Emmy-winning creative executive Gavin Purcell discusses the effect that artificial intelligence will have on creativity from art to video games—and it's not all bad news.
Hello! While i appreciate your article's attempt to soothe the ever-growing sense of doom that is festering within the hearts of many artists, I think it fails to consider how exactly the means by which art is created contributes to the concept of art itself. You liken AI generation to the printing press, or photography, but a printing press is merely recording words written by a person, and a camera is wielded by a human rather than a computer.
I know that might sound like luddite technophobia, but my opinion, and I think the opinion of many, is that art is so much more than a pastime to be streamlined and optimized, more than merely a warm fuzzy that is embraced momentarily. When we encounter powerful emotions—which is, at least for now, a uniquely human experience—emotions like grief, loss, anger, heartbreak, love, art becomes necessary; art becomes sustenance. When we set off into the world to find other people that have felt what we have, been wounded as we have and managed to survive, art is there to serve as a record of those who came before, and they say "I was real, and this is how I felt, and what I saw, and what I want you to know."
When we remove the humanity from that process, we're left with only the shell of what art was—the aesthetically pleasing exterior, but none of the meat that made it valuable. What does a picture that some AI generator pumped out after I type "my dad just died" offer to me in my grief? What connection to the human experience is there for me in a song about heartbreak that was written by a computer that can't feel pain? Yea, I'm sure that the "musician" had a much easier time creating the song because they didn't have to spend any time writing the lyrics, but how does that serve the consumer? What does that mean for us?
At the end of the day, almost all defenses of AI's role in creation, indeed even most of yours here, revolve around optimization, but speed in art is only important to shareholders. Don't think we didn't notice that you're writing on behalf of Activision/Blizzard. How many artists have you let go recently because you've "optimized" them into irrelevance? How long before the terms "artist" or "musician" are both synonymous with "Prompt engineer"?
Hello! While i appreciate your article's attempt to soothe the ever-growing sense of doom that is festering within the hearts of many artists, I think it fails to consider how exactly the means by which art is created contributes to the concept of art itself. You liken AI generation to the printing press, or photography, but a printing press is merely recording words written by a person, and a camera is wielded by a human rather than a computer.
I know that might sound like luddite technophobia, but my opinion, and I think the opinion of many, is that art is so much more than a pastime to be streamlined and optimized, more than merely a warm fuzzy that is embraced momentarily. When we encounter powerful emotions—which is, at least for now, a uniquely human experience—emotions like grief, loss, anger, heartbreak, love, art becomes necessary; art becomes sustenance. When we set off into the world to find other people that have felt what we have, been wounded as we have and managed to survive, art is there to serve as a record of those who came before, and they say "I was real, and this is how I felt, and what I saw, and what I want you to know."
When we remove the humanity from that process, we're left with only the shell of what art was—the aesthetically pleasing exterior, but none of the meat that made it valuable. What does a picture that some AI generator pumped out after I type "my dad just died" offer to me in my grief? What connection to the human experience is there for me in a song about heartbreak that was written by a computer that can't feel pain? Yea, I'm sure that the "musician" had a much easier time creating the song because they didn't have to spend any time writing the lyrics, but how does that serve the consumer? What does that mean for us?
At the end of the day, almost all defenses of AI's role in creation, indeed even most of yours here, revolve around optimization, but speed in art is only important to shareholders. Don't think we didn't notice that you're writing on behalf of Activision/Blizzard. How many artists have you let go recently because you've "optimized" them into irrelevance? How long before the terms "artist" or "musician" are both synonymous with "Prompt engineer"?