By Brynn Gibson

Editor in Chief

Have you ever wanted to see an oil painting of the pope eating a mango? Perhaps a picture of claymation bears at a corporate meeting? Well, you were born in the correct century. 

Now, with Artificial Intelligence (AI) tools including DALL-E 2, Midjourney AI, and Stable Diffusion, we can simply think art into existence! Pulling from billions of pieces of artwork, AI can capture the wildest corners of our imaginations with just a few words. It’s a collaboration of coders and artists; creative thinkers uniting in an ultimate tribute to human progress and technological advancement. 

However, I wouldn’t exactly characterize the collaboration as equitable. Behind every piece of AI-generated art are billions of uncredited artists. Developers train AI by allowing it to scour databases of existing photos and artworks to generate something new. The algorithm uses bits and pieces of different images to construct a new picture. In basic terms, it produces very advanced collages. Given that unlicensed images make up the vast majority of the input, many artists feel AI steals their work without their consent. AI is an incredible tool, but should not come at the expense of human creators. In order to reference a piece of artwork in a database, AI companies first need to buy the rights to use the image.

Furthermore, according to copyright laws, the “artist” behind AI generated-art is the person who prompted the algorithm to generate the image. This means that anyone who uses AI has the right to reproduce and make money off produced images. 

This technicality has triggered a flood of controversy. In September 2022, Jason Allen entered an AI-generated piece into the Colorado State Fair art competition. Not clarifying to the judges that he had used AI to make the picture, Allen won the competition and the 300 dollar prize. The piece of artwork Allen submitted was undoubtedly beautiful, but he should not have been able to take credit for its creation. Allen did not labor over the piece of artwork for hours on end, nor did he code the algorithm that created the image. AI copyright must be adjusted to give jurisdiction to the creators of the AI software, not to individual users. 

Some say the reign of human-made art is over. Artificial Intelligence can produce pieces of artwork with speed and in a quantity unmatchable by humans –– why would anyone pay an artist when they can produce better work for free? Yet asserting that AI art has “won” is a flawed argument. 

AI art only exists because of humans. AI is only capable of copying existing styles and media, and cannot fabricate entirely new genres of art by itself. With time, algorithms will become more advanced, but they will never be capable of thought itself. AI is merely an extension of human creativity; it may outperform human art, but it will never render human art obsolete.

(Sources: NY Times)