Automated art was around even as early as the ancient Greek civilisation
“If art is the bridge between what you see in your mind and what the world sees, then skill is how you build that bridge.”
The skill that built that bridge has been evolving constantly over the centuries. What started with natural and organic elements, within the walls of prehistoric dark caves, transformed with each era — right from parchment papers and oil paints on canvases to contemporary video art.
All of these however, needed human hands and intelligence for their execution, no matter what the tools may be. Today, we have reached another epoch where this human intelligence is being replaced by artificial intelligence.
Artificial Intelligence or AI can be broadly defined as intelligence exhibited by machines, computer systems in particular. The concept of AI-generated art is not a new phenomena as most of us imagine it to be. Automated art was around even as early as the ancient Greek civilisation, when inventors tried to design machines that produced music or that could write text.
Though the tradition flourished through the centuries that followed, it was only in the 2020s that these tools became accessible to the general public. Ever since, there has been a flurry of activity on that front and raging debates if it would affect the bridge of art adversely.
AI AND THE BUSINESS OF ART
The pandemic and the resultant lockdowns may have laid the foundation stone for zoom meetings and work from home strategies in the corporate sector, but it also was when the art market slowly started waking up to using technology to keep the business of art running. Augmented reality simulators and online viewing rooms for art became the norm during that trying period.
Once the pandemic’s effects waned and art’s physicality resurfaced, AI continued to be a remarkable tool to aid art galleries and museums in their research. Cataloguing art, for instance, which was earlier done manually and involved several days of work, was cut down to mere seconds, thanks to AI.
Keeping track of the art market and predicting future trends has also become a breeze with AI allowing for the interpretation of data regarding sale of art worldwide. Analysing art sales data has helped in establishing patterns and behaviour.
AI’s ability to analyse data has also tremendously helped in assessing the authenticity of artworks and helped determine its value. In January 2023, AI identified a hitherto unknown painting as the creation of Raphael, the famous Italian painter from the Renaissance period, after which the price of the artwork shot up to astronomical sums.
With AI’s access to historical records and other documents, this was easily achieved by studying and comparing brushstrokes, the style and even the pigment in the work! This has indeed been a boon for art buyers and investors, as checking the genuineness of a work of art, especially from very early periods, was always a tricky affair involving months, with art forgery practices prevailing rampantly and art collectors often getting entangled in its web.
AI AND ARTISTS
Similar to every other field, whispers of fear have been doing the rounds, proclaiming an eventual dangerously close to doomsday situation for artists. Alarm bells first rang when it was discovered that Jason Allen, the winner of an art competition in 2022, had created his award winning work, Théâtre D’opéra Spatial, with help from Artificial Intelligence.
The debates that ensued termed AI generated art as anti-artist, because anyone could now become an artist. All that was required was a simple text input. Artistic skills could take a backseat and even be nil, yet the algorithm could produce an astounding work of art based on the prompt. As simple as that, and yet, alarmingly blurring the lines between machine-made and human-made creations.
Besides, it also allows the use of artworks, without the original artist’s consent. In January 2024, almost 16,000 artists’ works had been used by an AI company to train their computers to replicate their works, obviously without considering obtaining due permissions from the concerned artists. Some of the artists were even acclaimed and famous, like Andy Warhol and Van Gogh, while others were relatively unknown. The reproductions could easily pass off as originals, by adding minor changes at the push of a button. Scam artists could then flood the market with these cleverly recreated works.
Before giving in to fear mongers, what needs to be pondered about is that no machine can ever replace the human in art. Art is an emotion expressed, of a lived experience by an artist. It contains within its folds a thousand human characteristics — joy, sorrow, imagination, pain, ecstasy and rage. No technology can analyse the world around or feel the human experience. All it can do is to combine publicly available information to create. To add to it, most AI produced artworks have subjects and compositions overlapping at times, with the fundamentals of design not being adhered to often.
AI may change how art is produced perhaps. It could be an effective tool for artists to achieve results, too. But, it can never replace human creativity, because man-made art has always been an intrinsic part of our evolution and will continue to do so as humanity unquestionably needs art!
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