As some people here may know, I've been trying, rather late in life, to learn to draw and paint. This is not uncommon among older people, and I won't speculate about psychological explanations for that. I'll just say that it can be both frustrating and rewarding. Frustrating because my results never come close to what I would like to accomplish, rewarding because I have noted actual improvement. Sometimes, too, I come up with something that is interesting despite being completely different from what I intended. Regardless of results, I think that trying to create art for myself has made me look at the world in a new way, and has given me an increased appreciation for the skills of more accomplished artists.
Besides dumping a lot of what I do on my Flickr page, I select some of the better drawings and paintings to show on Deviant Art (and a few here, as well). An advantage of frequenting the latter site is seeing what others, both amateurs and professionals, are up to. Seeing what other people can do with my selected media (mostly pencil, ink, and watercolors) gives me plenty of reason to be humble, but also provides inspiration and instruction. Being a small fish in a large pond has its advantages.
But within the past year I've become aware of something that has been around longer than that (but then, I'm always well behind the curve these days), AI art. I noticed a user on D-A who was posting some very interesting digital art. Only, when I read his descriptions, I found that he was not painting or drawing anything for himself. He was using an A.I. system called Midjourney AI; he would type in a text description, and the software would produce something to match that. To be clear, he was totally honest about this, and was describing exactly what he did.
This raises a number of interesting questions, for which I don't necessarily have good answers. Of course, one aspect of this is how it affects professional artists. For commercial purposes, at least, it may be harder to make a living when one is competing with bots who work much more cheaply. This doesn't affect me directly, as there is little chance that I'd ever sell any of my work, but it can have a wider influence on the art world in general. Will younger people be less likely to take up art as a career if they think they will be unable to sell any of their work? And how would having fewer professionals affect the amateur artist?
But there is also the question of accepting AI art as "real art". I could use words to describe it such as "derivative", "soulless", or "meaningless",but am I sure what I mean by that? Is there some quality to a painting done by a human, on physical media, that is easily distinguishable from a similar digital work done by a computer? Is it distinguishable only for those with an advanced appreciation of art, or can anyone see it? After looking at some samples of AI works, I have to confess that I, at least, can be fooled. I could talk myself into admiring the skill of the nonexistent human artist, and even into finding some sort of meaning or message in a particular work.
I'd also have to concede that there is human skill and creativity involved regardless. Only, it is the skill of those who designed the software. Or if the software itself was written by an AI, then there is the skill of whoever wrote that.
AIs depend on large databases of existing art. Human artists study what other human artists have done, and try to learn from that. What is the difference? Mind you, I feel rather strongly that there is a difference, but I am not sure that I can explain it. And I'm not sure that I'm right. And where is the line drawn between copying a particular style or theme, and outright plagiarism?
Questions, all I have are questions, not answers. For now, I just mark anything I post on the Internet as "all rights reserved", and where I can, add a tag that I don't want it included in any AI databases. But the world changes, and we can't always tell whether its for better, worse, or a bit of both.
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