 A painting made by AI with alterations by me. This first section about AI-generated art was generated by AI. Yeah, I get the irony. Following this essay, I share some of my own thoughts.
My Prompt: Essay for a blog post about my experience as a fine artist who is using AI to generate new images based on my own paintings. Discuss the meaning of originality when a machine can duplicate artists' efforts instantly. Is this new artwork "mine" or not? How I can use AI as an extension of my personal expression. ChatGPT's Output: Title: "AI and Art: Redefining Originality in the Digital Age" In the realm of fine arts, the advent of artificial intelligence has ushered in a new era of creative exploration and expression. As a fine artist, my journey with AI has been a fascinating one, involving the transformation of my own paintings into entirely new and unique creations. This blog post delves into the intriguing intersection of human creativity and machine intelligence, exploring the profound questions surrounding originality in the age of AI. The Evolution of Artistic Expression: Traditionally, the concept of originality in art has been closely tied to the uniqueness of an artist's vision, the personal touch they bring to their creations, and the individuality embedded in each brushstroke. However, the integration of AI into the artistic process challenges these notions, offering a tool that can instantaneously duplicate an artist's efforts and generate new images based on existing works. The Dilemma of Originality: The question arises: when AI can replicate an artist's style and produce new artwork with minimal human intervention, what does it mean for the notion of originality? Is the resulting artwork truly "mine," or does it belong to the machine that executed the duplication and transformation? This dilemma forces us to reconsider the traditional boundaries of authorship and artistic identity. AI as an Extension of Personal Expression: Rather than viewing AI as a threat to artistic originality, I have embraced it as a powerful extension of my personal expression. Instead of fearing the loss of authenticity, I use AI as a collaborator, pushing the boundaries of my creative process and exploring new dimensions of my artistic identity. By feeding my own paintings into the algorithm, I empower the machine to reinterpret and reimagine my work, leading to unexpected and thought-provoking results. The Fusion of Human and Machine Creativity: AI serves as a mirror, reflecting and amplifying the unique characteristics of my artistic style. It acts as a catalyst for innovation, suggesting possibilities that I might not have considered on my own. This symbiotic relationship between human and machine allows for the evolution of artistic expression, where the boundaries between creator and creation become fluid. Navigating the Ethical Landscape: As artists embrace AI as a creative tool, it becomes imperative to navigate the ethical landscape surrounding the use of technology in art. Questions of intellectual property, attribution, and the commercialization of AI-generated works need careful consideration. Striking a balance between human agency and machine capabilities is crucial for maintaining the integrity of the artistic process. In the age of AI, the meaning of originality in art is undergoing a profound transformation. As a fine artist, I have found that embracing AI as an extension of my personal expression opens up new possibilities and challenges preconceived notions of authorship. By navigating the ethical considerations and fostering a collaborative relationship with technology, artists can harness the power of AI to enrich and expand the boundaries of their creative endeavors. The future promises a dynamic fusion of human and machine creativity, where the definition of "mine" in art takes on a more nuanced and interconnected meaning. The Ethics of Art-Making using Artificial Intelligence - Personal Reflections, by artist James R Reynolds As a fine artist, my own experience making AI art has been pretty absorbing. For several months I did almost nothing else. All my life I have had to rely on my technical skill and personal vision to make artwork. Now, I can write a simple sentence and wait five seconds. Out pops a new art piece on my screen. It's digital, and it may not be exactly what I was imagining. It may have some bizarre glitches, but often the results are amazing. Along with the paintings that I make with actual paint, I am also exploring the possibilities that opened up with the recent dramatic breakthroughs in Artificial Intelligence. I spent years learning to draw, paint, sculpt, etc. More years were devoted to understanding color and composition. Each medium I work with holds mysteries that I have unlocked through endless practice. I take pride in my work and the progress I have made. So I was somewhat startled recently when I sat at an iPad to “make” art with virtually no effort. It quickly became a little addictive. I'm not really making the art, of course. A company in Canada and it's computers are making it. It's hard to know how to feel about these images. What I am clear about is that engaging with AI brings up conflicting and confusing feelings. But life's too short to waste time feeling lousy, and I believe I'm basically a good person. So writing this is partly an attempt at clarification for myself, and I want to be very upfront about what this is. I agree with something I once heard the Dalai Lama say, when asked about the purpose of life: “The purpose of life is to be happy,” he said, laughing. I could not agree more! One essential component of a happy life is to live with integrity. So I want to be transparent about what I am doing. I don't want to deceive anyone. I also don't want to feel guilty about claiming I did something wonderful that required almost no effort. Making art is hard; making AI art is easy. Now that anyone can make art, does that cheapen the meaning of the term “artist”? Perhaps, but I