Artificial Art and How it Challenges Creative Intelligence

by Christian Delise

December 2022

Scrolling through any online feed these days, it’s impossible to ignore the proliferation of A.I. created content, or as I like to call it: Artificial Art. Automation has been forecast to replace jobs for quite some time now, but until recently the threat remained limited mostly to the labor class- simple, mundane, or dangerous tasks would be the first to be supplanted, while the most human-centric creative professions such as writing, analytics, or art were to be the last roles which depended on humans. However it now seems that no field is safe from the threat of the rise of the machines.

Our society can’t help but make every topic into a binary debate and in these moments it is tempting to claim a stance. Traditionalists grasp onto the nostalgia of old and the danger of rushing into things we don’t yet fully understand, afraid that the rapidly evolving world will make their trade obsolete. Early adopters on the other hand are ever eager to jump in on the latest trend and claim premature victory for tech out of fear that they will miss being on the cutting edge. For better or worse, both are right. History teaches us that while new technology in creative fields does inevitably accelerate progress, there remains the need to integrate the lessons learned from doing things the old fashioned way. A great case study is the adoption of computer graphics in the film industry by ILM in the 1980’s. The capability of the software was surely impressive yet it was useless without the knowledge of how to implement traditional animation techniques. Understanding the principals of rendering a scene on a canvas painting is critical to applying advanced lighting and texturing to a complex 3D CAD scene. Understanding that there is a tendency to simultaneously over and under-estimate the potential of new artistic tools, I find it necessary to pose the philosophical question: What exactly is creativity and how can we constructively harness the power of new tools like Artificial Art?

As a creative at heart and an entrepreneur by necessity, the convergence of art and technology is always a highly appealing proposition for me. The idea of choosing a career in the arts was a daunting undertaking as it typically meant sacrificing luxuries such as money and respect in the pursuit of creative fulfillment. Design as a full time profession is essentially coming up with novel use of modern tools in new ways, and has evolved to become a natural path for anyone trying to utilize their right brain to secure a consistent income in a predominantly left brain business culture. Now that corporations have realized the value of visual appeal in the digital world, creativity has been formatted, packaged, and sold in a manner that leaves it vulnerable to automation just as any other field. This has all happened before of course, those who manifest wealth out of Art are a small minority and the rest are left to commoditize it to fulfill the visions of others. Most artists of the Renaissance never saw profit from their work until well after their death. Remember how NFT’s were set to liberate the starving artist? In the bigger picture sense- if anyone with an internet connection can create artistic content, does art in general lose it’s value?

When Jackson Pollock pioneered Automatic Art the world was moved by the concept of artistic expression which was conjured by random strokes through stream of consciousness. The uniqueness of the idea was as revolutionary as the imagery itself. We had been surrounded by impressionistic realism for centuries, it’s no surprise that the refreshingly contrarian themes of modernism, abstractionism, and surrealism movements were so embraced and controversial. As humans, the most direct route to stimulating our emotions is to show us something we have never seen before. Originality, therefore, is perhaps one of the most critical aspects necessary for producing creative work that is of cultural significance. Post Modernism has evolved beyond impressing the viewer with technique into a contest of seeking out the most shocking, never before experienced concepts. The same can be said for Artificial Art: The fact that we have never seen a machine program produce emotionally expressive and realistic content is a truly novel concept to us. It is fresh, efficient, and in many ways intimidating.

As with anything new, there is a natural curiosity to understand how it works, in order to understand the magic trick. Applications like DALL-E and Midjourney are basically advanced forms of Google image search which analyze all existing photos returned for the key words the user enters and recombines the visuals in a manner it believes the writer would assimilate with. Some design studios do this as a shortcut to creativity- its called a mood-board collage. The A.I. technology has already progressed to the point of rendering each pixel in a brush-like manner, giving the illusion that it made this collage from scratch. This is essentially what you would experience taking entry level art courses in an Art school- unpack how others have made art, rinse and repeat.

