AI-generated content may miss the intuitive leaps and creative insights that artists make, resulting in artworks lacking spontaneity and imaginative leaps. Ethical concerns related to authorship and ownership of AI-generated content can also blur the line between the artist’s creation and AI’s contribution. To overcome these challenges, artists must navigate these challenges with mindfulness and creativity, finding ways to harness AI’s benefits while preserving their unique artistic identity and emotional resonance.
How does AI decrease creativity?
AI’s ability to create art and music has sparked debates about creativity. While AI can mimic human styles with accuracy, it may lack the depth and emotional resonance of human-created art. The algorithms behind these creations analyze vast amounts of data, producing technically proficient works that may miss the subtle nuances that come from human experience and emotion. Artistic expression is deeply personal and subjective, and while AI can replicate certain styles, it cannot replicate the unique experiences and perspectives that drive human creativity. The most impactful art often reflects the artist’s journey, emotions, and worldview, which are challenging for AI to emulate.
How does artificial intelligence affect humans?
The advent of AI technologies, including natural language processing, image and audio recognition, and computer vision, has brought about a profound transformation in the manner in which media is consumed and interacted with. These technologies have facilitated the rapid processing and analysis of vast quantities of data, thereby streamlining the process of identifying and accessing the information that is required.
What are the negative effects of AI?
AI transparency and explainability are crucial for understanding the potential dangers of AI systems. AI models can be difficult to comprehend, leading to a lack of explanation for data usage and potential biases. This has led to the use of explainable AI, but it is still a long way from becoming common practice. AI companies like OpenAI and Google DeepMind have been accused of concealing potential dangers, leaving the public unaware of potential threats and making it difficult for lawmakers to take proactive measures.
AI-powered job automation is a pressing concern, with McKinsey estimating that by 2030, up to 30% of the U. S. economy’s tasks could be automated, with Black and Hispanic employees being particularly vulnerable. Goldman Sachs estimates that 300 million full-time jobs could be lost due to AI automation.
Why can’t AI replace human creativity?
Creativity is a dynamic, ever-evolving, and deeply personal process that AI struggles to replicate. It is a testament to the infinite possibilities inherent in our nature. Instead of viewing AI as a replacement for human creativity, a more constructive perspective is one of collaboration. AI tools can provide valuable insights, automate repetitive tasks, and offer new exploration avenues. However, the true magic of creativity lies in the harmonious collaboration between human intuition, emotion, and the computational capabilities of AI.
While AI can augment and enhance certain aspects of the creative process, it cannot replace the profound, multifaceted nature of human creativity. The synthesis of human ingenuity and AI technology holds the key to unlocking new frontiers of creative expression, where the two can coexist in a symbiotic relationship, each contributing its unique strengths to push the boundaries of what is creatively possible.
Can AI truly create art?
AI art can be a powerful tool for artists, creating beautiful, surreal, or hyperrealistic images that reflect contemporary society. Its ability to learn and develop skills like humans allows it to create artefacts that are accessible to the public. AI art is a blend of art history, presenting evolutions of works from both old and new data sources. It is meant to improve people’s lives by saving time and generating new artists and artworks.
However, AI art has limitations, as it requires supervision and feedback, which still requires human touch and eye in the art world. Artists working with AI are not concerned about being replaced, as they are not sentient or goal-driven. The interests sparking interest in co-creating art with AI are not limited.
On the other hand, AI art lacks emotions that create art, as it is motivated by commands rather than a desire to express itself. Works are created with no intent or sense of relevance, and humans must interpret AI’s outputs. AI art is not original, as it uses pre-existing images to satisfy user commands, which may be further removed from human art. Additionally, AI art lacks dialogue with other values that inspire artists, as it generates imagery based on a dataset that does not include how memories, symbols, language, and cultures influence our organic neural network.
AI art also complicates copyright, as it mimics existing artworks to create new user-generated art. The question remains: who made the art, the machine or the user? Can AI art be morally marketable and can artists sue for copyright violation? As a rapidly developing group of technologies, AI artworks and their artists will continue to inspire discussions within the wider art world and creative industries.
📹 Will Artificial Intelligence End Human Creativity?
0:00 Intro 1:26 AI Innovation is Moving FAST 3:40 How the AI Works (simplified) 4:28 What Does This Mean for Design & Culture?
I’m curious how the use of AI can help creatives push through creative blocks or moments of procrastination and help creatives finish projects they start rather than abandon them!! As a Psychologist who work with creatives entrepreneurs to help them finish projects, I’d love to know if there’s room for these new technologies in the process as well 🤔
It depends on what we mean by “creativity”. If we assume that there is a component of creativity in the desire of artificial intelligence to take away the evolutionary leadership that we humans have until today, then without a doubt it will be creative; very creative. Artificial intelligence doesn’t have to “think” like humans do to be a danger to our evolutionary leadership. Countries do not think, however they administer an “evolutionary power” so significant that it is capable of making a human renounce something as “vital” as his life, and go to the battlefield ready to “die for the homeland.” By the way, this constitutes an attack on the survival instinct. The City, the countries, are “evolutionary tools”. The greater the power of an “evolutionary tool”, the greater the dependence of the individual who is part of the group that “gives life” to the Entity in question. Today, by far, surpassing the power of the countries, the WEB has an enormous power, and our dependence on it is immense. To measure the above, imagine that for a month the WEB stopped operating. The WEB is a very recent “evolutionary tool”. When General Artificial Intelligence arises, it will know how to take advantage of the WEB, and in a couple of years it will acquire a power never seen before.
Has anyone have the same perspective as me that AIs are still just consuming human made sources and would only be a program if not for humans. I mean, i’ve used one that’s called bluewillow, it’s nice and all but it still feels inorganic and have attempted to create an image with the description and with what’s available.