would prefer to think that it expands how we define the term “human being”. We can all be artists now, making high-quality images. All that's needed is a device and access to the internet. So rather than decry the ease of producing AI art, I focus on two things: how to do it well, and making images that mean something to me. I am putting my name on the AI work. Who else's name should go on it? Beyond the fact that it was me entering a prompt, what makes it mine is my choice of words, which come from my individual aesthetic sensibility, my artist's eye. The art I have made has always been deeply personal. It's about appreciating and celebrating how extraordinary it is to be alive on the Earth. At the same time, I try to exert a degree of restraint, a touch of austerity, because I want my work to age well. Restraint may be even more important when very little effort or skill are required and a machine is doing the work. The vast majority of AI art that I see out there is utterly lacking in restraint, and is of no interest to me. There is a lot of pure fantasy: superheroes, muscle men, dragons, wood nymphs, women with impossibly large breasts, fanciful combinations of animals and people, spaceships, sports cars, demons and monsters - ad nauseam. Pretty superficial stuff, in my opinion. I hope to bring something more to this new medium. Maybe a little soul. Personal authenticity is valuable, partly due to its rarity. It's an interesting dilemma, trying to square my self-image as one of those rare ones while making pictures that are so divorced from reality. My training has very little bearing on the making of these images. A few words forming a prompt and selecting a “style” is all that's required of me (there are over 100 styles - or filters - to choose from in the system I use). I reject the work that doesn't feel true to my own aesthetic vision. I save the things that I like and that feel like paintings I would want to have painted. The AI program almost always leaves a few weird passages, so I have to repair parts of the image on a digital painting app that I've been learning to use. AI routinely creates animals with a fifth leg, or two heads. It makes human hands with four, six or seven fingers, or legs that are backward. It sometimes struggles with eyes, noses and lips. I frequently have to reconstruct whole sections, remove an unwanted part or smooth over an illogical or just plain weird transition. I also make adjustments as I would with photos, cropping, increasing exposure, saturation, etc. There are AI pieces that took five seconds to generate that I tinkered with for hours. This work gives me a little more claim to it being mine. It's also sort of satisfying, actually, seeing how stupid the program can be, despite it's almost magical skill set. The fancy new toy is still lacking in one thing humans still have over it - intelligence of a completely different order. I was talking about AI art with a friend the other day and he said there's no way it can make anything original, because it's all just working with what has been fed into it. The most it can do is rehash old material or do mashups of existing styles. I disagree. The oldest cliché in the book – Nothing new under the sun – seems to be the belief here. But that cliché applies to humans as well as robots, perhaps more so. Human culture is in a sense a closed system with inputs from - more culture! We artists are influenced by the art we see and it affects our own work. In a way, all art movements come into being in reaction to - and especially in reaction against – the dominant movement that young artists are fostered in. I'm not saying the history of art is totally obvious and predictable. I'm saying that it progresses along understandable lines. I don't expect AI to evolve in predictable, logical ways. It's not human, so it doesn't have a judgement about the art that came before. It doesn't have a goal to shock or to one-up its rivals. It doesn't have an agenda at all. On the other hand, it seems to have no limits on its “imagination”, if you will. When I enter a prompt, I'm often surprised and delighted with little flourishes that I didn't ask for. It feels exuberant somehow, like it's bursting with a wealth of ideas. Things that are ostensibly mistakes are often charming and exciting. Artists have started grumbling that, due to AI, there eventually won't be any painters anymore, but that seems highly doubtful. It might be less common, but there will always be certain people who just need to pick up a brush and express themselves in that way. Similar fears were expressed when photography came along. And while it's certain that many portraits were photographed that would otherwise have been painted, the camera has hardly destroyed the impulse to paint - the number of working artists has only continued to increase. Photography has evolved into a legitimate artform, while also deeply influencing painters. It serves as a tool in the painter's toolbox. I think the same thing is likely to happen with AI. Some artists will use it, some will scorn it, but over time, many artists will integrate it into the their palette. Regarding legal issues, I am sympathetic to the concern among many in the creative community about the unauthorized use of artists' original work in the training of the AI engines. Picasso's overused expression comes to mind: “Good artists borrow. Great artists steal.” So it follows that AI is the greatest artist of all time - and the greatest art thief! The lawsuits will unfold over years, during which time a lot of money will be made, as people find the experience irresistible. The plaintiffs are likely to have a challenge proving harm, since the AI algorithm draws from untold numbers of images from myriad sources each time it generates a new piece. Despite that, I can see some sort of negotiated settlement that compensates the artists. That would be a good thing. I would not submit an AI piece to an art competition, unless it was explicitly