AI CAN CREATE BEAUTY. BUT CAN IT MAKE ART?

When I think about the growing proliferation of artificial intelligence in the art world, I think about doorbells.

I guess it doesn’t really have to be doorbells. Imagine any mundane item a human might confront in everyday life. Imagine what it may have looked like 100 years ago, then what it would look like today. Fine materials shaped into intricate forms have almost ubiquitously been replaced by uncomplicated, monochromatic pieces of plastic.

The point is, our track record of making compromises in the name of consumability is consistent and ever-growing. The reasons for this are vast, but it begs the question: When did artistry become so unimportant to us?

Valuing beauty and the arts can seem superficial, but we’re ultimately talking about human expression and appreciation. Our ability to communicate with, relate to and interpret the world around us through creativity is, arguably, our most human trait ( just ask Aristotle).

While blue-collar workers have long felt threatened by the prospect of automation, artists have largely been spared from the notion of having their jobs taken by robots for this very reason. That is no longer the case.

From the Ai-generated collab between Drake and The Weeknd and the concerns at the heart of Hollywood’s Writers Guild strike, to textto-image art generators threatening graphic designers’ jobs, we can see this happening already. Why would a company pay a human artist to draw an illustration — or to write a song or TV show script — when an AI program could do it for next to nothing?

I’m fearful of how this squares with our tendency to automate simply because it will almost always be

cheaper and more efficient. What gets lost in a society that favors robots are the very things artificial intelligence lacks, and what makes life beautiful and worth living: artistry and shared humanity.

The importance of creative expression as a means of bringing people together is hard to overstate. Visual and musical artists connect us to a complex world of ideas that can’t be articulated with words alone. Various cultures and times in history are distinguished by how their humans chose to express themselves artistically and the stories they tell. There’s a reason we travel the world to see different styles of architecture, hear new genres of music and taste new flavors of food. The variety of human creativity brings vibrancy to our lives.

I don’t doubt that AI can make beautiful things. (I would expect nothing less from a software trained on unfathomable amounts of human conversations and stolen art.) The biggest losses if the creative arts are overtaken by AI won’t be aesthetic.

I liken it to the death of the in-person newsroom. As a young journalist who mostly works from home, I find myself yearning for the unpredictable and often spontaneous nature of the newsroom, as well as the opportunities to share experiences with my colleagues. Sure, studies show we are more productive (and, quite importantly, more accessible and environmentally friendly) working remotely, but they also show remote workers are more depressed, partly due to a lack of connection with others. I grieve the spontaneity of

shared spaces that can’t be replicated online, where complex humans become twodimensional.

Our complexities are rarely compatible with a scenario where we value productivity and consumability above all else. Humans devoid of our quirks and complications are no more than machines, and the same could be said for art without humans. What is the point of art if not to help humans communicate with, understand and relate to other humans? Just another tool for rich collectors to lighten their tax burdens?

People will never stop expressing themselves creatively, but it will become even more difficult to have a viable career in the arts as budding talent is forced to compete with computers, pushing people out of the industry. Future generations will understand this more intimately than we could today.

Does this mean we should be averse to innovation and reject the many positive uses that will surely become of AI? Absolutely not. I’ve been on the internet for most of my life and thus am weary of inciting or leaning into moral panics about new technologies. AI will not only make information more accessible than ever, but will undoubtedly be used as a tool by human artists to make really compelling work.

What I’m arguing is that those of us — primarily, people with control of a payroll — who value creativity should support human artists over their AI counterparts whenever possible, because I don’t want to find out what a world without artists would look like.

And because art, at its core, serves as a reminder that us humans are more alike than we are different.