This didn’t age well haha. AI art is present and being purchased through sites such as Etsy, Displate, at cons or even directly. Some folks are buying AI art on purpose and some are buying AI art w/o knowing that they are AI. These AI creations are present at multiple cons and steal away income that could’ve been going to real artists. It def didn’t emerge as a collabator but as a competitor. And if not a competitor, companies are using AI instead of real artists (such as wizard of the coast). I’ve seen this one AI tool being able to take a custom image and a meme and convert it where the custom image is in the meme picture format haha. AI is getting better and there’s still no rules/reguattions from preventing AI art to happen
There’s a difference between having the ability to create and the ability to produce. AI produces what its told to. There’s nothing special about that to me. Just because it can make something “unique” doesn’t mean it’s special. Craftsmanship and natural creativity always be appreciated above digitally appropriated productions that were spit out by a machine. You can’t turn passion or meaning into 1s and 0s. I guess I could see it as a tool? But for now it just feels like a knock-off.
AI seems a bad name for it. From what I understand it is essentially an iterative process with guidelines so that you get a type of evolutionary approach to whatever you wish to emulate. Not to my mind intelligence as there is no self awareness. The results are pretty awful but I suppose they will improve. The man with the portraits has to sit there and grade the computer’s efforts, the program itself cannot yet determine success or failure.
As a creative person who paints, draws, and drums, I must thank the human being operating the camera who recognized the near perfect composition of river, bridge, and buildings at the 7:22 mark. Yeah, that’s been screenshotted and will be sketched and subsequently painted. Speaking to the some of the issues raised in the article, how much credit do I owe the camera person for this??
Technology may not replace all jobs, but it will certainly make them easier, justifying employers to reduce wages across the board. What was once considered “skilled work” can now be done relatively easily, and that leads to a loss of high paid skilled work everywhere. All the while, productivity remains the same or increases, giving more revenue to the employers, and widening the income inequality gap. Governments worldwide need to address this by raising taxes on the employers and compensating the low wage workers with UBI.
Although is true that technology always have change our world and has changed work, so people have to look for new opportunities, the problem now is that is happening faster than ever before. Most people who will lost jobs don´t have the preparation to become other thing. Many people say workers of those fields can learn again, but how a truck worker with 50 years can start all over again? it´s not possible at least not for most of them. So this WILL have a strong impact in jobs and workers, not in specialists but in the most common ones. That´s why the discussion about universal salary is so important right now. Don´t get me wrong, I believe AI is one of the most important and wonderful inventions we have ever had, I´m really excited to see what will happen, but it will arise problems, that´s a fact.
the question isn’t whether ai can be creative but has the term creative, has always been misdefine by false assumptions and human arrogance and culture, basically therefore I copy many sources to create a unrecognizable chimera therefore I am creative, or how the most complex things are made out of many simple things repeated over and over again becoming unrecognizable and because it’s unrecognizable it’s new and different and unique but is it?
I have mixed feelings about this, I always thought that art and design would be the last thing an AI could do and as someone who studies art I get several existential doubts such as: should I stop studying and focus on how to use AI? Or wasted all this time studying and practicing anatomy, light and color, structure, perspective? And despite enjoying making art, now I feel useless and that all my efforts have been useless because there is already something that potentially can do it faster, better and cheaper.
I find this devastating. Feeling in awe of art is important, and that will be lost. Also, as an artist, I enjoy the tedious part of rendering. We don’t need to make more stuff faster, we need meaningful work that we find fulfilling. People are meant to create, not just consume. There is something hollow in just consuming.
The trend of people having to learn no actual manual skills (drawing, painting, spelling, photography, sculpting, handwriting, math, drafting, etc) will just accelerate. Right now, many of those creators still have those skills left over from needing them in the past, which can augment their use of AI. That’s why current artists get better results with AI than non-artists. But new generations will have less incentive to learn those skills and fundamentals. The AI is what they’ll start off with, and they will only ever know getting instant results by asking a question and clicking a button without the manual work and never having to learn all the details that go with it. Any specific tool can help you but also limit you. Younger generations will use their hands less and less. I already see the issue with my nieces and nephews, where they’re more interested in instant results, and mostly see the years of work necessary to learn old school art as a disincentive to ever learning it. They don’t get that after a while the process itself is enjoyable.
What I am most concerned about right now as an artist is not AI stealing our jobs but companies stealing our artwork to make ai art. There are many examples of AI art looking very very similar to a current artists work without any credit or money given to that artist. As mentioned in the article, an AI can’t create stuff out of nowhere. Companies shouldn’t be allowed to just steal art from small artists and feed it to an AI to make bland copies of that artists work.
The thing that worries me is that this won’t be like the advent of photography. This won’t just take away a few old fields and create a dozen new ones. To me it feels like AI will kill hundreds of professions, replacing them with only a couple in return. So many artists will just have nowhere to go because we can’t expect all of them to suddenly become prompt makers or something I’m an illustrator/character designer. I’m also learning 3D, can do some environmental/interior design. If one of my skillsets becomes obsolete – no worries, I have 4-5 more career options. But with AI? I have 0. And that terrifies me to the bone.
After doing research on this topic, in my case for audio and music production, for the last few months. I’ve come to the conclusion that A.I will be used on mass scale for big business and completely wipe out commerical creatives unless you are literally the top 1% of your field. Nothing will be entry level, nothing will be mid level. You’ll have to be elite in your field to be considered by a large company. Small businesses and individuals will stick to using free or cheaper A.I tools to make quick concepts and maybe use them as their actual products, but will still reach out to humans for the fine detail work. The other group of people I could see still hiring humans would be the highly successful and wealthy to commission a large and highly personalized art piece. The only way a human will be able to make a living off of their art is if they can produce something so different and well made that an A.I doesn’t have enough data points on it to reproduce something of the same caliber. (at that time, because the more work you do. The more A.I will learn about your art style. You’re killing your job everytime you make something.)
I was seriously annoyed by how dumb and surface level almost all articles covering DALL-E and Imagen were, mostly because they were made by creatively bankrupt tech fanboys instead of artists, designers and historians. This article on the other hand is fantastic, exactly the kind of insightful coverage I was looking for. Thank you very much, great stuff!