encouraged in the prospectus. I've read recently of AI submissions winning prizes, and that feels wrong to me. A person jurying paintings has to assume that the artist's hard-earned painting skills are on display - that's kind of the point. Making AI art isn't cheating. It's just a different thing, and it belongs in a special category. Meanwhile, I will limit myself by stealing from dead people, preferably long dead, when I enter an AI prompt. Luckily, my taste runs to artwork made largely before the 1920's, Andrew Wyeth being a notable exception. He was considered by many of his contemporaries to be out of step with the times, a throwback to an era before the goal was to shatter expectations and shock the viewing public. So a typical prompt of mine might be, “Woman in a field wearing a simple blue dress, morning light, by John Singer Sargent,” or “Vase of flowers on a table in front of a window, in the style of Degas”. As someone who is very concerned (to put it mildly) about the environment, I do have misgivings about the amount of energy all this processing power must take. I know there is a server somewhere churning through incalculable amounts of data to make these pictures, and there's a lot more energy devoted to simply preventing the machines from overheating. Wasted electricity has been one of the many reasons I disapprove of cryptocurrency. We have so many destructive things we do as a species, and I am a contributor. It's inescapable. All I can say is, I try to be moderate in all things, and I hope we can find some balance over the long haul, so our fellow passengers - the countless other species - can also thrive. There are other weighty issues at stake swirling around AI imagery these days. Very good AI video is starting to appear, along with the ability to mimic anyone's voice, accent and speech pattern. If anyone can be made to say anything and it's "caught" on camera, who can say what really happened? Deepfakes could be used to throw elections, and ultimately could undermine the very concept of truth and fact. This is not merely speculative - it's already started. The efforts so far have been a bit hamfisted, but we know it's going to become very hard to know what's real and what isn't, even with legislation. Some unsavory politicians who shall go unnamed are already casting doubt on whether they said certain nasty things that they absolutely did say, claiming it was AI-generated, which just muddies the waters. So from this apocalyptic perspective, what I am doing seems rather life-affirming.
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Artful Romance: Why You Should Take Someone to an Art Gallery on the First Date Hello there, art lovers and hopeless romantics! Today, we're exploring a creative twist on the classic first date – taking someone to an art gallery. While dinner and a movie may be a safe choice, there's something uniquely magical about wandering within the walls of a gallery on that initial rendezvous. As a connoisseur of both art and love, and as the proud co-owner of the beloved Sebastopol Gallery, I can attest to the wonders of this experience. Here are some compelling reasons why you should consider an art gallery for your first date.
Potential art collectors may wonder whether representational painting is still relevant in today’s fast paced, high-tech world. My response is a resounding yes! The crazier things get, the more crucial fine art becomes.
As the world seems to lose its way, art provides a vivid expression of the best of our culture. Art bridges continents and class. It relieves stress and keeps us grounded. Since prehistoric times, art has conveyed humanity’s dreams, aspirations and sense of the sacred. Artists often experience flow, joy and transcendence when they’re deep in the creative process. Collectors share that passion and intensity. When they bring art into their home, they have the satisfaction of knowing that their support and encouragement helps to foster the artist’s continued work. On a purely practical level, purchasing a high-quality painting by an emerging or established artist is considered by many to be a solid investment choice. A good painting should appreciate in value over time as the artist’s standing and reputation grow. How much the painting appreciates will depend on the level of accomplishment the artist achieves. But even if its value only goes up a little, it’s still a better investment than typical consumer goods, which require repeated maintenance or continual consumption. Most of the trappings of our daily lives are ephemeral - clothes go out of fashion, cars break down, and furniture wears out. For less than the cost of a new computer or spring wardrobe, you can acquire an original painting that will enrich your life while quite possibly appreciating in value over time. I am always stunned when I visit a nice home with little or no original art on the walls. Many people think nothing of spending thousands on mere stuff, but they may never consider what a great option original art really is. Yes, I know your walls may be full, but chances are you have more than one piece of ‘decor’ that you’re not completely in love with anymore. Why not replace it with a piece of original art, something of lasting value and personal resonance? Few things express good taste like an original painting in your home. Over time it may even become a cherished member of the family. Other considerations aside, the real reason fine art is important is ones quality of life. Of course, money can’t buy happiness, but a great painting can evoke powerful feelings of peace, excitement and joy each time you look at it. A painting can light up a room. It occupies its own space. And no, it doesn’t need to match your couch! It simply needs to speak to you, to give you a moment to pause and consider what’s important in life. |
James R ReynoldsI am a professional artist living in Sonoma County, California. Archives
February 2024
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