[Tech Thoughts] My issues with generative AI and AI-made images have a social dimension

I wanted to commission an artist to make a fantasy drawing of my fiancee and I to serve as a cover for a book that I want to fill with photos and writings about our life in the future. I was asked, somewhat innocently enough, why I couldn’t just chuck a photo of us into ChatGPT’s image generation tool, since it recently became available to all with a free tier of use. At the time, I couldn’t really figure out why it gave me a feeling of discomfort to be asked that question. I reflected on the matter, and I guess I have the wherewithal to respond publicly via this column, so here goes.

AI and Art: The Social Component

While I can acknowledge the effort it takes to widen the adoption of artificial intelligence — and in this case specifically, generative AI for creative work like writing and art creation — I cannot support it, and there’s a social component behind my discomfort that makes me feel like the fun police when I say that. They say AI image generation is fun...?

Most of the attention now is on ChatGPT and its ability to remake images fed into it into an art style similar to that of renowned animation outfit Studio Ghibli. The virality of the movement to make Ghiblified memes and images using AI has made it a very fun, social and “in-thing” experience to try it at least once. While I recognize that doing anything in this world has a corresponding cost associated with it, the price that comes with using AI is way too exacting for me. There are known increased environmental costs with using AI. Generative AI trains itself on data or intellectual property that may have been stolen, as in the case of literature or art. It trains itself on YOUR data, which you willingly give without much thought to the process.

The creative process is quite the thing. I cannot draw to save my life. But I write. I spent years practicing how to write by actually writing things — from stories, to news articles, to punditry, to poems and song covers — because my mind and body don’t process things well enough for me to draw, and I do not have the patience to learn the skill of making visual art. In the back of my mind, the temptation to use generative AI to aid or replace me in doing my work does not exist, because I value what I do, and realize that the human effort to write speaks volumes about why I practice the process of writing and the crafting of prose and poetry.

Supporting Human-made Artistry

It’s in this vein that I want to support artists who have spent years studying and honing their craft, and I am against taking the easy way out of using generative AI to have someone glibly Ghiblify me when the right way to own art is to have someone with the proper skills make it for you if you don’t have the same skillset. Generative AI devalues the creative process, and it means — whether you intend to or not — that there is a subset of people you value as lesser than yourself, and I won’t stand for that.

Of course, there’s no perfect solution to this. I won’t get people to support artists or writers or journalists just through one opinion column. Further, it would be difficult to get an artist to do something if they are not paid and, with the price of commodities today, art can be seen as a luxury. And yet, the social pressure that wells up inside me is to find art that I like and patronize those artists (or writers, or journalists, or musicians, and so on...), because they made something cool with their time and effort. In other words, take your cue from actual artists themselves!

Minute Burger went out on a limb and took a stand to support human art. Rappler’s roster of artists also work hard on their own ventures and are deserving of support.

In other words, make real art cool again, and dump the AI-made slop for your own good. Naysayers be damned. – Rappler.com