AI Art: Oxymoronic Paradox or Creative Evolution

Are Creatives Having A Justifiable Moral Panic?

I’ve been through the motions with AI. What an age to be alive, where technology can cause a real moral panic. Sure, there was all that business with the nukes during the Cuban missile crisis—but most everyday people didn’t feel the pressure of a moral choice. For most of civilization, the function of moral rule has been placed in some institution: church, state, or monarch. Not anymore. Now, even as a lowly writer, I have to decide whether AI use for art generation is a debasement of culture and a death blow to artists (including writers). Can someone change the timeline, please!

How did I first get involved with AI as a writer? In my day job, I work on communications content for a technology NGO, and heaven knows, thanks to ChatGPT (not a paid promotion), my workload has significantly reduced (60% maybe). While before, I was tasked with both ideation and execution, now, I just have to ideate and then command an execution. Soon, we’ll need to have that conversation about whether employers should expect more output with the emergence of AI or if employees should be given more free time. I have a feeling I know where this will go—capitalism always wins.

For all the computers and e-mails and whatnot - working hours have somehow only seemed to get longer with people taking work home more often on their laptops. If we aren’t careful, AI will be another productivity hack not to free us, but to further exploit us.

Anyway, this isn’t a ramble about economics; this is about creativity and AI. With my understanding of how LLMs work from my job, I tried writing a chapter of a novel using it to see what punch it was packing in that department. I was blown away. Sure, you have to know what you're doing and what you want if you don’t want another generic, derivative mess. But still, being able to produce an entire chapter in a two-hour sitting? Maybe even less. I don’t know if the already saturated world of storytelling is ready for this. But things are never going to be the same.

In Africa, YouTube folktale channels have become a niche, raking in views that compete with movies and music. These are essentially super-generic AI-generated stories in the African storytelling genre. In the West, Sci-Fi channels are popping up, doing the same thing—though with less dedication to visuals (come on, guys!).

There is something interesting about the genres that resonate with African and Western cultures. But that’s an article for another day.

These stories, when read, sound not just generic but derivative. Horrible copies of copies, sometimes mangled in other copies. This is what happens when you allow AI to generate the idea from scratch or give very vague prompts. But guess what? Look at the views—the consumer doesn’t care. They just want to be entertained. Personally, I don’t consider this art. In my view, there is a requirement for the idea-seed to have emerged from a human mind for the work to be considered art. But the market has other ideas.

Perhaps the argument can be made that there is a difference between entertainment and art. It's an argument I make a lot. You could also say commercialization is something different—creating for profit. Let’s be honest, aren’t the majority of popular IPs alive today just existing to milk the work of their original creators? Art, on the other hand, enjoys a sacred space, and dare I say it, if you're writing genre fiction without any relevant thematic exploration, you aren’t making art. Art is an exploration, not just the projection of ideas to elicit attention.

The Ikenga statue is a popular Igbo artistic symbol used to represent a person’s will power as suggested by the name IKE(Power) NGA(Motion). This figurine is always customized with the tool of a person’s trade in one hand (right) and the fruit of their trade in the other (left). This is a warrior’s ikenga, so he holds a sword on one hand and his opponent’s head on the other. This is what thematically meaningful art looks like in the highest form where it becomes diefied in the culture.

So, now we're up to two things for my art categorization:

- It must originate from a human mind.

- It must be thematically explorative (not just another execution of formulaic tropes).

What else, what else? I suppose the next question is about the crafting of the work. After the idea has been organically generated and grounded in a thematically rich foundation by a human, is there a requirement for a human being to execute the crafting?

We can agree that a graphic artist who 3D prints their work is not a sculptor, right? Even if they drew it on the computer, they did not sculpt it. But sculpting, while an art form, doesn’t mean every sculpture is a work of art. Remember, it has to have thematic resonance. So this argument won’t work. What next? What about a story using ghostwriters? Is the piece of art the story or the craft of telling it? Who is referred to as the creator here—the artist? These are the questions. And the ghostwriters who do not generate the idea or the themes around it—can they be referred to as the creator or even co-creator?

One thing we've learned from the visual arts is that technique is one thing, and vision is another. Take classical realist paintings: they likely require more time and technical proficiency (like fine-motor brush control) than Edvard Munch’s The Scream. Yet, The Scream competes with works that might have taken twice the time and mastery to replicate because of its thematic depth and aesthetic presentation. This highlights that it isn’t necessarily the craft level or its application that makes a body of work art. It’s why we don’t consider replicas as works of art, even if they require skill to execute on a craft level. They’re sort of like ghost-painters—following exact instructions.

To the untrained eye, there isn’t even a basis for comparison here. But to the practiced in the arcane ways of the artist, Munk’s work isn’t the childish amalgamtion of brush stroke it might appear like.

I’ll close with this on the creativity reflections: Do writers think our craft is somehow magical, exempt? That stringing sentences together is something too sacred for machines to touch? AI can take over building cars and houses, but not writing; which by the very existence of AI has lost all claim to the sacred domain. We now know even human language can be decoded by unconscious mathematical computations. Same mathematics it uses for any other task. I recall a friend of mine telling me once that artists believe to be in a sort of special class nearest to God because we have all these ideas. I wonder how gives inspiration to scientists and why we praise the best for allowing their work to be used for free to develop humanity but we won’t give out our writing to build AI for humanity. I guess it might have been easier if these companies weren’t planning to make trillions - but isn’t it the same for scientists who open their work to the public?

From an economic standpoint, writing as a craft is what a lot of artists survive on—freelancing, full-time jobs as copywriters, commissioned work. Outside of making art or entertainment (which pays very few writers), the skill of crafting is what puts food on our tables. AI is easily a threat to this economy because it cuts labour value in ways I can't begin to imagine. But will my boss fire me and use ChatGPT instead? Or keep me and let me do the prompting? I'll go with the latter. I have a larger context window for the organization’s communications needs, and AI is just good for task execution, requiring direction.

As with fiction, it’s also your creativity AI will piggyback on if you don’t want something derivative. The economy will likely favor experts who know how to communicate their ideas, but it will mean fewer opportunities for entry-level aspirants. Why hire an intern when AI costs $30 a month and can produce copy on command? At the very least, where I would have hired five, I’ll hire two. Either way, the possibility of a net loss is real.

When we finally defeat the big corps and takeover the land to build our utopia (a boy can dream)

In my dreams, I imagine another alternative. One where AI causes such a levelling effect that it breaks the stronghold of mega-corporations. Instead of Marvel making a billion dollars, 1,000 independent studios will make a million each. This also means that instead of the big agencies hugging all the clients, the little guy can compete by scaling labour and cognition with technology.

I’m still at war with myself regarding AI and its place in the creative world. But one thing is clear—it’s here to stay.

I don’t want to approach it with fear and miss opportunities. And let's be real, the Marvels and other giants I compete with as an indie studio will probably buy AI to use it and block it from competitors if they can. Who am I kidding?

My resolve is to compartmentalize my projects: my artistic pursuits will be all human-written, while my commercial pursuits can be AI-generated.

Phew, what a time to be alive.

P.S. If you're a writer reading this, don’t stress. The volume of work out there is already astronomical, with most books just floating around the ether of Amazon. Whether there are one billion or 10 billion books—it doesn’t matter. Find your tribe, and they will read you.