AI has been revolutionizing our lives for quite some time. But the recent appearance of generative AI tools such as ChatGPT have created a huge wave in our society like never before. Now, if you want to write something or ask questions, all you need to do is type a text prompt. It will write journals for you or give you pretty accurate and sophisticated answers.
For the creative field of art, design, and architecture, there are AI art generators such as Deep Dream, DALL-E 2, and Images.ai. When you give a description of visual images, they can generate surprisingly detailed, unique, and cool art pieces.
Just for fun, I asked Dalle to create art with the description “Painting of a large earth like planet in the universe in the shade of blue, gold, and brown”. Here they are!
It is amazing that AI can now create something that has been thought to exist only in a human domain. The conversation surrounding AI now turns to an existential pyramid of questions: “Is AI creativity better than that of humans?” “Can AI eventually replace our jobs as writers, designers, or artists?”
According to the article by Jaideep Singh from Entrepreneur, 5 freelance professions at risk of being replaced or transformed by AI are artists, writers, social media creators, photographers, and software developers where AI can actually help with the process of creation.
But before we discuss that reality, let’s consider what “creativity” is. One could say that “Creativity is the ability to make or otherwise bring into existence something new, whether a new solution to a problem, a new method or device, or a new artistic object or form”.
Now when we create something, it is almost always a variance of something that already existed. It all comes from the memory or dataset of what we’ve seen, read, or heard from the past. We basically use that data that we have stored in our brain, to invent something different. And that is exactly what generative AI is doing.
So let’s take a look at Generative Art. Generative Art is a process of algorithmically generating new ideas, shapes, colors or patterns. It is trained on hundreds of millions of images in their associated captions to be able to come up with creative output. All you need to do is to set rules that provide conditions and boundaries for the creation process.
So I learned that there are two common things between humans and AI. Number one, what we call creativity is the ability to use stored data and produce something else that is “beyond recognition”. No. Two, whether it is by AI or human, the creative process requires numerous trials and errors before being able to produce anything transformative.
The difference, however, is generative AI systems explore much broader ground faster than ever before, allowing us to maximize the opportunity for creativity by using computational tools to explore and test their design ideas rapidly.
So let’s get back to the question: “Is AI creativity better than humans?” “Can AI eventually replace our jobs as a writer, designer or artist?” To answer them, I did some experiments.
I wanted to see what kind of art Dallie would generate for me using the description of my original art “Love in Magenta”. I described it as “A calligraphy art with Japanese word love, in the shade of magenta and gold”.
One on the left is my original and two pieces next to it are AI’s creations.
Asking for a Japanese word might be a bit difficult I thought. I can see that it tried but the character didn't quite come out right. Color wise, AI seems to have a much brighter tone than my original, which is expected as my color palette is usually very calm and earthy. I bet the AI can endlessly come up with cool designs like these based on the same description, and perhaps get even closer to my own art with a more specific input. But I also bet that none of them will be exactly the same as mine.
In the next experiment, I used my new original abstract art piece titled “Inner Portrait”. I was very curious what AI would generate with this description: “An abstract art with dark shade of brown in the base layer and lighter shade of bright rosy gold with random bright thin strips of inspiration”
And here there are! I am actually pretty impressed with what Dallie generated. Each variation has its own unique taste and nuance.
But in the end, there is no way that anyone else including AI could create exactly the same piece that I just did.
Because in my original art, each shade and depth of the color represents different emotions ranging from anxiety and helplessness to calmness, empathy, and love. They are coexisting and somewhat balanced and embraced in the presence of my consciousness and light of hope. In a way, it is the product of my own internal algorithmic process based on datasets and unique stories stored within me, from every moment of my life leading up to the moment that I touched on canvas. Even with an in-depth description of what I painted, AI can’t bring such elements to life.
“Is AI creativity better than humans?” Well, my answer is NO. I’m not saying that my art is better than that AI’s creation but simply saying the uniqueness of each artist’s and each of human creation is not replaceable by AI.
“Can AI eventually replace our jobs as writers, designers or artists?” This is a tricky question to answer. It is silly to imagine humans and AI competing with each other when it comes to creativity. Rather, humans and AI can and should collaborate and complement each other. For example, AI can be useful for artists for brainstorming early in the process as a creative tool within their own layered process.
Michael Hansmeyer, an postmodern architect designer who use algorithmic computational techniques, said that Generative design is about “thinking about designing not the object — but a process to generate objects”. What he is saying is that the process allows for “more artificial serendipity: the happy accidental innovation that normally takes time to stumble upon”.
Generative tools are changing the way we make art in many ways. The article in AIArtist.org summarizes it very well.
AI tools are “making a wide range of creative skills more accessible. People with no creative skill sets can try to create something new.
It will shift artistic focus to creating a process rather than an end result leveraging computers to do the legwork and create near infinite variations in a given solution space.
AI tools will learn from us and become collaborators. They will be a spark for human creativity, rather than a simple replacement for it.
Evolutionary algorithms are making it possible to tap the wisdom of the ages and manifest it in inspiring new ways.
It's a real game changer and is very exciting. I have no idea what human and AI’s creative collaboration will lead us to but hope it will aid in our desire to express ourselves and pursue our creativity to new and beautiful places.
That’s all for you today.
That’s all for you today. If you enjoyed this video, please make sure to like it, subscribe to my channel, or leave a comment. If you are curious about my art collections, please go to www.lovethewayart.com. Thank you for watching! See you next time!