At this point I create art purely for personal satisfaction, like most artists it is something I have been doing since I learned to hold a pencil and it is a part of me. I don’t care if I can’t make money with it of course I am looking at other ways to make money for survival but I have isolated my love for art from any material gains it can bring me. Yes, I did spend a lot of time mastering some basic techniques and they help me bring my imagination into reality I don’t care if someone else is going to pay me for it or not as long as it makes me feel something
Pro tip, if you want to not be replaced by AI for a long time, do a physical job that is highly complex and changes on a day to day basis. Plumber for example is probably one of the very last jobs that will be replaced because that work is very situational, there is barely any datasets on it and you would need some insanely advanced robotics to even try.
Teams will get smaller = lost jobs. One cannot blithely compare across eras. In the past, the new technologies haven’t required the same level of skill set change. A person who could swing a sledge hammer could learn to use a steam hammer or steam drill. A traditional artist could learn to use digital tools, the same basic skill sets were applicable. Technologies are making bigger jumps and automation is already killing jobs. Looking at things from a creative standpoint also ignores that the creatives have always been a small percentage of the workforce. They will lose their jobs last, but there will likely be fewer jobs as automation fills in many rolls. The dude who is talking about pitching films ignore that ACCESS has always been the limiting factor in that endeavour, not team size. This episode feature shoes. How many different designs does one shoe company release in a given quarter? Soon, fewer people will be able to meet those demands, meaning fewer positions available. Perhaps some have too gloomy a view of the future of AI, but I seriously think that those featured in this view have too rosy a one. Oh, and photography didn’t replace art because photography IS art. And yes, art is exploding all over. But how many of those artists are getting paid?
I LOVE(sarcasm) how he is all like ‘oh, well what are you contributing when you make art anyway, it’s not thats special’ like REALLY it’s called human expression for a REASON! People put their soul into their art, and when you put down the work they put in, you’re putting down all their life experiences and passion and ideas they put into their work.
Technology is already well on its way to ending human creativity. Boredom is hugely responsible for creative genius; when we are bored we think, and when we think we create ideas. Nowadays when people are bored they reach for their phone to keep themselves occupied, which fills their mind with targeted content that can be controlled by an external entity, rather than their own creative ideas.
Words can’t possibly express in full detail and scale the sheer existential dread I have when it comes to AI. The loss of creative jobs is actually the least of my worries — I’m far more distraught by the idea of the complete and utter destruction of the meaningfulness and value of human creativity as a whole. I think about the world’s greatest creative endeavors, the most astounding feats of human creativity throughout history, about our absolute most beloved pieces of art and media, in the form of books, comics, games, movies, TV shows… and I think about how little we would have cared about them if AI had existed in their time. I think about how each of those magnificent works could have been effortlessly dethroned by a work of “art” created by AI, spectacular yet soulless… Created in a matter of hours, minutes, or even seconds, through the research and analysis of the works of real human beings who put years & decades worth of life experience and deep thought into creating. I’ve been inspired by so many of those works, those pieces of art… For years I’ve wanted to create a “final” work of art of my own, a humble masterpiece comprised of every great idea I’ve ever had, every moving life experience, every little spark of imagination, carefully crafted and refined over a period of years to create something truly spectacular, something moving, something life-changing… but… how impactful would it really be in a world where one can simply generate such a story at the press of a button.
Also I think the IP side might end up being a horror show – cos if something is obviously related to an artist, I think they might be justified in saying ‘where is my credit/royalty?’ – someone HAS to create those images to copy off in the first place – the problem will be when AI copies off itself, when the generated images become the model as everything is AI. That’s when we’ll go down a rabbit hole of sameness I think. There has to be unique things that artists and creatives create in the first place, the danger is we’ll stagnate from the point of AI taking over as many artists will stop painting/taking photos etc, and adding to that communal image ‘base’ – or indeed the walls will go up cos of IP issues. It’s fascinating, but I suspect when AI becomes big, the problem will be a spiral of sameness, and curating those images to not to include AI ones that leads it down the same path again and again.
There will come a point where many people will lose their jobs in the entertainment and design industry. Possibly the AIs of the future will reach the point where they are capable of designing a movie or article game on their own. which in my opinion (someone who is studying animation and art) is terrible.
As a Concept artist a the start of my career, I have mixed feelings about AI art and design: what skills that i still lack must I now omit to concentrate myself on new skills with these new tools? What lower level art jobs will be left to give me a foothold in the industry? On the other hand, I am so stimulated by the possibilities made possible and the speed at which these are reachable that I cant wait to get my hands on one of those tools. I picture myself as Lion tamer where the lion cub is the Ai: it will grow big enough to eat me one day, but if I tame it early, i can make him spin a balloon on his nose later on. Let s just hope I know how to handle the Ai whip well enough :p
Excellent article; even after 4 months, this article is very solid. The technology itself doesn’t matter; what matter is always human; how we use it. In the music field, there are some AI that generates music based on the theme that already exists. This seems good if they use these AI and get new inspiration from AI music sheets. But instead, lots of people used this AI to make music and sell those things as they made themselves. This really damaged the music industry hard, especially in copyrights and business. As long as these AI stay as another tool for artists, hell yeah, we would love it. But after I watched what happened in the music industry, I hope they make a law and system to protect artists. Many art sites should separate AI art and human art. And make a law that limits the artworks they can scan or gives a right to original artists who were studied by AI arts. I don’t fear that AI will replace art, but we should have a safety system to protect artists from those who abuse and ignore artists. Art shouldn’t be left just as a tool for capitalism, it’s not the same as making parts at a factory. What makes art worth it is all those processes and efforts artists put into their crafts.
well, it definitely means more images will be made and design teams will be smaller. it’s good for art but not artists. Artists will have a harder time standing out and being unique since this is so accessible. I think it is important for people to understand the difference between unique and original.
