Well, for the past few weeks you’ve watched me find some amazing AI images and post them on my blog. There’s some really groovy art out there, man. And I’m blown away by what AI can do.
So I’ve been like, thinking a lot of things over, and it’s not an easy decision: should I use AI in my work or not? There’s cool stuff available, for free (always a perk for any artist, seems like) and you’ve got a whole Hollywood movie cast in your laptop or PC. You don’t have to think how much better your illustration would be if only you knew how to make your computer do graphic art, or what a psychedelic poster you could create when there’s no limit to the attempts at catching just the right colors or putting a jungle on the head of a pin.
And then the thought that makes the decision for me sort of slides into view. Yeah, I could use AI and churn out a whole bunch of art – but it’s not mine. If I haven’t laid on the paint, scrubbed out the pencil lines, tried another color blocking arrangement when the first or twentieth effort just lies there on the canvas, it’s not my art.
I don’t have groupies. People haven’t discovered my work at a Friday afternoon open gallery with champagne and little cheese cracker whatsis. I’m still an unknown, and that’s fine with me. I’m exploring what I want to say or reveal or hide in every piece of art I complete. (And don’t think I haven’t thrown away a lot of stuff after I looked at it for a week either.)
But everything I’ve done is me. The good vibes you feel from the picture when I’ve gotten it close to what I’d seen inside my head. Every artist reveals a little bit of their soul when they let even one other person see their work. That’s part of the fear every artist deals with too. So I’ll just admire some of the shining examples of what AI can do – but that’s not my bag. The mistakes, the misses, the almost-right-but … yeah, man, it’s all me. The art of AI doesn’t have the tiny portion of soul that any creative work by a faulty human does.
And that head trip isn’t something any computer can learn or scrape or compile. Soul art. From the heART. Heavy. You dig it. – Tist