What is the problem with Ai in the arts?
The Short Version:
It steals your data.
It copies your work.
It cheats viewers.
It takes away your customers.
The Long version:
The Problem for artists
I am among thousands of other artists who have spent years honing our own artistic skills and finding a way, against all the odds to carve out a modest living in our chosen fields.
Like most artists the internet is an essential way to reach a potential audience for our work. And like most artists, the presence of our artistic data online is now being harvested to power Ai tools that plagiarise our work without permission, without consent and in doing so, creating a direct threat to our livelihoods.
Ai is exempt from, and undermines, copyright laws that were designed to protect artists from exactly this kind of threat.
It will be impossible for human artists to compete with Ai because of the ease and speed with which it can make works.
Ai devalues the skill of genuine artists who are not using it. Ai can ONLY do all this because of the data created by the very artists it is undermining and stealing from.
Ai is undermining the relationship between artists and their customers by creating distrust in their practice and quality.
Ai will not add more growth to this sector, it will merely redistribute funds from a wide pool of artists to a small number of Ai users
If we continue on the path AI tools have set, then creative careers such as illustration and journalism will be far less viable, and far fewer young people will enter the creative fields. They may disappear entirely.
'Ai reproduction will only affect printmakers and painters, e.g textile artists and ceramicists are safe'
- Not necessarily. Ai assistance can short-cut the design process for artists working in any medium.
- Many artists of all kinds, make their income from printed works like books or greetings cards. This is the easiest area for Ai products to mimic using artists’ own data. This is why we need solidarity across the arts sector.
'Relax! Ai reproduction will only ever make generic work that doesn't have the same soul as real human artwork'
- Of course this may be true, but Ai still poses a threat. It tightens the niche within which artists can scrape out a living by flooding the marketplace with inferior crap. Not all shoppers can tell the difference. All sales are valuable to artists, not just the big sales to discerning art collectors.
The problem for students
I love helping people discover their own creative potential and I have frequently met people who claim they 'can't draw' or they're 'not very creative'. They have gone on to discover their own way and made totally unique work that they are rightly proud of.
They have learnt, using courage and faith in their own skills to make art that speaks from their own heart and mind. I think this is a beautiful human thing and I want to protect it and nurture it.
Ai is not a useful tool in this space. Ai is becoming a real threat to peoples' faith in their own imagination and skills. Ai is being used as a crutch and a shortcut to making art. This not only undermines the people who make art without Ai but it prevents the real learning, self expression and communication that happens when we work without it.
The process of designing, arranging a composition, responding to an idea, observing and drawing - these are hard, but they are a way to process the world around us. Skipping this step is missing the point.
Art is not just about the outcome, the process itself is an essential part of the art. We need to be much more comfortable making mistakes and making 'imperfect' art. Even if you think you're terrible at drawing! Try it!
Your work is human and beautiful. It is an expression of who you are and where you are on your creative journey. I want to get to know YOU not a computer!
Let's keep art human
A final reality check
Teaching and making art often go hand in hand. Many art teachers are also practicing artists. They will no longer be able to afford to work in this sector if their income from sales of work is undermined by sales of Ai reproductions. When they're gone there will be fewer opportunities for anyone to learn traditional, human art skills. So, if you want to keep art teachers, keep your art FFAiR!
What a wonderful legacy AI art might have, if it disappeared and made all of us into artists. Artists who need nothing more than pencil, paper and our own feelings as inspiration. We had everything we needed, all along.
Quote from Matt Coral. Read his fantastic and thorough article here:
https://www.corralldesign.com/writing/ai-harm-hypocrisy
The problem for galleries and art lovers
Lack of trust of genuine artists whose work may be mistaken for Ai.
Ai is being used to generate compositions that can then be recreated in traditional art media, resulting in genuine artists loosing sales.
Imagine spending a lifetime developing skills, and months on a piece of artwork that looks incredible, only for someone to copy it or even to assume your work is too good to be real and pass it by! Sadly, this is already happening.
Viewers need to know if what they are looking at is human or artificial. If a venue screens their participants we make it much easier for people to decide whether is it worth their attention and their money.
Lower quality work from unscrupulous Ai producers who don’t quality-check their product.
Consumers are already being cheated by buying Ai ‘art’ online which arrives full of errors.
Work is being generated to mimic linocut, paintings or photography this devalues the work of genuine artists and devalues the consumer who thinks they are buying something made with effort and meaning
The problem for everyone
A Rise in mental health problems
I strongly believe that undermining the value of creative expression will lead to a mental health crisis.
Not just for professional artists who find themselves without a viable career, but also for people who won't experience the benefits of practicing art because:
- there will be no one left to teach them,
- there will be no-one left who can understand and appreciate their efforts and skill,
- they are side stepping the very parts of the process that create the mental health benefits
Making art can be hard. Its value lies in the effort made. When something is hard to achieve the payoff is greater. Often when I've struggled with a piece I comfort myself with the thought: 'If it was easy, it wouldn't be worth it!' What do we say now? Is nothing worth doing?!
Environmental cost
Ai data centres use vast amounts of energy and water for every little search prompt no matter how trivial and unnecessary.
I have never started a campaign before and I need all the help I can get!
Please get in touch if you would like to help!
