This subject has been something I’ve wrestled with for a while. I’ve gone back and forth, and may go back and forth a bit forever on the subject because it is a tough one. There are some great applications that have been brought about, but there have also been a lot of bad ones. I’m no expert but a lot of the bad I’ve seen is tied right to creatives and their work.
I sit here every week and think about what to use for an image to share on my posts, especially my stories. I know they may not be the greatest literary work, but they’re really written by me, and I want there to be an image that might grab someone’s eyes. I mean that’s a part of the writing/reading relationship from the jump, right? What is this artwork conveying to me? I want to be drawn into a story by the image. I can’t say exactly what does and doesn’t work to grab my attention, but something in the combo of title and image should be sucking the reader in. Which is hard to create when you’re on a deadline and already working a full time job, as well and just being indecisive in general. I’ve often wished I could just use AI to generate something quickly, but I don’t want to because I don’t know how they’re all sourced.
Too many AI’s are pulling stuff from artists without permission. That may sound like a loaded accusation, and the truth is, there may only be one or two of them that have done this. I will concede that point, because I don’t know. But I do know there has been at least one AI that has stolen art. While I don’t like the one bad apple ruins everyone idea, I can’t separate AI from this one in my brain. If one of them could be doing it, how am I supposed to take someone’s word about the next one when I don’t know the coding and can’t see what’s gone on behind the scenes? It’s so muddy.
Look, maybe I’m over simplifying it as a problem. I can completely see that being the case too. Why do I have a problem with this when there are memes out there with someone’s hard work being shared without their permission? Valid question, and perhaps I just accepted it as the way things are. Maybe it isn’t that different a situation in a lot of cases. But I struggle with the creatives losing out entirely because of a tool that may steal from them helping someone else succeed with “creating”. Because it’s not just stealing in that sense, but it’s also cheapening what artists and creatives are doing.
We are now living in a world where art is being devalued because of AI. How many people would rather just have their computer generate an image because it doesn’t cost them time or money the way an actual commissioned piece would? Why write a story when we could write a short summary of what we want and have it be generated. I have teacher friends who are posting all the time that the assignments they turn in they can review for AI just like plagiarism. We are handing over critical thinking and creativity to machines because it’s faster and easier to do at an alarming rate. Don’t even get me started on how close we are to it being able to create hard to detect deep fakes, if it isn’t already there anyway.
Maybe it makes me an old man shaking my fist at the clouds. I can accept that. I’m sure there will be more that I do that with as I get older. I do think this is important though. I’ve really only used an early on AI image generator several years ago to see how awful it was and making something, which I laughed at a lot. But since there are harmful ones out there I’ve stayed away. I spend often too much time struggling every week going through royalty free resources to find images, or wracking my brain for a meme on my newsletters and musings. If I had the time, I’d just sketch out my own cover art, and feel good about my own creativity. I just don’t have the time and energy for it. So I search for things that I can make an image with as I mentioned above. It could be easy just to generate something from AI, and maybe it would grab attention to help grow an audience better. It could also be me stepping on the back of someone else just like me trying to do something with their creativity, who never gets the shot they need because of someone fast tracking their success at the expense of them, and that just doesn’t feel right to me.
Yes there are other concerns of how it could take jobs down the road and that concerns me as well, but if I’ve learned anything in the workforce, corporate America already finds everyone replaceable. AI will just be another tool in the long line of ways they have replaced people. Art and creativity, those are the things that scare me more with AI because it’s so new and getting closer to hitting its stride. Those are things that bear out humanity’s soul, and if we start replacing that with fake generated mashups stolen from others, we may never find our way back.