Eva Guo (10) | STAFF REPORTER
Art is a window to the soul — an artist’s ideas and emotions of poured onto a canvas through tremendous amounts of creativity and dedication to their craft. Every mark is made with intent and a story behind it. That is of course until AI entered the scene. AI art, as the name suggests, are images or ‘artwork’ made by generative AI. In recent years, generative AI has become more and more popular, with even major companies using AI generated images in promotional material. However, since its development, AI has been surrounded by controversy and numerous ethical concerns.
One of the primary ethical concerns is consent. Generative AI works by collecting images — usually artwork from a human artist — into a database. Then the AI will identify patterns from those artworks to create a ‘new’ image. However, these artists never gave their consent for their work to be fed to and analyzed by a soulless machine. Artists are seeing their unique styles mimicked and mass produced without an ounce of credit or compensation, and with no consideration of their consent. To them, this is simply theft disguised as creativity.
This leads into another issue: these AI ’artists’ claim their generated images as their own work. The ‘creator’ may have typed in a few prompts, but the actual piece was made by an algorithm which was trained using the hard work of other legitimate artists. AI artwork takes no effort from the ‘artist.’ This misrepresentation undermines the work of actual human artists who put time and effort into perfecting their work.
The most troubling threat posed by generative AI is the impact it will have on the everyday working artist. Many artists rely on commissions, freelance gigs, and selling prints to earn a living. However with the rise of AI art, some clients will opt for free or cheap generative artwork, leaving human artists without jobs.
As the shift to AI generative works becomes more apparent, it challenges values of originality and respect for human labour. Although this shift may be inevitable, although AI may be able to create a perfect masterpiece in the blink of an eye, it could never replicate what art truly is — an expression of the soul.
