AI– the tool or the death of creativity?
I, like many others, first came across AI art unintentionally. We saw it on the internet through memes or YouTube videos. At first, I was struck with disbelief, being almost defensive– it can’t be true. How is it possible? Is this even real art? But sooner than later, I fell in love with the style, especially with Disco Diffusion. Disco Diffusion is AI generative art platform that uses open source. Its products has psychedelic properties that blend realistic details with abstract structures, alluring the sense of being in a dream. It brought a new way of seeing art. Yet, AI also casts a larger shadow on the future of creativity, making art ‘readily available’. Therefore, AI can be both a tool and a danger to society, and it’s up to how one uses it to retain the value of art in the future.
These AI-based techniques in the art can enhance creativity in the sense that it gives us a new way of looking at Art. As humans, we’re bound by what we are accustomed to as a certain style, a certain structure, and especially a certain aesthetic to please ourselves in what we embrace as art. However, with AI, there is no right or wrong, no social expectations, and no hitherto sense of aesthetics. Although AI has not been able to produce something entirely ‘original’ yet, its boundlessness gives us a glimpse of what art could also be. I have used AI to create a flowing animated sequence of Hanoi to replicate what I believe has been the only tool that could represent what memories would look like. The textures and shapes of buildings or roads all bleed into one another with no coherency in shape and structure yet have striking details with things such as the old French-style windows, the flower patterns of clothing that many elderlies wear, and the conical hats — All depicts the very essence of Hanoi. However, this is not the only style AI follows– it can generate anything given the correct prompt. Therefore, if AI is used as a basis for our imagination, especially for those less skilled in the art, it could generate a momentum of flowing ideas.
I believe that AI art will be a part of everyday life in 20 years– Almost like the google search engine. With a simple click and an imagination becomes an illustration. Whether desirable or not– it is very plausible given today’s technology such as with Dall E-2 the power of AI art is developing very fast. With this technology, I believe that the flow between idea and product is very fast, just like how Google has helped us the link between question and answer. This would rapidly increase people’s workflow. Artists who work freelance can easily generate demos very quickly for clients. People who work with Visual Marketing can present their ideas for posters, and advertisements very quickly with a simple click. Children who want to draw with their imagination can search how they imagine.
AI can be very beneficial, but its repercussions can be unrepairable. Throughout history, technology has been a tool to give human abilities to make things impossible possible. Calculators speed up calculations, Excel speeds up management, and Planes speed up our movement. However, a great danger of AI is that it speeds up our imagination. Unlike other technology, this technology could change the way we think. Our imagination is something that should be exercised, and excessive use of AI Art could potentially reduce our ability to imagine. This affects not merely art, but all social, economic, and political aspects of our society. To be able to imagine solutions and ideas in anything are imperative to social human development.
Secondly, another danger of AI the uncontrolled bias, but more worryingly, controlled bias. Lately, there have been people who voiced how Dall E-2 has gender biases and reinforced racial stereotypes. For example, searching ‘women’ reduced the frequency of the word by 14 percent while the frequency of the word ‘man’ was only reduced by 6 percent. However, we must remember AI uses open sources, and given its pre-training filters, it is only a portion of how biased our open source is I believe that there should be a very fine limit to control because firstly, bias is unavoidable. It is very human nature to be biased and AI is only a reflection of the open source which ultimately is only a reflection of human bias. If anything, the problem should be addressed from the source, not the result.
Secondly, the problem with controlled bias, is that it may lead to higher authorities controlling the mass with information. Especially when it comes to a subject as sensitive as affecting our imagination, this could be detrimental to freedom of speech, limiting our ability to express, imagine, and think. Therefore, AI platforms should be able to openly reference the open source without any regulations to expand as many possibilities as possible.
Overall, AI art could be a tremendous protentional in bringing our imagination and creativity into life fast but also may hold grave repercussions in making our brain lazy with imagining. Additionally, the regulation of AI art could potentially be maliciously used to control the mass’s imagination. Nonetheless, many like me still see it as a tool, an extension of expressing my creative intentions. Where will AI art take us, especially with the rising potential of sentient AI? We may not know for sure. But what we know is that AI art should be approached cautiously and engage our maximum imagination when using it because we can.
