Art has always been a major component of culture. Artistic movements like Impressionism and Dada were products of a history and society that pushed artists towards different ways of translating the feelings of the era onto a canvas. Those pieces carry the anguish, frustration, love and prosperity that the artist encountered in their lives through techniques that often take years of practice and dedication to develop.
However, the recent development of generative AI has caused a disruption in the artistic process. It has shown that a machine is capable of creating quick illustrations, animations, music, stories and so much more with just the click of a couple buttons. This has caused many artists to worry about something that is not only a source of income, but an outlet that has existed since the dawn of our existence.
“Whenever I talk about jobs outside of school, I always get hit with ‘well, we don’t know what the future will be like with AI so we may not even need artists anymore,’” said Conner Sanchez, an art student at Cuesta College.
Many artists like Sanchez have dealt with comments about how AI will impact their ability to find work. However, can human-made art truly be replaced by a machine?
Art is not only an individual’s self-expression – it is also a vessel for communication and connection. When an artist pours their life into a piece, that piece speaks to the very essence of being human. Despite being unique, human beings have shared experiences that everyone can relate to. Anger, fear, sadness and joy are all part of being human, and art displays an understanding of those experiences in a way that can be discussed and appreciated.
“You can see everyone’s life through their artwork, and I just don’t think you’d be able to see an AI’s life through their artwork,” Sanchez said.
Labeling AI-generated content as art is a contradiction of what art is meant to be, and to imply that art is only meant to be a glossy image for some marketing campaign is an insult to the experiences that artists have endured in order to bring life to the pieces that speak to our existence.
Keli Stockwell, a psychology major and artist at Cuesta College, thinks that art is something that brings artists and their communities together. However, AI has intruded on those relationships.
“People feel something with art, and if there’s no soul behind the art pieces, people don’t get to connect with the artists,” Stockwell said.
AI is often treated as the ultimate tool for problem solving, creativity and innovation. However, AI is not actually all-knowing. It operates on pattern recognition, algorithms and training. It cannot generate an image without having been fed the appropriate datasets.
One could argue that humans function similarly: we are only capable of producing outputs based on a limited set of data stored in our brains, and that AI can store far more information than we can. However, our minds possess something that AI doesn’t, and that is the faculty of wonder.
AI can’t look at the night sky and wonder what lies beyond the stars and then write a sonnet about it. It can’t experience a horrible loss and wonder about what could’ve been and then paint a portrait expressing its grief. It can’t feel swelling in its heart when surrounded by loved ones and then compose a sheet of music that encapsulates such grandiose emotions.
AI feeds off information, but it isn’t capable of reflecting on what it has learned. When a person learns about something that impacts them, it is likely that they will continue to pursue it. They will explore the many intricacies of that idea as they continue to ask questions that expand upon its concepts, and afterward, this knowledge becomes fuel for expression.
A human may experience something horrifying like war, and turn to art as a way to question and process those experiences. War is a subject that raises many questions about its cause, morality, ethics and nature. A person who has witnessed and endured the trials of war will likely have an array of feelings about the subject. On many occasions, those feelings are translated into art.
This is how “The Disasters of War,” by Francisco Goya came to be. Goya’s collection of illustrations that depict the horrors of the Peninsular War is not something that a machine could replicate. One can attempt to imagine the thoughts and feelings that Goya felt when holding his etching tools as he described what happened during the war through images that depict violence, repression and turmoil.
The images would feel less impactful if they were spit out instantaneously by a machine who was only able to create such images because of the data it was fed rather than understanding from its own lived experience.
To compare the human mind to that of a machine is a disservice, and perhaps a reduction, to what we are as people. The way we engage with the world is not made of a linear line of code, but rather fluctuations of emotions, thoughts and experiences.
These fluctuations are what make sharing and creating art so special. The history of humanity is a messy one, and art that reflects this messiness contributes to a greater conversation about who we are, and where we have come from.