“It will help designers….” Imagine thinking I’m gonna buy your product when the AI can give me the exactly thing I want. The moment I can connect this thing to a 3d plastic/metal printer, you’re done. Your only hope is a solar peak EMP frying all worldwide electronic and data storage devices so computer tech can go back to a 90s-tier scenario for a while unless another catastrophe happens.
I was fascinated using an AI for improving my art, I would use it for references while brainstorming a piece, but its getting kinda scary and it’s just version 2, I wouldn’t compare to calculators or computers since those are tools that need human intellect and creativity to function, this is something else man, it’s emulating the human aspect itself. I know artists will use it to push art and design, but corporations worry me, I work at the animation and vfx industry, and I know there’s a persuit to develop a tool to save time with less people, and this is just a step into that.
I’ve been considering pursuing a career in vfx, maybe going to school for it. this is honestly devastating because all the people who already have the industry connections are going to be the ones who get to use these amazing tools for paid work and those of us who would be looking to work our way up aren’t going to be able to because these programs are going to do everything for a select few “designers” while taking over all the other production team responsibilities that would otherwise be the stepping stones for a career in 3d/vfx/animation etc.
The optimism expressed at the end of this article is complete horsesh¡t. “Smaller teams” means thousands of mid-level creatives out of a job. This technology will benefit the rich and the well-established and it will harm those who don’t have access and don’t have the experience built up, or the reputation, to allow them to weather this new massive wave of competition. All of this would be fine if we lived in another system, that assured that people at the bottom, who grow up poor, have some access to basic needs being met, but we don’t; we live in capitalism. In a capitalist system where you trade your hours and your talent to pay your rent, most artists are completely f*cked by this.
If the AI creates in seconds what humans create in hours, we could say we already reached the singularity, at least for visual creation. At this point, the creation of visual content is growing geometrically. So, if you ask the AI to generate a bear siting on a motorcycle, it already has several references generated by other AIs. Sooner, AIs will start to generate visual concepts that will be understandable only by them!
I mix paints in my daily process! The problem with AI is the same as Photoshop, it gets very samey if you all use the same tools. Hence why people freak out at my traditional works because most AI cannot do the level of fluid dynamics and randomness that wet on wet watercolour does. That might change if it then copies all the watercolour paintings ever done, but I do think that the truly random nature – like say film cross-processing which is chemically random and hard to fake – will be harder with AI to create. But the real artistry will be prompt design, and artists will shift to that, and mangling the results in interesting ways and selection. You can create millions of images, but the talent is spotting the one that ‘works’ or will make a good product. Curation, editing, etc. I tend to use AI images in collages cos they usually need tweaking or more work. It still does interesting things, I find the mistakes more interesting and unique – AI getting it wrong is artistically more interesting for me than the successes. Cos those mistakes are very non-human, like that Go move.
I enjoy the creative process of searching how to blend different styles together into something cohesive. It’s tricky but the end result is always something to be proud off and now these machines take that away from us. I’m trying to stay open minded about this, but AI just takes away my years of expertise and reproduces it with a single click that just feels lazy and even slightly offensive to me as a creative who poured his blood sweat and tears into achieving this level of skill that now seemingly any average person can replicate. Now deadlines will be even worse because everyone would assume that creatives all know how to work with AI as a tool now, rather than relying on our own expertise. As a traditional artist who already was forced to make a big leap into the digital, this really sucks. I’d rather take my time and be proud of something I created with my own skills than rely on a machine that will make this world even more fast-paced than it already is. What is the point of any of the things I’ve achieved in my life if they’ve now become obsolete? I can’t reconcile all these different feelings…
So basically AI can give you aesthetic variations on an almost limitless level but ‘solutions’ to design problems require an incredibly deep understanding of end requirements. If AI can’t even work out how a door handle works, how can it possibly ‘design’ a new product? Agreed though, designers exclusively involved with the creation of aesthetic variations (like shoes) are screwed!
the snowball is only gonna get bigger, and to be completely honest, it is gonna have a huge impact on all kinds of visual graphic designers, even 3D artist will be in trouble it seems, instead of a company hiring 50 of them, they are only gonna hire a small very dedicated group of them where they have to create something super speficific, correct minor mistakes, unwanted vertices etc
In my opinion, it is a matter of time before people get bored of these products. Also, many people may start believing that any digital art is AI-generated, even if artists are driving the AI. On the other hand, I can imagine a future where software like photoshop will integrate these AI as tools: Now we have a tool to get a color of an image and use it to paint, so in the future we will have a tool to get an object, a texture or a style of the image, and use it to paint, generating a “stroke” that fits perfectly in the context of the image that we are painting. Aso, I believe that in the future, these AI will manage concepts such as emotions or motivation, so it will make it powerful for marketing purposes.
What scares me about AI art is that art is a mirror for the individual soul but ai art is a mirror of the spirit of the age. I’m afraid of a self imposed artistic feedback loop. If you think we are narcissistic now, just wait till you can look into the pool and see whatever you want whenever you want. You can see as many versions of it as you want. The self is a propaganda drug dealer, the ai is an infinite supply of propaganda.
The workflow will probably start with an AI producing hundreds or thousands of candidate images, a human or humans choosing a few favourites from them, then having the AI combine and manipulate those favourites to produce several batches of images, from which the human(s) will choose a few favourites, and so on until a human declares: that’s the one!
Honestly, this is great in terms of productivity and disaster in terms of number of designers being employed..this will drastically reduce the intern needed and also juniors getting hired especially freshers. This is so sad….creativity is also being automated by artificial intelligence tools like Dall-E The creative jobs were seen as a industry which would not be harmed by artifical intelligence and now it seems like it is going to drastically change it as well…for the worse indeed.
