Does Art need a heart?

Will AI replace humans in creating music, images and more? 

Over the past five years, artificial intelligence has grown exponentially. It has now got to the point where any conversation involving an artist and their colleagues or relatives devolves into a mindless drag about how AI will take over the world, amongst other comments belittling the artistic industry. AI may be able to replicate the same techniques as humans, but here is why they will never surpass us. 

Simply put, humans need other humans. For better or for worse, we are a societal species, dependant on talking to one another. This can be through the digital screen as we complain about another person’s opinion, or simply through conversation on the bus, where the same mantras are repeated. We use art created by people as discussion points, to see if we liked what the artist made or more accurately, how we can say we would have done it better. With AI, there is no artistic intention or message behind any of it so the conversations we have now, debating who the greatest rappers are or why Diary of a Wimp Kid is secretly the best book ever written, will be meaningless because there is nothing to its creation. 

If we let computers take over our lives, our independence and unique voice would be lost in the industry and what is left is just mindless slop being fed into our lives for cheap laughs. Some might say it has already happened with “Brain rot,” (a genre of social media where people post the least creative videos purely just so the dopamine can reach your head). Part of the enjoyment of art is the artist themselves, whether they want to be associated with their work or not, which all goes away when it is just some 14-year-old boy trying to make a quick buck by making AI images on ChatGPT. Some might say that there is still some creativity with AI, like what the person has to type into the algorithm for it to generate the images or videos, but let me ask you this: Is somebody telling a robot to create an image of a bird really as creative as somebody drawing the bird themselves? Of course not!  

While I am sure AI will be an incredibly helpful tool in the future, I choose to believe in the human spirit over any “clanker.” 

Ellis Waddams