The Future of Art in the Age of AI: Personal Insights
The AI revolution in art: Personal insights on creativity, technology, and the future.
I had a video call with some of my best friends the other day.
We typically talk every couple of months, discussing everything from life—how are you? how's work? are you moving again?—to more debate-rich topics like geopolitics, national politics (mainly Spanish), culture (books, films, music), and lately, not surprisingly, AI.
I've noticed an increase in the number of times AI is brought up in our WhatsApp group as well as in our conversations. These days, everyone seems to be saying that AI is eating the world—a rephrased version of "Software is eating the world." It really seems to be the case, even among friends with diverse backgrounds like ours—I'm a writer and a marketer, my friends are an anthropologist, a telecommunications engineer, and a psychologist.
Last time we spoke, the topic of the future of art and copyright came up. Some of the questions we discussed were:
“What will happen to copyright in the age of AI?”
“What are the consequences of AI crawling the public (sometimes private) internet for human wisdom and then using it for new works?”
“What does it mean for traditional writers, painters, graphic designers, or any artistic discipline?”
We have varying levels of AI proficiency—or rather, usage of AI tools.
We've all tried the basics (like ChatGPT), and some of us have gone beyond that, trying other niche tools. This makes our debates rich with statements like, “Have you seen this tool? It makes X ten times faster. It’s mind-blowing.”
Last time, the debate got heated over the following arguments,
“What will be the point of art in the future if AI can be more creative—by a magnitude—than any human?
What difference will it make to come up with a novel idea, technique, or form of art if, at the end of the day, AI will generate something 100 times better and faster?”
Personally, I've been practising photography for over two decades, writing on and off since childhood, and I paint when I feel inspired and have the time. So, I feel "entitled" to have an opinion.
I thought it would be interesting to explore the future of art from a non-academic, speculative point of view—specifically from an artist's perspective. So here I am, in the best style of ChatGPT, inviting you to delve into my processes and opinions about what will happen.
At Substack, where this publication lives, the community of writers is having sharp debates about the use—or not—of AI for their work.
Some argue that it diminishes the novelty of the work.
Some argue that using Generative AI to create is just a way to cheat, increasing productivity at the cost of producing generic artwork. This, in turn, feeds the machine, making new works in the next step of the chain even more generic and uncharacteristic.
Some say Generative AI is just a powerful tool, like the printing press, typewriter, or computers. Thanks to Generative AI, they are not only more productive but can create on a new level.
If we try to synthesize these valid arguments, on one hand, AI has the potential to augment human creativity, enabling artists to focus on higher-level tasks while AI handles mundane aspects of the creative process. This can lead to increased productivity and the production of more complex and sophisticated artworks.
On the other hand, AI-generated art raises questions about the value and authenticity of creative works.
The ability of AI to replicate artistic styles and produce art indistinguishable from human-created works challenges traditional notions of authorship and creativity. This leads to concerns about the devaluation of human creativity and the potential loss of artistic identity. All of this, considering that the AI we use today, is the worst AI in our lifetime.
In an AI-dominated world, now and in the near future, creativity and the point of art can be seen as means of preserving human identity and emotional expression in a world where machines increasingly mimic human creativity.
Art can remind us of the unique qualities that make human beings distinct from machines, such as emotional expression, empathy, and creativity.
How I Use Generative AI in My Creative Work
As mentioned in previous publications, I work as a marketer and storyteller and have practiced photography for quite some time. To me, Generative AI has been an incredible boost to productivity as a marketer and has taken my creativity to a different level.
Here’s how I worked on some of the articles for Rebel Strokes. I’ll focus on a particular example to make it tangible and easy to follow.
Step 1: Choosing a Theme
I typically choose my themes based on my artistic preferences. Lately, it's been a combination of mythology, land art, and surrealism. Recently, I started a series on land art—you can find the first post here and the second in the series here.
To learn more about land art, I prompted Perplexity (I use the free version with a cap on 5 Pro Searches per day). I start with a generic prompt for initial research and narrow it down as I get interested in specific genres, artists, locations, or artworks.