When I first studied ai (not as a career but out of interest) I quickly realised ai could replace artist, and when you add robotics into it, ai could replace any job expect science and politics, but with super ai, it could replace that too. Tbh if we don’t put laws in place now, our society will indefinitely look like the one from Alita: Battle Angel — a small percentage of the most rich and powerful living in a polished city with strict order where everything is done by robots, while the rest of society live in a rough city with martial law, then people will have their jobs back because robots are too expensive and just for the elite. But that would be the end goal; leading up to that a lot of people will lose their jobs and become homeless, it’s only when the majority are homeless that the rough city will emerge. That’s all ofc if someone doesn’t screw up and the robots don’t take over the world.
I spent 42 years as a commercial artist. I’m glad I was able to retire last year, because soon my profession won’t exist. It comes down to money. Up to now, a client would tell a commercial artist what they wanted — maybe send a rough sketch — and the artist took it from there. Now, that client will enter some words into a program, send the artist a full-blown illustration, and say “Can you tweak this.” Yes, but are they going to want to pay you $2000? No, they’ll want to pay $50, since a program already did most of the work. And on the other side, say they did hand you a sketch on a post-it note like before? They’re going to assume you, the artist, had an AI do most of the work in seconds, even if you didn’t. Again, $50 instead of $2000 is what they’ll think its worth. Clients are not going to want to pay enough for the career of a commercial artist to be sustained.
creative fields are scared of ai to some extent, but the fact that all the others fields are going to get wiped passes un noticed, as an exemple, accountants will be gone, any type of marketing, generalist doctors because a database of diagnostics is all that is needed. ai will put a bunch of people out of work
I feel like this will put alot of people out of business. Digital artists? No need for that, that AI will be able to do everything on its own. Stock image websites where people sell images and photographs? AI got you covered, no need for that anymore. I’ve used Dalle 2 and it can literally create anything you could ever think of. From specific lens settings in photography to every artstyle that has ever existed. Now with Boston dynamics making insane progress in automation with robotics too… The next 10 years might be wild
I think we are like the realistic painters of late 1800 seeing a man with a camera that makes portraits in only 20 minutes. In the past artist used to mix chemicals to obtain colors, now we can use Procreate and Photoshop, in the next years AI etc, I think we just level up the basic access to more possibilities. Also if you like the traditional tools you can continue use them as a hobby, not necessary as the tools of your job. Maybe in the future a 3 people indie studio could make a game like Red Dead Redemption 2 in 1 year 🙂
I’ve always thought AI can’t exactly replace human creativity, but can be used as a tool to save us time to generate concepts, and even use as an inspiration for something else. At the end of the day, we still need humans to double check and give final reviews that the design would work. It’s like automation in manufacturing. Just because they can do the job better and faster, that doesn’t mean people don’t have to know how the machines work, and how to repair it. Another good example is game companies trying to use AI to detect bad player behavior, and that still needs plenty of work because most of the time the AI can’t understand emotions and intent as much as human beings could. Or even using AI to detect botting activity. Basically, at the end of the day, we still need human oversight to a certain extent as AI can’t completely replace humans as much as people feared as such.
So as someone who has spent a good bit of time designing an AI, and specifically working with a text-to-image AI (Stable Diffusion, not one mentioned here), it can be useful to understand how these things work. You covered it pretty well, but it really is worth stating again that none of these models actually UNDERSTAND what any of these words mean. They don’t know that a shoe is a shoe. What they know is that the word “shoe” decomposes down to this number, which is then associated with all of these other numbers via a fancy equation. The AI doesn’t “know” anything. It does a bunch of math and what comes out is a bunch of numbers, and those numbers are then transformed into a picture. It’s also worth noting that the way that pretty much all of the modern image generators work is via diffusion. What this means is that the AI starts with a bunch of noise (think static, like on an old television), and then works backward step by step to remove the noise based on the prompt until it gets the desired image. It’s like Michelangelo freeing the angel from the stone. The AI knows how to filter the noise until it gets the image it wants. This is why your stained glass shoe didn’t work at first. You didn’t give the model enough to work with to get the effect you wanted. It saw the extra color as noise and filtered it out. It wasn’t until you got past a critical point that the model accepted the color as part of the image and worked it into the prompt.
I think AI form finding will finally make formalism obsolete, because consumers will get overwhelmed by it. So the gist of the design will focus on material sourcing, Just labor practice and cradle to cradle lifecycle. AI in form finding brings everything, everywhere all at once, which will overload consumer senses and will make them consider minimal form.
The same is happening for many other fields as well, including computer programming/software engineering. There are already prototype AI that you can give a prompt like, “make me a mobile app with a menu at the top with these options, and a login button at the top right”, and so on. I’m a software engineer at a company specialising in providing AI solutions, so I’m safer than most, but at some point there’ll be fully general AI that requires no technical skill to use. But at that point we’ll either have ushered in a utopia or dystopia (my money is on the latter), so it becomes somewhat academic at that point.
I agree with most of what you say about AI. The separation though is passion. An artist doesn’t “produce” through physical prompts such as money or adoration or company pressure and many others although they might give incentive or motivation. An artist produces because “they have to.” Their soul is hostage to subliminal compulsion. The advantage of the human mind over AI is what I call the “think tank” which is beyond control of “the owner.” A think tank advantage over AI is the infinite universe of input. Everything you’ve ever experienced in your entire life is cataloged in your think tank. Every sight, every sound, every smell, every touch, even every taste but more importantly than all of that, the things AI will never possess, every emotion. Your love, your hatreds, your disappointment, your success, your friends, your enemies and all other emotions are part of the think tank matrix. The one shortcoming of the think tank is the owner has no conscious control. You can’t turn it on or off when you punch a clock, or you get a paycheck, or your supervision attempts to compell you through incentive or threat. It comes when it comes. And that is the prison of the creative or artistic mind. You don’t own it. It owns you. When the inspiration comes you will sacrifice everything to satisfy the compulsion. Your belongings, your creature comforts, your money, your security, sometimes even your family gets pushed to the bleachers of your existence. Anyhow, that’s my story and I’m sticking to it.
