AI. Art Manifesto
GANs(Generative Adversarial Network) was first developed in 2014, and since then generative art has been developed. With the help of AI like Dall. E, Midjourney, and countless others, we were able to create images more easily than ever before. It has brought excitement, concern, and the question of “what is considered art?”
When discussing art, generally concept and craftsmanship come into rise. The concept is the idea behind the art - it can be the intention of the artist, a discussion between viewers, viewer's interpretation, and is very much fluid. However, craftsmanship is how the concept has materialized in space and time. Craftsmanship is not necessarily about making something skillfully - it's intertwined with concept and its optimal materialization.
When it comes to AI art one thing that is being questioned is craftsmanship. By typing in some text, AI like Dall. E or Midjourney can easily “craft” images. Craftsmanship is done by AI and the role of humans is purely coming up with concepts. Craftsmanship in the digital world has been valued before, but what makes AI different is that programs like Photoshop or Procreate are “Tools,” which is different from craftsmanship itself. In this sense, Photoshop is merely an extension of brushstrokes, except going back was possible. AI entirely takes charge of craftsmanship which is why its validation as an art is questionable.
However, it can be argued that crafting words or sentences can be craftsmanship as well. Words as art existed in the forms of poetry, manifestos, and so on. For AI they don't require the level of craftsmanship like poetry, yet it does take multiple takes and some sort of effort and trial to get the desired outcomes.
Ultimately AI relies on human concepts to generate art with somewhat questionable craftsmanship. Then, what's the issue of AI art?
Artworks in the digital world have always brought copyright issues and AI art brought new issues of copyright. AI art generates art based on the image data it possesses, and it has to use countless numbers of images to create a dataset. During the process, artists' artworks were used as data without their consent. It can be argued that humans also refer to other artis's work to create new artwork. However, humans also make an effort to make other people's art styles their own with a twist, while AI doesn't do that sort of “craftsmanship.” Again, the craftsmanship of AI art can be questioned.
In this sense, generated AI art itself does not lack craftsmanship since it uses human craftsmanship to generate images. What's questionable is the process of getting the craftsmanship and its transformation to the dataset.
Ultimately, like any art AI art is also about reliance on human
