The year is 2025. We have automated everything. We have done away with the need for the tedious slog of creating art, and we are now able to turn to our true pursuits of mindless busywork. Need to write an essay? Not anymore, with the advent of generative large language models like ChatGPT. Need to make a work of art? A generative image model like Midjourney or Dall-E has got you covered. So, then, why am I still here, drawing, creating?
I could have asked AI to write this op-ed for me, and it may have done a better job in arguing against itself, but I didn’t. I’m still here, taking time out of my day to type away. Am I a fool for doing so? Why do so many of us keep creating? How do we even bear to make art anymore?
There’s a whiteboard on the third floor of Noyce filled with doodles and drawings and words written by frequenters of the hallway, or even those passing by. Most people don’t leave their names. Some leave masterpieces. Every month, the art accumulated over four weeks of human expression is simply wiped away, and the board returns to a blank slate, only to be refilled with creation in the month to follow. I suppose there’s a certain thrill to working with such an ephemeral medium. There’s no opening reception, no artist statement, just you and a couple of whiteboard markers. Echoes of the caves of our ancestors.
Enough has been said about the practical reasons not to use AI. It destroys the environment, steals from artists and creatives, and, as has been stated and restated, the output is just plain ugly. But these arguments grow weaker as the next big development in technology appears. We cannot keep clinging to minute inaccuracies, missing the forest for the trees. If we designed a perfect generative AI that hurt nobody and nothing, would the things it produced be art?
One part of what I believe prompts so many people to use AI image generators is the idea that art is some unattainable, unreachable thing, consigned to only a select elite who were born with skill or wealth, and the belief that “I could never do that.” But I never learned to draw by looking at something someone else made and saying, “I could never do that.” I learned by observing and doing.
It’s a mistake to think that technical skill comes from innate talent and not from learned effort, and it’s an even bigger mistake to think that skill is a requirement to make art. The form that art takes matters, yes, but so does its meaning. An AI can create an image that is aesthetically beautiful. Does it mean anything to the AI? Can it ever even know what it means?
This is not to say that there aren’t forms of art or artworks that are prohibitively inaccessible to the average person or that exist solely as conduits of wealth or fame, with little real meaning. It’s also important to acknowledge that many facets of our current society are antagonistic to the idea of art for the layperson. However, it’s disingenuous to say that AI image generators bring art to the masses. Art has always been something for the masses. Museums and libraries bring people together through art. It is something that we as a species have been doing since the beginning of time. Even when we lived in caves, with no guarantee of food, safety, or comfort, we found a way to create art. Did the hands that drew the gentle smile of the Chauvet Cave Bear ever wish something else could do it for them?
Art gives me a voice, however small, and I would like for it to remain my own. That is how, despite the effort it takes, I bear to keep making it. When we leave this world, we leave the product of our efforts behind. If the product is all you care for, then I cannot deny you the ease and convenience of artificial intelligence. But love resides within the effort of it all, and it comes through into the work, through to the next person who sees it and whose heart is changed in kind.