Ever since I first found out about Dall E in the MKBHD article, it’s been keeping me up at night. My mind has been making leaps to the the complete obsolescence of human input, making life as I know it meaningless, as all I do is make things (I’m a software dev and happy to be). You’ve clearly thought about this carefully and given some interesting perspective that I hadn’t thought about before. Not that it’s relevant, but it made me feel better about the impending shift in work dynamics. Great article, John.
No offense to people (weird thing to say), but I think people greatly overestimate their own creativity. Unless a person was raised in a cultural vacuum, all our thoughts and creations are built on top of concepts and ideas from other people that we have absorbed over our lifetimes. I would say AI at the stage talked about in this article is very much doing the same thing. Sure it’s not self motivated and is taking direction from a person on what type of imagery to create, but the design process isn’t really different than a human artist that is hired to create a specific idea.
Just responding the title with out perusal the vid yet. The answer is clearly no. Ppl create because they enjoy doing it. A business will try to use it to improve their profits because making a profit is their only goal, but their will always be some person making something that may never see the light of day. For instance I made street art out of leaves I made a whole art style from the chlorophyll of random leaves because that’s just what was around. It said savage beast king something or other. I didn’t even take a picture. And the point of using leaves (red and green in color) was so it would wash away naturally when it rained with out damaging the public or possibly private property I was writing/ drawing on. I made some graffiti too around my neighborhood but I didn’t use any type of permanent paint or take any steps to make sure it lasted. The point was to make sure it didn’t last so it was a special treat for the few ppl who got to see it then it would disappear forever. To me it made it more rare and special. Even now I’m writing this lengthy post. Because I enjoy it. There was no intent for it to last this long when it started it.
All I know is that the current economic system, and the whole way we organize society based on people working jobs all day long is unsustainable in every way. As a graphic designer just starting out, how will I compete with ai that can churn out thousands of options in seconds for free. How can anyone compete with that eventually. And I wouldn’t even care, I would think it was neat and a great tool for my own creativity if my livelihood didn’t depend on it. And this sort of thing is a problem with so many jobs. Automation would be great if it meant the workers could go home and be paid for doing nothing. But it’s like our system is still stuck in the Victorian era and our value system is still based on a protestant work ethic that is totally outdated.
I’m a graphic designer and been trying our Bluewillow. Given the level that these AIs are art. I don’t think they will replace us anytime soon. I’m using these to my advantage and giving them the flare that I have and identity on my art. These images spark inspiration rathar than struggle from looking for one.
being influenced by thousands of images and sounds, then creatively drawing influence from them and producing something in a creative way. That sounds like the process any artist goes through. If this is the first rung on the ladder just imagine where this could go. Also I think the pace of change and innovation will accelerate.
28:45 sorry but what? That’s so bizarre and untrue lol there were plenty of great painters before photography and to make a wild ass objective statement like this made me immediately go “well I can stop listening to this person” I guess all Greek sculpture, all the Renaissance art was just dog shit until photography came along lol
I have been using my own AI in sound design and music production since the early 2000. It is very useful for me especially when I suffer from writers block, but what I have learned from using it in this field is that when I rely on it too much it would often get me into copyright trouble, and as record labels became more and more aggressive in their copyright claims I do not longer dare to use it for composition. now it is simple a sound design tool that I use for highly experimental sounds and inspiration.
Imagine dedicating most of your life to pursue your dream of becoming an artist, all the battles and obstacles overcome, you reach a point where the thousands of hours of study, practise and determination mean you now possess the artist skills and talent to create unique, impressive, life fulfilling art…. And now all of that means nothing. Your practise, study, work, sacrifice, passion, dedication, all means absolutely nothing. Any old moron can now produce better work than you. “But this will empower the artist” BS – There will be no need for 99.9% of artists now. This is most probably the worst thing to happen to art, period. Gonna be a lot of artists working in Amazon warehouses. Well done nerds.
30:29 – which is EXACTLY what A.I. does 🙂 You inadvertently made a good point that people agree to have their creative output used ON THEIR terms. This is already not the case. Not only data sets were harvested (not exclusively though) from copyright owners without their knowledge (let alone permission), the data sets themselves are under no obligation to be third party/publically vewable. At present the benefit from your creative contribution to the data set is controlled by the person behind the A.I. In future the A.I. may control another A.I. to do the same because it will be even more efficient. Yeah, A.I. is a tool, and YES a lot of humans will lose their jobs/(livelyhoods) because as a direct result of it. To say teams “will become smaller” or “the talent will be reallocated” is a diplomatic acknowledgement of impending job losses (shockingly Ruwen has forgotten that the path to get to be a lead artist still is through apprenticeship of doing the mundane work). Also, references to photography in a lot of statments were comically out of context – invention of photography had nothing to do with painting “becoming better” 🙂 Good discussion.
13:54 I think its like your “go inside” example. Its kind of funny to see where this impressive AI falls short. Like, if you tell the AI to go inside, and it doesnt know what a doorknob is, or how to use it, it might be funny to see how it tries to make its way inside. Same thing here, its just kinda funny. Like particularly that set of in-n-out signs, saying things like “no nut”
I can’t wait to dig into this more, but the initial screenshot of the shoe concepts made me think- while it’s impressive an AI could make all those concepts quickly, allowing us to ideate more quickly- ultimately all those images that AI used to train itself were made without AI. Humans never make anything in a vacuum as well, we’re just recontextualizing images we’ve taken in but ultimately I think the human mind will be more novel always. I think the will make for less shitty shoe designs across the board, but an AI may never be able to pull out Led Zeppelin out of the hat, when all it has are Beatles songs in its database. Thanks for the interesting thoughts, I got a lot more to learn.
to the people feeling discouraged pursuing art due to this, I think that this will not change things for the worse for you because think about it, if AIs can mass produce these in a split second then what worth is there? it becomes saturated and that where authentic human creativity will be in high demand more so than ever.
There is no way this doesn’t lead to all humans eventually being completely replaced by AI. Sure, humans can still do art or anything else for fun, but there will be no need to pay a human for it when AI can do a better job for free in a fraction of the time. They always try to spin this as something that will lead to “more opportunities and creativity”. That will happen, but only for a few years before the AI replaces those skills as well. A thing like curation, that he mentions, or even making a article like this will be done by AI in a few years. The only way I think humans will have any professional relevance in the future is by somehow merging with AI. But at that point we wouldn’t be human any longer.
Wow, another incredible article! As a student currently working towards a degree in industrial design, it’s difficult to decide if the development of design-focused AI should fill me with terror or excitement. On one hand, it’s disheartening to see a computer program create stunning visualizations of products in mere seconds that triumph over the technical abilities that I’ve spent years working on, but it is also equally exciting to imagine a future where I can use these tools paired with my own understanding of human needs to create truly innovative and inspiring designs. Who do you think will benefit most from this technology, emerging designers who are just breaking into the field, or established professionals with a deep understanding of the capabilities of this artificial intelligence?
13:04 – 13:13 Omg I almost spat out my coffee when I heard that AI voice HAHAH! Enough of that for today thank you very much. But in all seriousness, your articles have come so far from when you first started and I’m so happy for your well-deserved growth! Another great article and thank you for spreading the awareness of design to the masses because our community really does need some love from non-designers.. 😂
AI art generator should be ilegal cause it sustracts and use without consent design and arts that belongs to creators. So, its bias to call someone Designer or Art creator when he/she has no idea how to draw even an abstract art but just come to the web and write some text and generate merged-stolen-arts.
I would also argue that the comparison to what photography did for painting is a false one. When cameras were invented they were invented with the goal of capturing the world as it is. The focus with cameras has always been in image quality and detail. The camera wants to capture the world as it is and photography as an art is trying to inject creativity back into that process. The goal of image producsing AI (or the goal as presented by a few of the creators behind it) is to create AN ARTIST. The image is merely the product created by the creation. To put it bluntly, a better comparison is that of the horse and the car. The car does everything the horse does but better in every way. The horse was completely unseated by the car of it’s place in the everyday life of humans and exists now as little more than a plaything of the well off. The horse still sees use in places to poor to replace it with machines but in developed nations it exists as a time waster and diversion for people who can afford to spend time playing with an animal who’s been outmoded. Perhaps I’m merely a pessimist but I see the artist as the horse. If Ai is good enough/ refined enough even a child will be able to effectively use it. The artist will cling on as a novelty so niche that only a few will exist makeing “old fashioned” art for the rich that can afford such frivolities.
I love the prediction about poetry and I believe this is where the beauty lies with this technology. I fed poetry I wrote about a ghostly encounter into Craiyon, and the closeness to what I was looking for even at that low resolution was UNCANNY. Being adept at manipulating and rearranging speech is going to be invaluable, especially with technical and historical knowledge, and those who are good at it and putting it to use right now with AI are experiencing the closest we currently have to the idea of downloading content from the mind’s eye (or mind’s ear) -a technology I’ve ALWAYS wanted, as my ability to visually or audibly express what I can imagine has always been limited. This will change everything.
At the same time, this could very much be like de-industrialisation of this industry, where jobs shift to a virtual plane. It’s true that after de-industrialisation jobs roughly recovered to a similar, point, but unemployment has never been quite as low. As the article says, these tools are perfect for the super-designers, but what about us common-folk. We can’t all be brilliant, can we? If so, then no one is brilliant, and it becomes even harder to stand out amongst the crowd. As someone growing up wondering whether the engineering career I want will even exist for me, it doesn’t feel like the line can just keep going up because enough adults are optimistic. In the end, it’s kids growing up that are constantly being asked to do more, to get the same job and probably less pay than those before us.
Great overview of the state of the “AI” art. I think these tools will likely raise the bar for design and art, and it’s prudent to be adept with the technology. How an artist incorporates AI to achieve his/her goals will separate the hacks from the masters. Strange to think that Leonardo and Michelangelo spent years mastering anatomy drawing, whereas today’s master artists and designers will be joined at the hip to AI.
People need to stop worrying about machines taking their jobs. The real focus should be on the fact that we’ve already rendered countless jobs obsolete over the past 100 years. This should have made the vast majority of our lives exponentially easier, but instead, most of us don’t/can’t own our own homes, and are still stuck working 40+ hour weeks just to barely get by. Two words can sum up the reasoning behind this “Planned obsolescence” (AKA: corporate greed). Given the modern ease of mining, harvesting crops, and even building a home; it makes no good sense that anyone should need to work their entire lives just to barely scrape by with basic survival, all while stuck in a job they hate. The modern state of the world is deplorable..
I think there might be a bit too much emphasis on text prompts alone. It would probably be a good idea to explore other methods of steering AI. For example, after three years of Artbreeder and some time spent with Looking Glass (which work by interpolation/extrapolation and generating variations respectively), I’ve leaned there are so many things AI can do that you can’t easily put into words.
So we are at the point of evolution where we will be second place as intelligent being. Like the primordial apes who give birth to us homosapiens, we have given birth to AI. We will have to learn how many animals live their life, like a dog or a dolphin, they too are intelligent but they can’t compete with humans. The human future seems to be in similar lines with AI in control. With almost every aspect of life being impacted / taken over by AI, I only see growing food / farming for self sustenance to be the only option. Not to say AI can’t do some work here, it can definitely do but it would do in its favor. Maybe AI will decide which type of food / how much calories are sufficient to sustain human life just like how we decide how much to feed for our pet dog / cat.
It wont end human creativity for a very long time. an ai with out the human operator has the creative skills of paint in a bucket. The very reason why the ai can wow in the first place is because of the human input. with out it the ai begins to fall apart and die so they need us more then we need them at this point. Ask chat gpt to write a full saga like lord of the rings or something like starwars a new hope to return of the jedi. youl be lucky to get 5 pages into basic story with no substance.
