In recent years, it seems the development of Artificial Intelligence technology has exponentially improved. Think back to even just 2021; the talk of AI was minimal. It was this new and interesting technology on the horizon, it seemed like it had some potential, but it was still in its infancy stages.

Flash forward to 2024 and it’s constantly in the news and in everyday conversation. Now we are starting to see the beginnings of the huge impacts this new, not fully understood technology is going to have on the world. There has been more and more talk of how it will affect jobs, the economy, entertainment and even politics.

But one area I particularly want to focus on is the implications of generative AI software. This is what AI generated art, music and writing are – think of ChatGPT, Mid Journey, Sora AI.

These generative AI systems have gotten increasingly better. I remember experimenting with AI generated art in early 2022 and it was interesting. The images vaguely looked like the prompt you put in – but now, they are almost indistinguishable. AI-generated images are honestly good, and sometimes even impressive. Open AI’s Sora is creating mind-blowing realistic videos. 

All of these developments have created huge debates on what art and creative work really is. Some believe Generative AI will make human artists obsolete, as it is much cheaper. Others think art created by AI is not real art and human artists will always be important.

I believe writing, music, and art generated by Artificial Intelligence is not real art, and only humans can do this.

The thing is, AI still needs human guidance. It can’t come up with these things on its own. AI fundamentally does not interpret this media the same way we do, and does not follow the same creative process. 

And finally, the soul and craft that goes into creating all forms of art is so valuable to the final piece, and is something that only humans can understand. AI should not replace humans, it is just a new tool for us to use. 

I believe most people do not understand how generative AI works. Ironically, there’s not much intelligence to how it creates the works it put out. Like any other computer program, it really just follows a set of instructions, while referencing  the millions of pieces of data they were trained on.

For example, if you ask an AI image generator for a picture of an apple, it looks at the data it was trained on, and knows that this arrangement of pixels with these numerical values correlates to the string of letters “apple.”

Computers see images like this: pixel 1 = rgb (233, 89, 16,), pixel 2 = rgb ( 90, 70, 240), etc. It doesn’t understand what an apple or image actually is, it’s just going off the instructions it was programmed with. It is just a bunch of numbers and data to AI, they don’t understand what they are making.

In my opinion, the creative process is so important to what art is, and computers don’t do that. When a writer, an artist, or musician decides to create something first they need inspiration, then they start creating it. sometimes some stuff doesn’t work so they go back and change it, they need to plan ahead. This creative process is so important to what art is. 

Adding onto how humans fundamentally create things differently, a good musician needs to understand music theory. A good writer needs to understand, story telling, and using language in an articulate way. A good artist needs to understand shape and form, light and color.

All of this means nothing to AI; it’s just a bunch of data. Humans can only understand what’s underneath the final product and what goes into it, which in my opinion is another reason the works of generative AI disqualifies them as art.

And, although more abstract, the soul that goes into art may be the most defining part. Art is an expression of oneself, their experiences, and perception and that is what makes art, art. AI isn’t conscious; it doesn’t have memories, or any real grasp of the world.

Now, if an AI were conscious and had experiences and perception and it created art on its own, then that would be considered art. But AI can’t work on its own. It still needs human guidance. You could argue that the work an AI puts out is the creative work of the person that used the AI to create it. Although it would be their idea, they didn’t put any work into creating, they didn’t have a process or craft. 

Generative AI is simply a tool to use. It is like any other new innovation or technology. In fact, when cameras were first invented, some feared it would make painting obsolete, but it sparked new art movements that went against photorealism, like cubism and impressionism. And there are some benefits to generative AI, especially for producing quick art or music pieces free of copyright, which could benefit average people.

Human creatives aren’t going anywhere, because AI is not creative.