Some people worry that AI will make artists obsolete. After all, it can already generate songs and images and poems, among other things.
I have doubts (or you may call them hopes).
A large part of what makes great art so alluring, I believe, is that a flawed human, just like you and me, could come up with something so special. The infallibility of the creator matters as much as the art itself.
My experience of John Lennon’s music is so much richer because across his life, navigating the chaos of the world, he was: a creative genius, a dick head, an activist, hilarious, lazy, slogging it, short-haired, long-haired, druggy, at the top of his game, in a creative slump, innovator, copy-cat, conformist, rebel, mean, grieving, angry, loving, shot dead.
Across time, we mainly back the artist, not a single work of art. When we don’t, we call it novelty. A novelty song we get hooked on in the short term is kind of like saying – “I don’t much care who made this”. Fertile territory for AI.
But for the stuff we really care about – the posters that end up on our bedroom walls – we usually can’t separate art in and of itself from the story of the artist. The story of the artist is embedded in their work, whether it’s explicit or not. It’s the living, breathing person behind a piece of art that brings jeopardy and drama to the table – two things we can’t resist.
This is most likely why the verification and attribution of paintings matters. This is a large part of how the price of ‘Salvador Mundi’ went from $1,175 in 2005 – when it was thought to be a copy – to $450,312,500 in 2017 – when it was thought to be an original Leonardo. This is why we care if a piece of street art that looks like a Banksy is actually claimed by Banksy.
This feels irrational; that the value of art can change significantly because of who it was created by. Surely that shouldn’t matter – surely, if it’s good, it’s good. Except, a lot of the time, who made it matters as much, if not more than anything. Why? We’re way more emotional than we are rational.
Kill the story, you kill the art.
This is where AI will struggle to compete. In the end, it won’t be flawed enough.
