I was so happy to attend Professor Leach’s talk about AI! The conversation of AI has recently come up in a discussion with some of my peers and it reminded me of a few of the topics that were discussed in Professor Leach’s talk. In conversation, we were discussing the role of AI in the arts and how AI can be quite harmful to artists, at least that’s what I believe. My friends disagreed (quite loudly if I may add) and maintained the stance that AI will never be able to create art in the same way a human can. They went on to say that you simply can’t program creativity, so AI would be unlikely to replace human artists.
Here are my thoughts.
As an artist myself, I feel that we are entering a very tricky time. For me, it isn’t about my art vs the AI-generated art. It’s more so these questions: Will people be able to tell the difference or care who made the art? Will art become devalued and seen as something that can be simply generated by AI? Why would you pay for artists and their work when you can recreate their work or make something even more artificially “perfect” with AI?
These questions have yet to be answered and are quite difficult to answer. I wonder what the future will look like for artists who ultimately will have to compete with not only other artists like themselves, but AI as well.