Step 2: Organizing the Research
Once I collect the research using Notion, I draft the first version of the article. This process can take up to 8 hours, depending on the density of the post and the subject I'm portraying. It’s important to note that I’m not a native English speaker. Writing in English, even after more than 15 years working in Shakespeare's language, requires more mental effort for me than for someone born into a native English context.
Step 3: Editing
After the first draft, I typically use a couple of GPTs I created to help maintain my style and voice, format, and correct grammar, spelling, and punctuation. I ask these GPTs, based on GPT-4, to edit and rate for readability given my audience—people interested in art, social commentary through art interventions, and history for Rebel Strokes, or speculative design, futurism, and speculative futures for Speculative Everything.
This method significantly reduces spelling errors, enhances consistency, and improves narratives that would otherwise depend on a number of friends and relatives.
I tried this process before; it was painfully slow. Valuable as it is, emotions naturally influence the feedback loop, and their bias comes with it, because, well, they tend to like me. Go figure.
Step 4: Putting It All Together
Once satisfied with the final draft in Notion, I copy the formatted text into Substack's backend, add relevant images, captions, and finally, once everything is compiled, I suggest three titles to ChatGPT, Gemini, and Claude for a friendly SEO title. Typically, I blend two or three suggestions into one headline and reuse some of them as subheadlines.
The whole process of writing a 1500-word article—yes, I tend to write long articles—using Generative AI takes around 15 hours.
For fun and comparison, I created the second part of the Land Art series all by myself using good old Google search and Notion for writing. I only used AI in the form of Grammarly to check spelling and grammar at the final draft.
This process took 28 hours in total.
So there you have it. My productivity increased substantially, and the quality of writing, my voice, my tone, my knowledge, and my process are 100% human.
My creativity and point of view—for better or worse—are mine and mine alone.
Generative AI reduces the parts of the work that are tedious.
If I need to choose a headline and AI can make 20 of them in 10 seconds, and I can choose the best two, as long as they're accurate, why not use it? It’s like asking if you’re still using a horse and buggy when you could drive a car.
To sum up, in my view, the potential benefits of using AI in art include:
Enhanced creativity: AI introduces new modes of creative expression, giving artists fresh opportunities for exploration and innovation.
Increased efficiency: AI automates repetitive tasks, freeing up artists and writers to concentrate on higher-level creative decisions.
New forms of artistic expression: AI produces unique and visually striking artworks that challenge traditional artistic techniques and aesthetics.
Improved collaboration: AI fosters collaboration between artists and other creatives, leading to more diverse and innovative artistic projects.
Increased accessibility: AI makes art more accessible to people with disabilities, such as those with visual or hearing impairments.
However, the potential drawbacks of using AI in art, which I haven’t explored here, include:
Loss of human agency: AI algorithms can assume the role of the artist, possibly leading to a loss of human agency and interpretation in the artistic process.
Sustainability concerns: The energy consumption and increasing size and complexity of AI models used in art creation raise sustainability issues.
Ethical considerations: AI-generated art brings up questions about authorship, ownership, and the potential for AI to replace human artists.
Potential for bias: AI algorithms can be biased, potentially resulting in art that is not inclusive or representative of diverse perspectives.
Dependence on technology: AI-generated art may rely too heavily on technology, limiting the creative potential of artists who do not have access to these tools.
I would love to know your thoughts on the above!
Last Words and a Token of Appreciation
I love writing. I love reading. I love literature, and I believe Generative AI is transforming the way we define writing.
As long as there's a human element and we ensure that what goes out isn’t false or a direct copy, what’s wrong with using Generative AI to come up with better stories?
Use AI every day, try to understand it, bend it, break it, and back again.
Use it for creativity and art’s sake. There are trillions of examples happening every day.
In my opinion, artists should embrace it. That’s not to say we shouldn’t talk about how our work should be treated fairly. We just need to accept that the rules have changed and there is no way back.
Let’s help each other’s creative processes. By any art necessary.
See you next time.
PS: I’m collecting a number of prompts into a library that everyone reading Rebel Strokes could benefit from. They will be free and added in the next couple of weeks. I hope you find them useful and tweak them as you see fit for your own purposes—and maybe share them with everyone else? Sharing is caring.