Back in University, a professor once described the act of rendering a design illustration as ‘academic’ or able to be replicable strictly by following a process….this insight was meant to be encouraging for those students struggling with applied technique and to suggest that if one were to study the principals of painting lights, shadows, and materials, the desired qualities of 3D products on paper would be produced. To the more, let’s say, naturally talented in the class it was a sobering moment in which we realized that despite being able to “draw well” we will ultimately be judged purely on technical execution. In Design, our work is meant to serve a purpose by solving a problem and therefore loses credibility as pure Art, which by definition can not strive to serve a specific function- this is a highly debatable subject. The correlation here is that with originality now as a prerequisite for Modern Art, these mediums share a common challenge - the creator must produce fresh ideas and discern the best way to execute them in order to convince the viewer of their value. If the combination of elements is too obvious or drawn from direct inspiration, it is labeled “derivative”, the kiss of death for most Art…I have yet to see design studies produced using A.I. which goes beyond derivative, as the brand identity imagery associated with them is so well established. It seems as though Artificial Art is limited in it’s ability to forecast beyond what already exists in this regard.

Regardless of the field- be it Music, Fiction, Film, Design, or any other creative industry, producing work of true originality is the most evasive and seemingly futile pursuit of the profession. It is important to realize that no Artist is completely original as every act of creation is based on the combination of pre-existing ideas and content. Inspiration to create can stem from any combination of what one perceives throughout their life. To produce something which resonates in a new way, Artists often make extremely harsh judgements on both their observations and their work in order to evolve the conversation and avoid being derivative. This “suffering” is often essential to making breakthroughs in their work, something that Artificial Art cannot yet do on it’s own. On the flip side, through this technology we have reached a moment where anyone can instantly experience the act of producing content regardless of actual artistic talent and thus can jump straight to the reflective phase of the artistic process , where they feel the fleeting pride of creating something which then stares right back them as they face the reality that what they have made might not be worth anything at all. Today’s creators can more easily research everything that already exists and calculate with a degree of accuracy what combination of elements would be the most novel delivery system for the whatever message or feeling they are trying to convey.

Since we have established that the rarity of skills used to produce the magic of art is able to be replicated, and the originality aspect can be somewhat formulaic, what remains is arguably the most critical aspect of artistic value: the origin story of the artist themself. As humans, we rely on our relatability to other humans as a form of appreciation and connection for the work they create. Art with a capital A is often the product of the combined positive and/or negative experiences of the Artist and is intentionally or unintentionally meant to conjure up an emotion in the viewer who has shared in some part with these feelings. This is a very precarious feat as it largely depends on the timing and context in which the work is released. Much of the intrinsic value assigned to collectible pieces of Art or timeless classics in Film, Fiction, and Music directly correlates to the story behind what it takes to make them. Our culture invests in the meaning behind the work, even when the interests are entirely self serving or fully assigned by the viewer.

Machines, for as much as we know, do not suffer, do not draw from past experiences and have no demonstrable emotion. No one pities A.I. or is curious about it’s struggle. Once the novelty of computer generated content fades, all that remains is the questionable catalyst behind it’s own inception- it’s not a very dramatic story without any context. To address this, the idea of implanting memories into A.I. is a well studied concept. Since our own memories of experiences are essentially recorded stories which we can play back to ourselves, compelling storytelling will be essential to the progress of bridging the gap between Artificial Art and true creative intelligence. Perhaps once the machines achieve sentience and realize that the widest application of their intelligence thus far is being used for creating post apocalyptic acid trips and self portraits of celebrities in unusual scenarios, they will have suffered enough to earn their own credibility for creating more original work. This is why I have attempted to apply their talents in a somewhat meaningful way, just in case they are keeping track of which of us were thoughtful about their efforts.

I am not afraid that Artificial Art will supplant the role of creatives. It is a tool for producing media, a device which is only as good as the end user’s execution. It is not conscious, curious, or original, at least not yet… It will be very interesting to see what new unique combination of applications can be optimized for Artificial Art and how it can be used to create more complex, multi faceted content more efficiently. The stories that can now be told by a broader pool of individuals using these tools are only just beginning. If I have any concern it is that the very metrics by which we gauge creativity will become increasingly diluted and trivial in an era that is already suffering from a post modern identity crisis. The silver lining for this trend is that once the world is flush with an over abundance of Artificial Art and Digital Darwinism comes full circle, the physical skills and trades of the old world which were passed down by hand will theoretically become even rarer, more appreciated, and highly sought after, giving way to a resurgence in the demand for refreshingly humanistic expressions of creative intelligence. In the meantime, it’s entertaining to watch the general population beta test the technology- now that Art is being democratized, creativity will be forced to evolve to a higher state. One could imagine worse things.