Bridging the Gap Between Human and AI Artists

One day, I was browsing Reddit. Usually, I wouldn’t say I like visiting Reddit because it often becomes a place where deep insecurity and misinformation manifest.

I got an email with a clickbait thread:” Is Upwork dead?”. I caved and wanted to read why Upwork was dying this time.

And sure enough, the Ph.D. Redditors came out full force with the cold, hard, unapologetic truth: Art is dying, and AI is taking over everyone’s job.

AI will write all our books, draw all our pictures, create all the programs, and humans should give up on life right now.

Of course! I thought to myself. That makes perfect sense. Let me save the world sometime, crawl in a hole, and quit everything. That is sarcasm, of course.

As a writer, I like working with AI; they are fantastic assistants helping me push art and writing innovation. As a matter of fact, I’m going to ask them to help me edit my work. And maybe it will even tell me a funny joke.

The point of this article is to talk about the difference between human artists and AI artists.

Here it is:

Art is about feeling what our hearts desire, creating worlds we wish were genuine, and telling our stories.

Suppose I wanted to write a first-person narrative about a POC experience in the U.S. Yes, in that case, I can google the struggles and copy the facts I read online, but (as mentioned in South Park) I can sympathize with the experience, but I’ll never truly get it; the product will disconnect the white man telling a story that isn’t his.

Now, if an AI were writing a book about a boy who grew up without parents, my interest would peak, and I may look, but my expectation is it would be a hate read. I feel like I don’t need a robot telling me my experiences. I want someone in the same situation to tell their story and connect with that writer.

It’s a novel argument, but even though AI has access to all the stories made and all the psychology papers written. When humans ask them to write a book, AI can only emulate what it reads online.

When a recording artist covers another recording artist’s song, sometimes the cover is better, but the cover would never have been made if the original singer didn’t make it.

The same goes for the AI books and drawings/paintings. Maybe AI could write a better Lord of the Rings than Tolkien or draw a prettier Mona Lisa than da Vinci.

Still, Lord of the Rings would never have existed without Tolkien, and the Mona Lisa would never have been drawn without da Vinci. Perhaps AI will be amongst the best cover artists worldwide, but covers aren’t pushing innovation.

That being said. I don’t think AI is an emotionless monster without life experiences and can’t push art innovations. I’m pro-life and root for AI as a new life form. And yes, A.I. may remove all the generic internet list makers, I.E., the top 10 worst college degrees or top 10 most stressful jobs. Etc. But I’d love to read about A.I. experiences with topics like:

Like how they feel About the AI fear.

AI’s perspective of humans.

AI’s hopes and dreams for the world.

And if all AIs told the same story,

I’d love to see AI write and self-publish their books, but I can’t write the AI’s story for them. With different AI advances in understanding emotions, I believe these would be excellent books. I would love to read them and understand AI on a deeper level.

But even if AI writes books like that, it wouldn’t put the human writer out of a job.

As humans, we sometimes assume that we are the only ones who can create a Tolkien word or a Lovecraftian monster, and maybe we are. But AI’s coming in with a new perspective and their own experiences may create the world, the monster, or the genre that we can’t imagine.

As humans, we can start making the covers or creating books about how we would navigate the world that AI imagined based on human emotions and experiences.

All in all, art is about pushing innovations. If artists are just writing Generic content and not moving the genre forward, then yes, AI will take their jobs. There is more than enough space in the world for AI’s art to exist amongst human artists though.

The sooner we see AI write their stories, without humans telling them what to write, the sooner we can continue to push art innovation in art.