The last temptation of art

This article is about AI and art. It’s not the first I’ve made, but the last was in 2024 when the landscape was different. Since then, AI has gotten better, and the backlash against it has gotten stronger. Since then, I’ve started my own creative business, creating and publishing games.

The Disclaimer

My company, SigTrent Games, does not use Gen AI for our products. I made that decision for two reasons. Firstly, I like working with artists and creative people, and the company was made to be a creative outlet for people. Secondly, a good many TTRPG fans are understandably hostile to its use. Being intrinsically creative people, the threat of AI is significant.

So, I am not an advocate for AI, especially not for the use of AI in creative works. As a professional writer, it’s just as much a threat to my work as anyone else’s. While this article contradicts some arguments used by anti-AI activists, it’s due to my observations and experience, not my desire.

AI “ART”

The crux of what I want to write about is only one bit of the general discourse for AI, that is, its quality as art. This is a deep topic, and my only aim here is to offer a perspective and opinion, not to make a case, even though I will make some arguments and address counterarguments. It’s really just my way of processing ideas.

I enjoy some AI creations

At the root of all this is simply an experience; I often enjoy the creations of AI. I have enjoyed writing by AI, I have enjoyed conversing and debating with AI, I have enjoyed seeing and generating AI pictures, and most recently, I quite enjoyed a song composed by AI at my behest.

Of course, I’ve seen plenty of “slop” that I don’t enjoy, or enjoy only out of a love of the absurd and stupid. Bad movies are one of my favorite things. I’ve also not seen anything done by AI yet that surpasses the art made entirely by human beings. That said, most of what I see AI make is technically better than what most humans who have not dedicated themselves to mastering a craft can do.

So when someone says something like, “Everything AI makes is shit anyway,” I don’t agree. If that were true, then it would not actually be a threat to anyone’s livelihood. The fact is, a lot of it is good enough that people enjoy it, and in a commercial market, that’s the bar, not whether or not it satisfies another artist’s sensibilities or desires. AI creations are not only valued because they are cheap and easy, but also because, in many measures, they are of decent quality.

Art, AI, and Humanity

Another argument I hear a lot is that AI work is not made by humans and therefore cannot be considered art. That is a valid opinion, as what qualifies as art is a hotly debated topic with no clear authority or objective reference. That said, I disagree for a few reasons.

First of all, as we all know, AI models are trained on human work. While that is often done unethically and sometimes illegally, it does mean that what an AI creates is entirely learned from human work. It reflects our ideas, thoughts, techniques, and understanding of what is depicted. Sometimes it “misunderstands” and it certainly reinterprets work, but we only recognize it because it is mimicking and learning from us.

Secondly, AI is a human creation. We wrote the code and we give it commands. AI is a tool and system we humans made to produce content that mimics the content we have learned how to make. There is certainly an argument that using a tool takes away some element of the human touch, but it is inarguably a product of human ingenuity and creativity. That doesn’t necessarily make it art; plenty of things humans make are not art. But for me, it looks like art, sounds like art, and makes me feel like art, so I feel that AI-generated content can be considered art.

Don’t be fooled

I think it is natural for someone who hates AI and what it represents to adopt a “sour grapes” attitude, claiming it is all going to be crap and that, ultimately, everyone will realize how bad it is and turn against it. That is wishful thinking that ignores reality. AI is good at making decent to excellent quality work with almost no effort on the part of its users. That doesn’t make its users the equivalent of someone who dedicated a lifetime to a craft, but it does mean that the average person has access to custom-created works of art with almost no effort or personal investment. That is galling, it’s not fair, it’s potentially dangerous, but it’s also true. It’s only going to get better and cheaper over time.

That doesn’t mean living in despair. If you are an artist, you presumably like making art. The fact that AI is pretty good, doesn’t mean there won’t be reasons to support human artists and plenty of people willing to do it. You can still hate AI and argue it is not “true art” and there will be plenty of people who agree. And even if it takes you a lot longer to make a great work of art, there is still about the same chance that it will catch the general zeitgeist of the moment and become something you can make a career out of. It’s just more likely that you will have to incubate your art outside of a purely commercial corporate setting. They probably would have effectively stolen your work from you anyhow.

My small part

My part in all this is small. I will keep paying artists of various sorts for their work as best I can. I won’t use AI for the production of creative work that I sell or share commercially. I won’t pay money for AI gen products designed to make creative works, and thus not encourage its creation. I will continue to spend money on works created by people and not by AI. I will not judge human artists against the work of AI.

I will also call them as I see them when I look at what AI is capable of. I’ll also keep abreast of what it can do and how its use changes business and life in general. I will continue to enjoy what AI can do when I find it enjoyable. I will occasionally use AI in non-creative areas of my life, like fixing my awful spelling, helping parse data, or organizing my music library when I don’t feel like doing it myself.