Reconstruct the Personal
Protecting Our Creative Identity in the AI Age
Trevor Kowalski is a composer and pianist based in Los Angeles. His music has been heard 80 million times across the digital landscape.
Recently, I was captivated by thispersondoesnotexist.com. Viewing pristine images of humans that exist nowhere in the world is eerily inspiring.
Apprehensive, I went through the internet’s collective crash-course on artificial intelligence. How will creators survive prodigious, self-learning AI that generate high-quality faces, as well as music, paintings, YouTubers (!), scripts, and more?
Competing with computers, how will any of us keep our human creative identity in the 2020s and beyond?
A lot of us won’t.
How do we protect ourselves?
The AI Avalanche
Computers currently write better music than a large portion of us composers. The tech continues to improve, so it’s just a matter of time before it’s used profitably and productively.
Computers will first displace formulaic, unoriginal, or non-visible artists across the creative landscape by making an average artistic product themselves from a simple template. Virtually every artistic decision can be quantified and recreated.
As someone making a living in the arts, I was distraught. Upper-tier artists aren’t safe either. I can feed a network John Williams’ compositions and the computer can write a new piece that sounds like John Williams. Combine 10 artists from multiple genres and you’ll have music that sounds completely new. This technology can make the biggest creators in their field irrelevant.
How Do We Protect Ourselves?
Composer Holly Herndon, who incorporates AI into her music:
“This is happening, people are moving this full-speed-ahead, it’s going to be a really big part of music moving forward…and that’s why we’re trying to create a counter-narrative to it.”
Let’s create a counter-narrative
Computers can quantify and create in all artistic mediums, but this doesn’t mean much — great art still relies on the human experience, so let’s take control of the technology and amplify our uniquely human stories.
Work with the enemy
AI can work with creators on projects to combine unusual, computer generated perspectives with idiosyncratic human input and guidance. Our work needs to be as good as possible to outperform solely AI-generated work — use AI to help. The more complex our work, be it emotionally or compositionally, the harder it is to replace.
As the technology becomes more accessible and user friendly, those creatives displaced by AI can work with computers to discover new forms of their human expression.
Our humanity is a strength
Regardless of if you choose to work with AI or not, there’s a cliché: our human flaws and peculiarities are the engaging part. Without them, we’re in danger of becoming irrelevant and replaceable. Emotional transparency is key — double down on the personal in your work. Present your personality in a live setting and form public, human connections with an audience. Make yourself harder to replace by showing everyone who you are.
Computers can recreate your work, but they can’t recreate your personality, energy, and story, which is what pushes your creations into the relatable and accessible as more people want authentic creators
What’s more human than optimism? Even in the darkest predictions, I know we’ll be able to reconstruct the personal.
Our humanity, combined with AI as a tool, will allow the arts to thrive.
I came to terms with AI’s effect on music composition and the arts after consulting with professionals throughout music and tech over the course of writing my new piece “Reconstruct the Personal”. You can listen on Spotify, Apple Music, and watch the video on YouTube. Artwork below.
