A New Yorker article recently gave me hope about the future of art and artists! The article Why A.I. Isn’t Going to Make Art explores the limitations of generative AI in creating art and contrasts it with how human creativity actually works. I am going to quote the article heavily since it is behind a paywall.
Art is notoriously hard to define, and so are the differences between good art and bad art. But let me offer a generalization: art is something that results from making a lot of choices.
While generative AI like DALL-E or ChatGPT can mimic style, they fall short of genuine creativity because they don’t make intentional artistic decisions. The author starts with the example of writing fiction.
. . . you are—consciously or unconsciously—making a choice about almost every word you type; to oversimplify, we can imagine that a ten-thousand-word short story requires something on the order of ten thousand choices. When you give a generative-A.I. program a prompt, you are making very few choices; if you supply a hundred-word prompt, you have made on the order of a hundred choices.
If an A.I. generates a ten-thousand-word story based on your prompt, it has to fill in for all of the choices that you are not making. There are various ways it can do this. One is to take an average of the choices that other writers have made, as represented by text found on the Internet; that average is equivalent to the least interesting choices possible, which is why A.I.-generated text is often really bland. Another is to instruct the program to engage in style mimicry, emulating the choices made by a specific writer, which produces a highly derivative story. In neither case is it creating interesting art.
I love how the writer talks about choices. I am currently editing a novel and it feels like all day every day I have a million options to choose from.
Smiling, she took the glass.
She took the glass and smiled.
Taking the glass, she smiled.
As she took the cup, her mouth twitched up into a grin.
Good God, the possibilities of ONE sentence are endless!
Which leads me to a favorite section of the piece:
Many novelists have had the experience of being approached by someone convinced that they have a great idea for a novel, which they are willing to share in exchange for a fifty-fifty split of the proceeds. Such a person inadvertently reveals that they think formulating sentences is a nuisance rather than a fundamental part of storytelling in prose. Generative A.I. appeals to people who think they can express themselves in a medium without actually working in that medium.
I’m definitely having fun using AI to work in mediums that I don’t have any special talent for, such as creating images for a graphic novel, but I still get much greater pleasure from picking up a guitar or paints and actually learning a new skill.
The article concludes with good news and bad news.
The good: while AI may streamline mundane tasks, it cannot replace the human ability to create meaning.
The bad: It may lower expectations for quality writing and art, dehumanizing the creative process by reducing the role of individual expression. True creativity comes from personal experience and intention, which AI cannot replicate.
Nailed It
Finally! Some bloopers worthy of the name.
This first one is pretty good except for the amount of hair, which is almost as big as a city block.
Then we have the woman who is walking through a glass door, or the door is walking through her?
We have some typical ageism happening. Please read the prompt.
I believe the AI preferred to add wrinkles to that turtleneck.
Next, the AI suddenly used an R Crumb style. I kind of dig it but couldn’t replicate it. And why are the images split in half? Your guess is as good as mine.
And finally, the pièce de résistance, the annoyed woman with three arms. Or two arms, and one is so long it wraps around her back and shows us a peek of hand.