To my un-mathematical brain, this looks like little more than gibberish: min min G D Ex[log(D(x))]+Ez [log (1-D(G(z)))]. However, this short algorithm of code, written by the art collective Obvious, is possibly the new paint and canvas of our technological age. This code created the Portrait of Edmond de Belamy, which sold for an eye-watering $432,500 during an auction at Christie’s in 2018. Marking the first instance of an auction house selling artwork created by an algorithm, this instance raises questions about the future of human art in our increasingly AI-dependent world.
So will artists really throw away their canvases and easels in favour of logs and binary numbers? And should we be worried about this?
To answer these questions, countless writers have prophesied a future in which AI hijacks the very concept of art and annihilates the human artist. While there is a certain degree of merit to these arguments, and certainly sufficient evidence to cause serious concern, there seems to me – possibly due to my own gullible optimism – some reasons we should not be concerned about the implications of AI entering the art world.
Human contact is of paramount importance when it comes to art. While one could see practically any artwork in high resolution on our computers, we still travel to museums to behold them with our own eyes. Why is this? Why, for example, travel to Paris to see Monet’s Water Lilies? It seems partly to satisfy a desire to be physically in the same space Monet once was, to have the knowledge that he touched the paint and canvas that stands a mere metre before you. While some religious people will take a pilgrimage to be in the presence of a holy relic, art lovers will make a somewhat similar journey to be in the presence of a revered work of art – we feel there is something sacrosanct about knowing the artist held the same space that you are.
However, art created by AI will lack this quasi-spiritual quality. Knowing that Monet, Caravaggio or Picasso touched and was present in the artwork is important. AI art on the other hand lacks this essential allure. It’s a struggle to believe that an increased presence of AI art will greatly reduce our drive to experience art created by human artists.
While reading articles about AI, it is easy to become convinced that it will replace many jobs – the artist included. The conception of AI might indeed increasingly saturate the art market, but will this AI vs human competition really dissuade artists from creating art?
However, while the introduction of AI art might further saturate the art market, I struggle to believe that the competition of AI art will dissuade artists from creating art.
No one becomes an artist because it is easy – for most it is an unstable job without the promise of a fixed or sufficient income. And yet each year thousands of talented teenagers send off their UCAS applications to art schools with a dream to become an artist. Artists create art, because of a compelling urge within them to do so, because to imagine doing something else is disheartening. AI is not capable of stopping this.
The intrusion of AI into the arts industry is often looked at pejoratively but there do seem to be some positives. Artist and coder Sougwen Chung is an example of how AI offers artists new techniques and modes with which to create. Chung combines her two disciplines to create fascinating works – she builds and programs robots, run by AI, to replicate her drawing technique and create works that are a combination of her drawings and AI’s interpretation of her style. Talking to the Washington Post, Chung discusses how she explores what it means “to have a drawing collaborator that was a nonhuman machine entity.” With access to AI readily available to anyone with access to a computer and internet connection, perhaps art creation could become more accessible.
Maybe it is naive to underestimate the destructive potential of AI in the arts industry. However, art is an essential facet of the human condition. The world has changed unrecognisably from the world in which prehistoric cave paintings were done by the first artists, but through all that change, art has remained, suggesting, even in an AI-ridden world, where there are humans, there will continue to be human art.
Illustration by Jojo Gormley.