With the rise of artificial intelligence (AI) technology, there has been increased usage of AI-generated artwork. Currently, AI produces writing or paintings by looking at pre-existing works and mashing together elements until it produces something.
This “art” is not real art because a machine could never replicate human emotions, and in trying to, it hurts real artists. There is a difference between knowing and understanding. AI image generator MidJourney can know what combination of lines, colors, and composition make for an appealing image based on human-made art. However, that image would lack any fundamental meaning. AI is not human, and thus cannot understand human emotions. It doesn’t have the lived experiences that contain ideas beyond mere words. People can see and feel the sorrow of a painter through their work without needing to see a word. But someone who has never felt sorrow cannot paint sorrow.
Beyond that, AI often copies artwork without the original artist’s permission. When an AI replicates a free-
lance artist’s art style, it threatens the original artist’s income. Artists spend years perfecting their craft. Their hard work and dedication create a unique style, but when AI creates a copy, it ignores the years of practice artists undergo to perfect their craft. If the trend of using AI to create artwork continued, people would simply use the AI to recreate the artwork instead of actually hiring the artist. Imagine a world where all the best musicians are penniless because they were so good at making music that a corporation used AI to replicate their music instead of hiring them. No one would want to be an artist, and that would be the death of art as well as the loss of the millions of jobs.
Furthermore, when an author writes, they make a conscious decision to write every word.
Their words carry the weight of their life. Two people who went through the same experience can write different and compelling stories reflecting their anguish, joy, and relief.
However, when AI writes, it looks at all the pre-existing stories it has access to and crunches some
of them together to create an amalgamation of literature. If AI wrote a story about being stranded on an island, it might look at “Island of the Blue Dolphin” and “Lord of the Flies” and mix those stories together.
Would “Lord of the Flies” carry the same meaning if the children jumped off a ship because they saw their siblings on an island shore? No. In this case, AI took the characters from “Lord of the Flies” but placed them in the plotline of “Island of the Blue Dolphin.” The thematic topic of human savagery from “Lord of the
Flies” and perseverance from “Island of the Blue Dolphin” would both be sacrificed to create a meaningless story.
Machines can never capture themes and emotions to craft art and will always hurt people when they try to. Art in all of its media should never come from artificial intelligence.