On AI and The Arts: Human Authorship in an Automated World 

The AI debate rages on. And it isn’t going anywhere anytime soon. 

Or ever.

The cat is out of the bag. Every day another one jumps out of the endlessly deep sack, convoluting our notions of what is “real.”

In a world of widespread simulacra, one must decide what is and isn’t art. 

Beyond this definitional task of how we classify art, one must then decide whether they will support machine-art.

This is where the commercial battleground will be. This is where the battle will be decide. 

If we can, we will. Humans will always push the boundaries of progress and ignore the ethical considerations. 

So, it’s coming. It’s already here. 

The question is: what are we going to do about it? 

————————

If a machine can make art, is it art or mere imitation? 

It seems the question now is not the output (or product) but rather the process. If the output is indistinguishable from the real, what makes one output “real” and the other “fake”? 

The who (or the what) involved in the process answers this question. 

If a machine can produce sublime poetry like Dante or render abstract masterpieces like Blake (and it can, because it was trained on these masterworks), what then becomes important when considering art?

Is the goal for everything to be polished and beautiful due to machine augmentation, a balanced democratized perfection everywhere you look? 

Or does such ubiquitous flawlessness (the hyper real, as it’s known in postmodern philosophy) make one crave the real even more?

In a world of indistinguishable simulacra, what is “the real?”

Answer: the human. The broken. The beautiful. 

The messy. The imperfect. The chaotic. 

In a world of machine manufactured polished artifice all around us, we will, as long as we remain our humanity, be intrinsically drawn to the human.  

——————

Beyond the philosophical issue at hand of human authorship vs generative machine imitations, there is a very real technological consideration here that cannot go unaddressed.

The advent of new technologies is an avalanche. One cannot stop it. 

One can only adapt or be left behind. 

It is not if one adapts to new technologies but how that is important. 

What is pressingly unique about the present situation with generative AI, unlike prior technological revolutions which rendered many established modes of human effort anachronistic, is its ability to go beyond augmenting a human process to generating it (essentially becoming the stand-in author.) 

Before generative AI, technology required the human’s involvement. Now, it really doesn’t. 

Machine intelligence and traditional AI systems do not pose a threat to art and authorship. These modes merely assist a human creator with the technical process of enhancing a creation. 

Generative AI does, because it removes the role of the human author altogether. This mode supplants the human author, serving as both idea generator and implementer. 

The old way of technology was for the tech to technically assist a human with a task.

Now, the machine can create the task, plan it, and execute it while the human sits back in their chair, amazed at their obsolescence. 

———————

Most of us do not care if a machine edited a book’s grammar or enhanced the visual effects of a film. 

We have swallowed this pill a long time ago with Word processors and special effects.

The new pill we are being asked to swallow is a far deeper, existential one, one which is foundational to our ontological understanding of ourselves. 

Will we consume art that is not only enhanced by a machine but altogether made by a machine? 

Are you moved by words on a page, brushstrokes on a canvas, or images on a screen because of the humanity behind them, or simply because they are there? 

Can something synthetically produced move you to tears when you know it is machine-made, devoid of human sculpting? 

Or does your feeling when reacting to art require that human-to-human connection, that knowledge that someone like you created this thing? 

This is where the commercial battleground lies which will decide the future of human authorship. 

Corporations will cut out the human for the bottom line without batting an eye. This has always been the case, and it always will be. 

Anything of utility has, and will continue to be, automated. Your taxes, grocery lists, driving cars —- even your doctor and lawyer will one day be machine automated processes.

Anything that is a task of utility will be streamlined and swallowed by machine automation in the name of capitalistic efficiency. 

If the machine can do it better, why have the human involved? 

This, to me, seems to be the future in every domain but art. 

This is why it is essential how we define art. 

Is it the process of art making or the mere end product that we revere and call “art?”

—————————-

Would you walk into a museum to consume masterpieces made by machines where the only human involvement in the process was writing a prompt? 

Or does the human authorship and the human involvement in the creation process of the work mean something? 

More specifically, does it merely mean something – something we can skirt, accept, or ignore – or does it mean everything? 

The stage will remain authentically, totally human. This will be the last hold out of sheer humanity.

This performing arts, excluding cinema and music, will remain a bastion of raw, unmolested human expression. 

The stage and the museums will remain fundamentally human. I suspect even literature will preserve an aggressively etched humanity to it.

So what if the cover is AI-made art? The story better be “real” (not made up by a machine.)

We don’t care if a machine edited the book’s grammar or improved the writer’s vocabulary. 

We aren’t as interested in a story made up by a machine as we are one made up by a human.

Aren’t we?

——————————-

The artistic authorship battle will be decided in the commercial medium of the 21st century – cinema. 

The question of what the future holds for AI and its relationship with art has less to do with our philosophical stances on it and everything do with the commercial acceptance of it.

Even those who bemoaned the arrival of ChatGPT and prognosticated the death of civilization it forecasted eventually began using the tool. 

People will be people. They will do what is easiest and most efficient. 

Corporations be will corporations. 

If audiences will pay to watch AI produced art, corporations will produce these films. 

If consumers will read a novel generated by an AI, publishers will produce this. 

In this world, corporations don’t have to pay authors or filmmakers. They can, in the name of efficiency, remove them from the process altogether. 

This is the future that is coming.

This is what is already here. 

So, what are we going to do about it?

What can we do? 

——————

It is our taste – and our willingness to support this (with our money) – that will influence the degree of its widespread implementation. 

Is the goal to replace the human from the human (and essential, true art is always foundationally human) or to enhance the human? 

Enhancement is fine. Eradication is not. 

(This essay was not generated or enhanced using AI.) 

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