Artists will create art with AI
And we need artists to figure this out soon.
As someone who wrote, recorded, produced and published a bedroom-rock album in his teens (no I’m not linking to it lol), I feel somewhat (although not entirely) qualified to comment on AI - and more generally new technology - in music, the creative arts, and what I call “emotional endeavours”.
Everyone has their own definition of art. Mine is: art is anything that elicits an emotional response. Angry, sad, hopeful and happy - it’s art. It follows that anything that doesn’t make anyone feel anything cannot be art.
Two things follow from this:
Art cannot be singularly defined, as what is or isn’t art is defined on an individual level. As long as someone thinks it’s art - it’s art.
Art is still collective, social and cultural - but to be collective art it needs to elicit a powerful emotional response from many people.
Can AI be used in the creation of art?
I’ve been thinking a lot in the last few weeks about this question: can AI be used in the creation of art?
I think it can. But only in the sense that it’s a tool a human can use to convey the emotional response they desire. AI itself cannot create art - the human is a necessary component of the artistic process.
Think about it this way.
AI is essentially a compression technology with emergent capabilities in producing novel, new content. But it’s still just another technological advancement.
Technological advancements brought about better amplifiers, electric guitars and synths.
In the hands of a technologist those tools remain physics experiments and curiosities at best.
Artists create emotions with new technology
But in the hands of an artist - we have some of the most powerful collective shared art in history. The Beatles. Queen. Phil Collins and the gated reverb drum line. EDM. Mufasa. Bambi. Toy Story.
Artists experiment as much as a technologist, but an artist is experimenting in how to make themselves, and others feel something.
They are finding how to turn this technology - transistors, circuits and software - into something emotional.
In this way, I don’t think AI is that different to previous technological jumps in art history.
Seeing photographs would have blown the minds of people in the early days of that technology.
Movies - just the concept of seeing a moving screen for the first time must have been wild.
Records meant you weren’t limited by what you could play on the piano for a sing along.
Each of these technologies probably felt pretty similar to how we feel today about AI - in terms of change over a lifetime - but one of the great things about being human is that we get to keep inventing new things and feeling like we’re the first ones to ever experience something new.
Artists will create art with AI
The challenge for artists with AI is not “how do I avoid being replaced by this” - this has already been happening for centuries as technology has replaced humans in art. (Even to the point where the DJ that puts on the songs has already been replaced with an algorithm in Spotify).
It is, how do we use this technology to create something that makes people feel.
Personally, I’m really excited to see what people create.
I think we’re going to see amazing movies created in someone’s bedroom. Production company, lighting, video no longer being hurdles to getting a great script on screen.
Are you a great poet, but don’t have a way to record a song - I’m keen to hear your latest fully-produced track with Suno.
The best art is created soon after the technology goes mainstream
Each time a new technology comes along, there’s this window of bohemianism as slower-moving corporations and the capitalist powers that be try to catchup with the sheer inventiveness of people. An explosion of new ideas, new ways of doing things and new creative endeavours that we couldn’t have imagined without the technology. Then the capitalists come in and ruin it for ever by squeezing every last unemotional drop of commercial value out of it.
AI hasn’t had this (yet) - so get out there and create while you still can. Build something. Write something.
Emotion is our most raw and fundamental means to communicate and form relationships. It is something core and central to what it is to be human.
I and everyone close to AI seems to be experiencing some sort of collective psychosis around “human” endeavours. Multiple people I know want to turn it all off and go farm vegetables in a sort of croft. Crofting was objectively pretty shit - but it was human. It was our shit.
We don’t all need to go back to staving to death over winter to recapture humanity - but we DO need to figure out how to find humanity in this new technology, and fast. I’m not keen to read another “here’s the honest reality” in an article online.
I don’t want to be questioning every em-dash in a piece as some sort of gotcha.
And holy shit some of the new AI video production stuff is getting good.
But most of it’s not emotional. It’s a smeared goop of sepia-coloured slop that gives most people the ick.
Changing this is going to require a lot of hard work by very creative people. And I don’t think the job of creatives is going away any time soon.
One other thing. Older people, as a collective, ALWAYS hate whatever the younger generations are experimenting with. As I get older I find myself increasingly intrigued by “kids these days”. This is normal. Doesn’t make getting older any easier. But with age comes wisdom and we should revel in the creativity of youth unencumbered by rose-tinted glasses of the past.