Dan: Artificial Intelligence (AI) has recently been much in the news—it is often viewed as a profound threat to human civilization. This evening Lida and I want to explore the use of AI in the art world and discuss its relation to human creativity.
Did you know that there are numerous AI art apps available to purchase on the web? If you go to Google, and type AI and Art, you will find numerous examples. An app called AI.Art is what I will use tonight. It works like this: you type what you would like the app to paint. Then press a button. And in about 12 seconds, the painting appears.
Here are two examples:
I asked the AI app to do a painting of Donald Trump dancing with a rabbit. Ten seconds later this appeared
I then asked it do a painting of the bombing of Gaza. This appeared
These are original paintings. They have never been done before. AI draws on millions of illustrations and then combines them to produce such paintings. What are we to think about this? Is it a major threat to human creativity?
Lida: Amazing and what fun Dan, but they are inane images. There is no originality in them, just a random re-hash of what has already been discovered. It is derivative of what we have pumped into our databases. At most a laugh (for now, we may not be laughing always).
We seem to be keen to believe, follow even, the machines and algorithms. Is this based on laziness, fear or do we really believe our lives are improved? It is here to stay and just now the novelty of A.I. has got us all super excited. We will be afraid that it will push our known world out of existence.
Remember how photography was going to kill painting,
How television was going to close down all theatres.
How film was making television redundant. How computers were producing the paperless office.
How Kindles were stopping people buying and reading books. HA!
So my worry is not that we will overturn the known order, but that we must make certain that we keep our creative minds awake.
Our life’s work is not just about the end product but about beating original paths in our minds.
I cut letters/inscriptions by hand, with a hammer in my left hand and a chisel in my right hand. These hands are connected to my brain. It is this slow and deliberate process that makes magic appear, not everyday the same as last.
It would be great to believe there was progress (I would like to think there is) but I know there
is originality. Every blow of the hammer is a new cut. Every letter a new shape. Tomorrow I will cut the perfect letter . . . tomorrow. In this process lies our evolution, new perspectives reveal themselves as we move forwards, unknown things can pop up. I find my voice in the unexpected, a reason for being alive. The process, the listening, talking, drawing, cutting and painting is where we grow. The end product is evidence and a sharing ground, (and when I get paid) but not my reason d’etre. They are both important but the vital element is not the result, it is the awareness with which we work and change.
Dan: Your observations are moving. And profound. In one sense you are right about originality. AI paintings are composed of elements from pre-existing art. An app like AI Art draws upon millions of exisiting images and combines them anew. So, for example, the painting of Donald Trump dancing with a rabbit is made up of existing images of Donald
Trump and rabbits. That is why there is a copyright issue. Artists bitterly complain that their drawings and paintings are used by AI without any payment. This, they believe, is an outrageous theft which should be stopped under copyright law. But so far the law offers no protection.
So in one sense, AI art is not original. It is new certainly but not completely original. AI miraculously copies and combines existing art work to produce something new. Amazingly each time an AI app is given instructions like: ’Draw the bombing of Gaza,’ every example will be different.
Here, for example, is another image of bombing Gaza:
If I were to continue asking AI to draw the bombing of Gaza or Donald Trump dancing with a rabbit, no image would be the same.
It is totally fascinating what AI can do. You say it is fun. But artists are seriously threatened. I think you will agree that the paintings of Donald Trump and the bombing of Gaza are remarkably good. Impressive. It would take hours, possibly days to produce such art work. I don’t think they are inane. They are truly remarkable.
Here is another example. This time I asked the AI app to create Picasso painting a Burmese cat. This is the result. I think it is astonishing—
It is no wonder that artists are terrified of AI. It is a serious threat to their livelihood. In 20 seconds this painting was created from words. All I did was type in brief instructions, and less than a minute later, the painting of Picasso and the cat emerged.
On the web there are innumerable discussions by artists of what AI can do. They are aghast and deeply worried. How, they ask, will it be possible for them to earn a living if companies can create art in this way for no more than paying about £10 a month for an AI app?
You have eloquently described the process of letter-cutting. You speak about magic and growth. About an original path. About
evolution. And new perspectives. But let me ask you this question. (It is parallel to the issue of AI.) You meticulously cut stone by hand. I have watched others in your Cambridge studio painstakingly cut letters. Your work and theirs is beautiful. But machines also cut stone. Their gravestones can be beautiful too. Like AI they are programmed with precise instructions. What makes your letter cutting better? And more original? Does originality lie in the human process of creation? Must creativity be confined to human beings? Or can machines be creative too?
Lida: I am with Robert Henri: ‘The object is not to make art, it is to be in that wonderful state which makes art inevitable. The action not the result.’
So do you think we can design a machine to work itself into that state?
Let’s define ART as man using free will, and AI as a machine rearranging what has been discovered by man and stored on line.
I will not quote the whole Gill statement verbatim as there is little as annoying as asking a question and being answered in quotes by others. What do YOU think? Would you like that conversation with a machine? I would not.
How can you possibly say that what I do is in any way the same as a machine. It is the difference between life and death. Artists that are worrying about AI are in the wrong business. We just get on with it, relentlessly, and amazing things happen when we keep working, exploring, digging. Not just inane pictures of the bombing of Gaza. Each artist would produce quite a different image to your empty plumes of smoke. One of humanity.
We play, make fun and use up the earth’s resources is wasteful idleness. I wonder what this random emptiness, yes, this throwing of the dice, will awaken in the next generation . . . if anything.
But this must not become a moral argument.
Dan: What you say about is persuasive. There is no doubt the stones you cut are wonderful. No machine can match your originality. Yet I cannot agree with what you say about the process of creating art and the end result. You believe that the creative process is fundamental. And it is for this reason that AI art is flawed. It is a mechanical process that simply rearranges already existing images. Without human imagination in the process, you argue, it lacks true originality.
But is it truly the case that the process of creation is crucial? Don’t we value the end result regardless of how it was made? Think of the works of Turner, for example. We don’t know exactly what he did in his studio, nor how long it took him to paint his masterpieces. What we have are the paintings themselves.
That is what is magnificent. That is what matters.
This is the point David Hockney makes in his book about the old masters. In Secret
Knowledge he explains how artists like Vermeer used optical devices to trace contour lines. They did not, so to speak, eyeball what they were painting and sketch the outline. Instead they used optical devices like the camera obscura and the camera lucida to draw accurately what they saw. In other words, the old masters did not magically produce paintings. Rather they used mechanical instruments to achieve realism in their work. Do we care? Should we care? What difference does it make how artists create their paintings? The process of creation is irrelevant.
So to return to AI art. Human imagination was responsible for the millions of images on which AI art is based. Using complex algorithms, AI art chooses relevant images to produce paintings which follow written instructions.
You are dismissive of AI Art precisely because it lacks human involvement. As we saw, human involvement is not entirely absent because AI art drawn on what has already been created by human beings. But the combination of images into a new whole is done mechanically. This final—and crucial stage—is done by the employment of complex algoritms.
Is creativity missing in the process? Your view is that AI art—though fun—is trivial. And ultimately pointless. Is this fair? I think AI art creations are totally fantastic. And I am spooked by them.
Let me conclude our discussion with a drawing and a video based on AI art. I instructed the AI art app as follows: ‘Draw a Victorian gentleman in London.’ Not only can you tell the AI app what you want it to paint, you can specify what style it should be. It could be in the style of Rembrandt. Or Degas.
Or Toulouse Lautrec. Or Picasso. Or Monet. I chose Manet. And here he is:
