Society is elbows-deep in the new age of technology, and with new advancements comes new conflict. Artificial Intelligence is one of those advancements that has mounts of controversy surrounding it. AI was invented in 1956, but until recently, it didn’t threaten the job positions of human workers, especially artists.
Several AI Image generating programs have surfaced in recent years, most prominently Midjourney, DALL-E, and Stable Diffusion. Since their releases, more and more people have been able to generate images that are completely artificially generated. What people don’t realize is that AI generated images are created by stealing artwork from real artists.
“It takes from human artists and claims to be original,” Darius Oliver, a senior Shadow Ridge High School student artist, commented. “Sometimes you can tell exactly which artist it took from, and it can even replicate any given artist that you input.”
In order to generate AI “art,” these programs must grab from millions of original art pieces from the internet to compile it all into one picture. That means any artist, from big to small, can be a target. People can input a simple prompt into the AI and it will spit out something it found online, but with strange, inhuman mutations—because it isn’t human.
This has become such a major problem in recent years because AI users are claiming that they are artists, and that typing out prompts takes hard work. They also claim that it’s much more efficient than a human artist, even with the AI mutations.
Makenna Leavitt, a senior SRHS student stated, “It’s soulless. AI can’t feel emotions, so their creations lack emotion.”
Artists around the world since the beginning of time have emphasized how art is a method of self expression. Computers don’t have unique experiences, personalities, or feelings, so it is only capable of grabbing from others’ experiences and making what it “thinks” it looks like from the surface. The human mind works in ways that AI is incapable of recreating in a way that captures every ounce of pain and joy.
“Artists are important to the world. We’re able to see things in ways most people can’t. They can’t just throw us away because technology is able to do the job decently enough,” Madison Guzman, another senior student at SRHS shared.
Thanks to the rise of AI technology, people are starting to consider dropping the need for human artists and accepting soulless interpretations made by computers. For the art industry, this means danger. Millions of artists are in jeopardy in the face of a trembling industry of humans who prefer robots.
Guzman continues, “AI ruins the whole purpose of creating art. Non-artists don’t really understand that.”
An important thing to remember is that personal connection is the biggest aspect of all human lives, and AI brings humanity one step closer to throwing that away. Humans must look out for each other for the sake of preserving the beauty of artwork and emotional unity.
