Reflective Essay Sample: Will Art Created by Artificial Intelligence Replace Traditional Art?

📌Category: Art, Artificial Intelligence, Science
📌Words: 936
📌Pages: 4
📌Published: 16 March 2022

Have you ever seen an image of famous paintings and thought, “wow this art is so in depth and detailed, it must be expensive”? Well in 2018, a price of art made by an artificial intelligence was sold for 430 thousand dollars(bbc,Art Made) , for something that could be mistaken for a ruined painting. The sale of this painting has sent a shockwave through the art community leaving people wondering if they will soon be replaced by robots and artificial intelligence. Artificial intelligence created art is plagued with questions such as “ who owns the art?” And  “ why does it sell for that much?” Leading many to have a pessimistic outlook on the future of traditional art. However, I don't think that traditional art is doomed.

The use of artificial intelligence to create art began in the late 1950's, artists started to make art with algorithms and equations to produce primitive patterns and pictures (the gradient, the past). Over many years and hours of work on artists behalf, artificial intelligence has created better and better art until alexander mordvintsev’s artificial intelligence called deep dream revolutionized by introducing actual artificial intelligence to run equations and make calculations, although the images made were clearly made up of other images(the gradient, the past). This leads us to the sale of Ahmed Elgammal in 2019 and more current events.

First, according totowardsdatascience.com, “An artist is someone who creates original works of art.”(towards science,The Role of AI). They also said “ Artists are a vehicle for expressing universal emotion.”(towards science,The Role of AI). These quotes convey the idea that art is created for humans to share emotion and thoughts and those things are integral for creating fine art. For example, look at the work of Zdzislaw Beksinski, he was a polish  man that grew up around the holocaust era and his paintings reflected that. His paintings were of hell scapes that commonly had themes of nazi symbols and death, wich he must have felt similarly through out his time living during the holocaust. One particular art piece, shows two skeletons embracing with a dark and gloomy background (beksinski), the art piece is extremely gloomy and has themes of death, grief, the futility of life, loss, and surprisingly hope. What kind of purpose or intent could an artificial intelligence instill in an artificial painting? 

Currently, art made by artificial intelligence has to fit into certain categories or make their own categories. This means that art pieces that come from current AIs (in categories where neatness and vivid imagery are valued) will be of relatively low quality, as seen in Edmond de ballamy which was the first art sold for a major price(the gradient, the past). The art work just isn’t up to the same quality and expressiveness that traditional art work provides.

Also, the availability of  low quality artificial intelligence that already makes primitive images is almost astonishing. The website AIArtist.org provides a list of about 8 AIs that make image art only, not to mention 10 plus other free AIs that you can find with a simple google search, and that is image art alone.  Recently The Verge has posted an article titles “The US Copyright Office says an AI can’t copyright its art”(the verge, The US Copyright Office). This is in response to an artist by the name of Steven Thaler trying to copy right his image made by artificial intelligence(the verge, The US Copyright Office). This means that no matter how good Artificial intelligence gets, its work cant be copyrighted because “The board found that Thaler’s AI-created image didn’t include an element of “human authorship”(the verge, The US Copyright Office) which correlates to the first reason in this essay. This is important because copyright protects against others using your art for monetary gain and plagiarism.

Some people may say that artificial intelligence is a relatively new technology and will soon become as skilled as human artists, if not more so. Another talking point is that artificial intelligence can produce art so much faster than a human, this will cause problems in the long term future of art, especially when the third reason in this essay is re-examined. Eventually the market will become saturated with so many artificial intelligence created art pieces that people won't be able to differentiate between human and AI art. This may lead to the devaluation of both human and AI made art without the proper regulation and management.

Artificial intelligence may be on the edge of excellence, but they probably won't surpass human artists within a couple of years. When it does surpass humans I don't think that the art created by artificial intelligence will be more expensive than traditional art. The current technology, and laws don’t let artificial intelligence perform to its full potential and limits how good artificial intelligence created art can be. Although in many years time artificial intelligence that creates art could be in everyone's pockets, and on everyone's phones,  the ability to make art will be extended to everyone, maybe you will make something like edmond bellamy and sell your art for some crazy amount.

Works Cited

“Art Made by Ai Is Selling for Thousands – Is It Any Good?” BBC Culture, BBC, https://www.bbc.com/culture/article/20181210-art-made-by-ai-is-selling-for-thousands-is-it-any-good.

Beksinski, Zdzislaw. “Two Skeletons Embracing.” Daily Art Magazine, 16 Jan. 22AD, https://www.dailyartmagazine.com/the-dystopian-surrealism-of-zdzislaw-beksinski/. Accessed 22 Feb. 2022.

Gey, Thomas. “The Role of AI in Art Creation.” Medium, Towards Data Science, 4 Dec. 2021, https://towardsdatascience.com/the-role-of-ai-in-art-creation-a53dbd562cdb.

Graham, Thomas. “Art Made by Ai Is Selling for Thousands – Is It Any Good?” BBC Culture, BBC, 12 Dec. 2018, https://www.bbc.com/culture/article/20181210-art-made-by-ai-is-selling-for-thousands-is-it-any-good.

Hao, Karen. “The Computing Power Needed to Train AI Is Now Rising Seven Times Faster than Ever Before.” MIT Technology Review, MIT Technology Review, 2 Apr. 2020, https://www.technologyreview.com/2019/11/11/132004/the-computing-power-needed-to-train-ai-is-now-rising-seven-times-faster-than-ever-before/. 

Meaker, Morgan. “AI-Created Art Redraws Battle Lines for Man versus Machine.” Daily Telegraph , 5 June 2021, pp. 8–8.

Offert, Fabian. “The Past, Present, and Future of AI Art.” Sentiers, 18 June 2019, https://thegradient.pub/the-past-present-and-future-of-ai-art/ 

Robertson, Adi. “The US Copyright Office Says an AI Can't Copyright Its Art.” The Verge, The Verge, 21 Feb. 2022, https://www.theverge.com/2022/2/21/22944335/us-copyright-office-reject-ai-generated-art-recent-entrance-to-paradise. 

Weiner, Ken. “Can Ai Create True Art?” Scientific American Blog Network, Scientific American, 12 Nov. 2018, https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/can-ai-create-true-art/.

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