Can You Tell The Difference?
As AI allows me to explore the unknown, I reflect on where originality stands in a virtual world
We program ourselves to stick to traditional life patterns: morning routines, careers, mental and physical regimes, and creative pursuits. This lifestyle, ingrained in our psyche, becomes a topic of daily conversations and at the forefront of our consciousness. However, this obligation to routine often leads to resistance to change, despite certain scenarios igniting a bolt of interest within us.
The release of personalized GPTs by OpenAI has skyrocketed demand for ChatGPT. Dr David Dunkley Gyimah was an advocate for machine learning early on, and he encouraged me to explore image generators like MidJourney. With access to ChatGPT Plus, I have tested the capabilities of DALL-E, breaking my norm of photography.
AI has helped me tremendously as a photographer. I use Adobe Photoshop and Lightroom Classic. By integrating generative fill into their application, I can select a part of my image and imagine an ideal fix or insertion, and it generates my wish like a genie.
Experimenting with DALL-E, I uploaded an image of myself followed by an hour of detailed prompts to achieve a near-replica of my original photo. The initial results from DALL-E astounded me with their precision, prompting me to reflect for another hour. Why am I driven to replicate my art in varied forms? Isn’t my work the authentic, rarest, unique form of art to exist?
This technology is disruptive. It enables me to reproduce images in mere minutes, a task traditionally demanding hours of effort and money. ChatGPT Plus cost me only $21.78, and to reward myself I enjoyed a Hot Chai Latte.
Imagine yourself as a user: as image generators render more realistic images, you could create a photo of yourself during Paris Fashion Week wearing your favorite fashion brand. Who can prove that you are not present? Fantasy becomes indistinguishable from reality. It challenges the authenticity of every post we interact with.
What I initially perceived as a shortcut to creativity, I embrace it as an enhancement. Thinking like a computer, I analyze the dependency of each step, feeding the AI model with images of my own to generate unfathomable concepts. This approach by Heliot Emil was explained in an interview with Bliss Foster.
I need to continue testing and meditating on it for more capabilities, but I could not stop thinking about how this can make us more susceptible to delusion.
It then brings up the question of what originality is. Is anything unique? In the fashion industry, we see how trends are cyclical. Creative directors looked to all forms of art for inspiration. They scour vintage clothing stores and find a piece that they like, rip the fabric apart, and reconstruct it to fit into the theme of their collection. Take your idols for instance, you emulate the same music taste, books, and style as them.
This development extends beyond our physical body — we change our locations and jobs to curate a persona that is our ideal lifestyle.
Since this exists in the physical world, imagine the ease of replicating our fantasies in the virtual world. Will the Metaverse, or other platforms, prove to be better than reality? Our nature drives us towards pleasure and away from pain, so a virtual world is enticing.
With the influx of fake reality, how can we ensure that the real, physical art is consistently outperforming the entertaining, virtual creations?
Virgil Abloh mentioned that counterfeits are the best feedback. How can we push our creative work to stay ahead of the imitators?
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