Terminator, I Robot, 2001: A Space Odyssey—these are just a few examples of the potential danger of Artificial Intelligence, yet we don’t listen. Luckily AI hasn’t evolved enough to end or enslave the human race, but it has evolved enough to ruin art.
According to the Oxford Dictionary, art is “the expression or application of human creative skill and imagination, typically in a visual form.” The key word in this quote is HUMAN – art is the most human creation. It lets artists express themselves. So why are we using AI in art?
Take the movie “La La Land” for example. The audience can see all the hard work and passion that went into the film in every dance number and somber scene. The film wouldn’t work without the artists putting emotional moments into it – that’s what makes it a great film.
AI cannot make a film like La La Land because machines do not have emotions. It can make the same plot, the same story, but ultimately it will feel hollow. Take the ending for example: it’s a bittersweet ending where two characters follow their dreams but by doing that they drift apart. It is a very sad and emotional ending, which requires a person who understands how love and pain works. AI doesn’t have human capabilities that an artist would have. It can’t feel pain or love – it’s a computer.
“Next Stop Paris,” a film fully generated by AI, has already caused controversy. The movie was written by real people (allegedly) but the visuals were fully created by AI. The film will be a standard love story, but the audience can tell it’s made by a machine. The characters look laughably bad, and the dialogue is just cliched lines such as “Wait, don’t go” and “Who’s never sure of what you want even if it’s right in front of you.”
Another example of AI in art is the new AI animation application tools. These new tools such as Kaiber AI and Decohere make it so that people don’t actually have to be good at animating. They could just have a robot do it for them.
And don’t forget about the AI generated pictures that pop up everywhere nowadays. Why paint or sketch something when you can just type it into your computer and have it generated in mere seconds?
People will defend these new advancements in AI, talking about how great technology is going and all the new cool things it can do. I’m not going to argue with the fact that it’s impressive that AI has advanced as far as it has, with the chat boxes and AI deep fakes, but I will say that it doesn’t need to.
The animation tool can make animations look better and smoother, but then it isn’t art anymore. What makes animation art is the fact that someone spent months working on the project, making it the best it can be. Or someone spent days grueling over a beautiful painting – that’s art. When a program paints something it just isn’t the same.
Sure, AI will make the artwork look better, look “cooler,” but the fact remains that it will never have the same emotional impact as a human art piece. A person could stare at an AI generated painting for hours and never find any deep message, emotion, or meaning to it, but if they look at a real painting by a real artist then they will.
So please, keep AI out of art. It doesn’t belong there. Use AI in your phones, cars, essays, vacuum cleaners, just not in art.
