Art is a form of expression that highlights past experiences, ideas, thoughts, emotions and dreams. The beauty of art and creation is the human connection and emotional insight that radiates through it. The empathy and nuanced interpretations of societal norms demonstrated through art showcase the artist’s biases, unique experiences and ideals. Without human touch, art falls flat as it cannot showcase these complex nuances.
Artists can feel intimidated in a world where generative artificial intelligence (AI) can produce artwork. The art scene is already challenging, and career opportunities are smaller than for other sectors. The under-appreciation for artists’ crafts can also prove they are easily replaceable. There have been instances within China’s video game industry of illustrators looking to AI for jobs. The artwork artists craft would take time and effort; however, they come out incredible, but AI produces similar images in less time, saving a company money.
A portion of artists currently facing being replaced by AI is writers. As seen through the writer’s strike in the United States, the discussions and attempts to use AI have already begun within Hollywood writers’ rooms. Studios are looking at AI as a tool to speed up the writing processes — however, writers fear AI could take over the writer’s room, leaving some without jobs.
Don’t get me wrong, I believe that AI can help with brainstorming and organizing thoughts. It has the potential to assist writers. However, using it to write the first draft of a script would be unauthentic to the writing process because writing is closely associated with self-expression and emotion. AI identifies patterns from existing scripts and creates them based on those present themes and ideas. There are no original thoughts or nuanced ideas. AI does not portray authentic emotions and experiences but instead uses other artists pieces to create its own work.
I can’t see AI being able to capture the same emotions, liveliness and intention humans do when writing. As human beings, we understand complex emotion and connection while also being able to relay feelings better because of the direct experiences we face daily. We can capture emotions we have directly faced and experienced with more convection than a robot gathering data from others’ experiences and forming a surface-level depiction of them.
There is a level of radiant emotion in art pieces and there is a level of understanding and empathy derived from them. Audiences want to relate and understand the artist’s experiences and thoughts. I feel that the exchange of human ideas and thoughts is the beauty and makes art necessary in order to understand the complex nuances of our emotions. Without human experience behind art, it feels cheap.
Artists are irreplaceable by AI. No computer can compare to the imagination and authentic emotion a human can portray. The beauty of art is someone’s mind working through an emotion, thought or experience and portraying that struggle through their art form. Art comes from the heart and depicts the reality of humanity. Even though they have tried, machines cannot replicate the emotional intention behind human art.
