Artist's Perspective: Why AI 'Art' is Soulless Theft

Last week I went to a gig by myself for the first time. I sat myself down in my single seat, possibly the youngest person in the room and one of thousands excited to see Split Enz. I loved it – I felt joy and heartache as the lyrics spoke of human experiences, really lived. I happily realised that I did not have to wonder whether Split Enz had used AI in their work (as I so often do nowadays) as these bangers were created long before it was even dreamed of.

As a visual artist and writer myself, when I see AI generated images, music or words presented as “art”, I see red. It’s boring, it’s theft, it’s soulless, sterile and it’s killing the planet through energy and water-guzzling datacentres. Someone suggested AI “visual art” should be called “Computer Rendered Artificial Pictures” (CRAP).

It’s not just me. In the Australian comic art community, festivals like the Perth Comics Arts festival have denounced AI, saying they “will not knowingly promote AI-generated materials, nor will we allow any such work to be a part of our festival”. I pumped my fist in the air when I heard this.

In my life, I am only interested in what a human can do so I am happily letting AI pass me by. I draw the old way – with my hand. I come up with ideas the old way – with my brain. I do this because doing art faster with the help of AI would not make me more creative, skilled or fulfilled. It would actually drain the colour out of my existence as an artist.

I was once contacted by a researcher who was making AI specifically for artists. I could apparently train his AI technology in my artistic style so I could eventually simply enter a verbal prompt and voilà! An artwork would appear, as if I had drawn it. I wouldn’t even have to pick up a pen.

I never replied to the email. If I was able to generate an artwork in seconds, then what is the purpose of me, as an artist? Creating art is like spending six months in a leaky boat. The water pours in, you battle to stay afloat while questioning all your choices until you finally clamber ashore on to dry land, triumphant. You can’t divorce the artist from the artistic process, sorry.

When people are moved by art, they want to know the artist and about the artistic process that created it – they want to know the band, they buy their merch to say “I saw them live”, they would die of happiness if they could grab a coffee with Neil Finn and ask him about his creative life (what about it, Neil?).

Who is behind AI “art”? The machine? The person who wrote the prompt? The tech bro who built the AI that scraped human artistic skill and creation to generate the “art”? Legal issues about authorship and copyright aside, what could any of them possibly say about the process of generating the image that would have any capacity to move someone or reveal something about the human experience or an artistic process? “I typed the prompt and pressed enter” – amazing bro, good work.

As I sat there listening to Message to My Girl, my mind went back in time, to the earliest humans. They were artists, we have found their ancient cave paintings and jewellery, and no doubt they told tales and sang songs that will never reach our ears.

My mind went forward in time too. On the last day of humanity, someone would pick up a stick and write something in the dirt. Or utter some words aloud. Or sing a song. Into the abyss we would make our mark because art is how we say ‘we were here and we lived.’

These thoughts were punctuated by the man sitting next to me who let out an ear-splitting cheer every time the music moved him, something that delighted me because I realised only a human with a great love for a band of humans would be so elated.

Until that night, I had seen generative AI as a threat to art, a dirty creature I had to keep one step ahead of. That was my mistake. I laughed out loud when I saw it for what it really is: a pale imitation of the real thing, which is the sole domain of the human, not the machine.

Long live art and our humanity.