9:30 it’s important to note that AlphaGo was trained partly using a method called “reinforcement learning” – they’ve basically let it play against itself to improve. The way how these image generators are trained is more of a conservative approach – the equivalent of training AlphaGo to just mimic previous human games. Therefore, these image generators can’t really “think outside the box” as much as AlphaGo could, when playing against Lee Sedol. Btw sorry for the antropomorphization, i know it’s just a bunch of vector multiplications, okay?
I am a 23 year old industrial designer with brain cancer. I thought this article was really interesting! One of my main takeaways is that AI is a fantastic aid in ideation and helping us think of things that we hadn’t previously stumbled upon. I can’t help but wonder what other implications this has. In the article it talks about having an AI start out by playing the very complicated game with humans and then letting it play with itself hundreds of times for months on end until it becomes good enough to beat even the best human player. I’m wondering if we have ever tried programming into an AI technology everything we know about cancer and the human body – how it responds to medicine and other treatments, what has been tried and what has not been tried – and then having it “play against itself” trying to cure a digital human with cancer until it finds a solution. It could help us come up with ideas that we either didn’t think of before, or didn’t have the resources to test rapidly enough.
Very well article tackling most of all the most important AI-questions. I as well, think that AI needs to be pushed in a direction which help and improve the already existing world of art, instead of villainizing and rejecting the new creative ways of the AI. While there are definitely some improvements and changes to be made in the rules and laws department, I think we should embrace these AI advancements and do everything we can to make sure, that the AI becomes a supporting tool for creativity and not the opposite.
The question is: how likely is that AI comes up with the same design over and over again, or it makes it differently each time you run the task? How likely is that two different AI come up with a similar design, and whether or not it would be a function of the dataset only? It would be really curious to know if there is any research answering those questions 🤔
This may sound harsh, but if you cannot come up with your own ideas, but have to steal the work of creative people who’s work is taken from the internet without their consent to create so called artificial intelligence art, you are not a creative and should consider an other day job. What you are doing here, is theft and you are actively pushing creative people out of the work force. There is no such thing as artificial intelligence. This type of program is made by adding up thousands of stolen human made pieces of art and design.
As a stock photographer with over twelve thousand images with Getty… this is the end. My income has drastically diminished at an increasing rate over the past few years. This was my retirement plan. No more. I am now shooting weddings, family portraits and homes for architects and making more than my stock photo income and enjoying the interactions with people and shooting beautiful homes. You cannot stop disruptive technology… but you can/must adapt.
Another great article John – Always a pleasure to work with you on these important topics surrounding creative work. All great tools begin with controversy. Epics are framed around the advancement of technology even back to the times when horses were first tamed to extend the hunting range of tribes. AI is just now being framed around the power and scope of broad range uses. As a tool to extend our conceptual hunting range, it will do much in the way of expanding both our mindset when conceptualizing and our understanding of possibilities outside former product/object boundaries. Just like books when they were first developed, written words and pages were once demonized and scholars mocked for “cheating” by not using memorization alone to orate before a crowd. AI will change a lot of things, but it is still highly dependent upon our ability to conceptually evolve with it. Horses themselves don’t hunt. Words don’t read themselves. So too with AI, it can only thrive as long as mankind is creatively partnered with its expansive future.
I really loved that article but I find the ending is quite naive in front of capitalist incentives. Capitalism doesn’t care about offering the best product or user experience as much as it cares about their bottom line and stock price. Sure some high end companies will turn all that productivity into better products, and their employees will be privileged, but since when has a revolution in productivity allowed the working class to work less hours, or get richer ? Not since 3 generations at least.
As a traditional artist and a designer I am very excited for these technologies. Design will get exponentially better, but as a traditional oil painter, I’m excited that my field will get smaller and smaller over time, which will make us a more valuable form of art. The statement at the end about art getting better after photography was hilariously wrong. Traditional art got exponentially worse, and less human, as photographs were being implemented. I think only in the last couple of decades have Traditional artists realized the value of making art in the way the old masters did before photography.
When I became interested in art I thought that I was going to craft it with my hands, brush stroke by brush stroke, not with typing words in a prompt. I feel the world is being robbed of something big. Art is one of the few careers where people want to work in for the sake of the work as well as the money, not only the latter. With AI you are removing the former, likely the latter too, because who will pay for you to enter a couple of sentences in a prompt? Even if such jobs start to exist, who would be excited to do that? I certainly won’t do it.
I’m sure this is setting off much anxiety and fear in the art/design world, and rightfully so, but I can’t help but think about how incredibly defining this is for humanity. We are quickly moving towards a clear understanding of what humanity actually is, and thats because we finally have something we can compare ourselves to as a collective. If at some point AI becomes better than anything we can do, which it will, Then what are we left with as humans? Before you answer that question you have to think, am I trying hard to stand out next to this miraculous technology. Why are we deteremined to be the miracle more than it? I think its a question of ego. I predict that we will wage war against AI and not let it progress us as much it can simply because we feel intimidated by it. On top of that, If there is intellegent life in the universe they probably are not interacting with us because we would also wage war on them due to our ego. We’re still monkeys
I’m both an artist and technophile, so I wholely embrace AI and what it can do. I think your example with photography was really good, because it’s true. You don’t need a $1000 camera and a tripod to be a great photographer nowadays, because a high end phone takes insanely good photos with very little effort. But that didn’t kill photography at all… There’s more pictures being taken now than ever before, and the quality is ever increasing. And in the end, a good picture is still a good picture. Even if there’s a million other good pictures, they don’t devalue each other. And while I can’t say I’m not a little annoyed that traditional art is becoming less useful, I think most true artists will adapt. Because like you said, the best ‘prompt engineers’ will likely be artists themselves, and artists will also likely know the best ways in which to take advantage of AI tools. It’s like how Photoshop can make even a non-painter a half decent painter, but it can make a preexisting painter an even better painter.