AI and Art
Dead men tell no tales, but they do sing songs after 43 years of their passing, or so I thought when I received a notification on November 2, 2023, from Spotify announcing that The Beatles had released a new song.
The Beatles officially broke up after 1974, and two of the four members passed away in the years that followed. Yes, there were songs and recordings that came out well into the '90s and early 2000s, but it was still a surprise to the world to get a new Beatles song in 2023. Was it a prank? A fluke? If not, then what sorcery was this?
And that is when Artificial Intelligence and 'Lord of the Rings' director Peter Jackson come into the picture. In a nutshell, Peter Jackson, with the help of machine learning and AI, was able to retrieve and isolate John Lennon’s voice from an old cassette. They then proceeded to retrieve George’s old guitar riffs in the vault and recorded McCartney and Ringo in the studio, successfully creating a song with two living Beatles and two from the dead.
It flooded headlines and it also showed up on some of my resolutions in debate tournaments. It was the first time I saw the world unanimously agree for the use of AI and technology in art.
However, nothing is ever as black and white as The Beatles. The involvement of AI in art and artistic endeavors has been a major source of controversy. In our Friday class, I had the opportunity to bombard guest speaker Dr. Clemens with questions about her views on AI in art. Playing devil's advocate, I argued against AI's involvement, while Dr. Clemens believes AI brings modernity, equity, and accessibility for expression, even in art. She contends that if we reject digital tools in art, where do we draw the line? Dr. Clemens points out that art, even at its most basic, uses some form of technology whether it’s pencils, paper, typewriters, or musical instruments. While her argument is compelling, the debater in me still has a rebuttal. (Yes, this paper basically reflects me debating with my shampoo bottles, revisiting topics I couldn’t think of during the debate earlier in the day.)
One can argue against Dr. Clemens' stance by stating that AI introduces cognitive and cerebral interference in art, with the generative capabilities of artificial intelligence affecting the artist's work holistically. In my opinion, equating artificial intelligence, something designed to mimic sentience, with paper, pencils, and typewriters is an intellectually dishonest argument. Yes, those tools help us/create convenience to achieve expression, but they do not directly pose a threat to our artistic values. One could also argue that constant AI interference diminishes the core and original soul behind the art or creation in a body of work, the hook, the imperfections, and strange relatability that draws people in. These flaws get replaced by a generic overlay, crafted by AI trained on other works to simulate what creative output "should" look like.
This argument has been supported by many. So much so that Hollywood experienced one of its biggest writers' strikes because of generative AI. In September 2023, The New York Times reported that the Authors Guild had sued OpenAI for infringing on authors' copyrights, claiming that the AI engine used copyrighted books to train the chatbot. Clearly, there are complications and strong opinions when it comes to AI’s involvement in art.
Conclusion Note:
It is complicated. Sometimes AI helps us create an amazing body of work, filled with nostalgia and creativity, as with the Beatles, and sometimes AI might erode our artistic values and creativity. Can we draw a line and draft laws and regulations for something so abstract and evolving? I don’t know. Would AI become so advanced that we can't distinguish between what is human and what is not? I don’t know. Would AI art become so mainstream that human art becomes rare, niche, valuable, and expensive? I don’t know. It is complicated, but I am open to exploring this subject further. Right now, I lean towards the negation side regarding AI and art. Dead men do sing songs, and sometimes those songs are magnificent, but it should never be at the expense of human creativity.
References:
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/09/20/books/authors-openai-lawsuit-chatgpt-copyright.html
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