Alli Adams
Editor’s Note: All opinion section content reflects the views of the individual author only and does not represent a stance taken by The Collegian or its editorial board.
If you’ve scrolled through any social media app now or in the past two years, you’ve likely seen plenty of photos that just look a little off. Maybe they look like plastic, they have a weird yellow hue or they possess too many fingers. By now, most of us can see these photos and clock them as AI-generated.
A lot of the time, those who make these AI-generated images try to pass it off as art. Maybe the prompter asked AI to remake the “Mona Lisa” in Studio Ghibli form, or maybe they asked it to finish the “Unfinished Painting” by Keith Haring — or maybe they just asked for an astronaut in space.
No matter the size, appearance or quality of these AI-generated images, they will never be true art; they are a slap in the face to every artist with integrity.
One of the primary reasons for this is the theft that goes into creating these AI engines. Artificial intelligence companies feed their pattern recognition programs with things already existing on the internet, including artwork in so many forms, which are then replicated. This theft forces real artists to compete against the mush thrown out by these engines; only, the engines have the upper hand because it is fast, easy and free.
“I believe we became human when we began making art.”
Hayao Miyazaki, the co-founder of Studio Ghibli and one of its most prolific animators, is staunchly against AI-generated images. “(It is) an insult to life itself,” he said in 2016 regarding an AI-generated video. Despite this, people use AI to reimagine themselves in the worlds of Studio Ghibli, stealing the animation studio’s work and spitting on the ideas of stories they want to be a part of so badly.
The most illustrative example of AI stealing art happened with Haring’s work. His art piece, “Unfinished Painting,” was never meant to be finished. It was supposed to symbolize Haring’s life, which was tragically cut short at the age of 31 due to AIDS. But someone used AI to finish it, completely erasing the point of Haring’s poignant activism through his painting.
Art comes from and requires meaning, which cannot be replicated by a computer program. It comes from lived experiences and human understanding. Even an elephant with a paintbrush cannot make art because it is hard to say there’s any intention behind the strokes. An unthinking, generative computer program that bases its responses on pattern recognition rather than true thought and emotion cannot make art.
AI art cannot generate hands, counting fingers being a well-known a way to spot AI-generated images. They never look quite right. But hand depictions are some of the first pieces of art to ever exist. Look at Cueva de las Manos in Argentina. The cave art in there is possibly 13,000 years old, and it’s most iconic painting is a wall of floor-to-ceiling handprints, a piece that required helping others to reach the top.
I believe we became human when we began making art. There is a large debate in the scientific world about when people stopped being apes and started being people. Some say it’s when we made fire; others say it’s when we started cooking our food. But I say it’s when we started making art. It’s when we no longer worried solely about survival, and we could spend our time making beautiful things that made us happy. Whether it be pictographs that told stories, cave paintings that proved that we were here or jewelry to look pretty, art is an integral part of humanity.
Artificial intelligence cannot have our humanity. I will not let it. Art has always been made and will continue to be made by human hands. It looks much better, anyway.
Reach Audrey Weishaar at letters@collegian.com or on social media @RMCollegian.