Why I Don't Think A.I. Is "Plagiarism Software"
Many people are outraged by A.I., calling it, as Noam Chomsky did, "plagiarism software." I disagree. Here's a different way to think
about it, using the visual arts as an example; the same arguments apply to writing and creating music.
When aspiring artists learn how to make art, they look at already existing art and learn from it. Sometimes they'll copy old masters to
try to understand how those paintings and drawings were made. They'll practice technique until they are proficient using their tools -- their paints and brushes, pens and pencils -- then, ideally,
the talented ones develop their own styles, creating something new from what they've observed and learned.
That's also how A.I. works. I'll quote photographer/A.I. artist Jeff Alu's excellent comment on Facebook, made in response to someone
who didn't know the process:
"[A.I.] trains on millions of already existing videos and images. So it learns by what has already been created by humans. Once it
has all of that information in its 'brain,' it recalls what it learned when a reference to something it knows about is entered as a text prompt, such as, 'A dog running along the beach with waves in
the background.'
But the amazing part is that it is not just piecing together imagery from its database (such as splicing together separate videos
of the beach with waves and a dog), but it is creating entirely new imagery.
In the case of the dog running down the beach video it has just created, you would not find that exact imagery, either of the dog
or the beach, within its database. It learns what a beach and a dog should look like and creates never-before-seen imagery."
Note: never-before-seen imagery.
Oxford University defines plaigarism as “presenting work or ideas from another source as your own, with or without consent of
the original author." A.I. does not literally use images or even parts of previously existing work and mix them all together (note: collage artists do that), but instead takes the information it has
learned about what something looks like and creates a new interpretation of that something. Doesn't that rule out "presenting work from another source as its
own?"
The other part of the definition,"presenting ideas from another source as your own," is tricky for people, but not so for A.I.
because A.I. does not have "ideas." It has information that it recombines in new ways as it is instructed by a prompt. There is no "inspiration," only mathematical recalculations of bits of stored
knowledge that result in new imagery. The person providing the prompt has the ideas.
Sometimes the resulting A.I. imagery is successful, sometimes not. This is why a person using A.I. so often has to refine a prompt
repeatedly to get what s/he wants, or use generative fill to fix parts of an image that aren't right, or take the whole thing into Photoshop and finalize it there.
I understand that critics of A.I. are angry that its products are being called art, but I think that's an emotional response, not a
rational one. Machine learning has speed and efficiency that can't be duplicated by a human. A.I. is faster and better at synthesizing massive amounts of data than any human could be, even if it was
possible to be exposed to that same massive amount of source imagery. And A.I. can create images in seconds. That is offensive (and threatening) to many artists because not only does it seem to
trivialize the human effort involved in learning how to make art, but it also seems to dismiss the whole concept of creativity. That is deeply disturbing. What meaning does making art have if A.I.
can do it?
I think it has the same meaning it's always had: humans want -- sometimes need -- to express themselves, and making art is an important
and satisfying way to do that.
And the viewer of art? People are visual creatures, and we respond to what we see. If we respond positively to art made by A.I. rather
than a human, does that mean that the emotion, the spark of creativity that's behind human art doesn't matter? Of course it matters, and not only to the artist. Creativity is not irrelevant. It
matters to the viewer, too, and it gets conveyed not only by the art itself, but also by the stories. The story of the artist, the story of how the art was made, the story of what it means have
value. Still. Even in the face of A.I. art, and perhaps even more so because of it.
I agree that it's disturbing to have our understanding of the art-making process challenged in a way that affects our definition of
what art is. But art has been redefined in the past by the art world. When did impressionist art become "valid?" Or abstract art? When did conceptual art go legit? The art world assimilated these
types of creative expression and did so by creating separate categories for them.
What about photography? Is it not "real" art because it uses a camera? That was the argument for many years. And now we can ask, "Is
the process of taking a photo more artistic than the process of describing an image that we want to see created by A.I.?" In both cases, a device is a tool for the artist. The photographer still
needs a good eye and the skill to manipulate the image, if necessary; the A.I. user still needs to be able to describe the desired image and manipulate it, too.
Without going completely off into a debate about what is art?, I think most people would agree that the art world can be very
strange. A banana duct-taped to a wall? And let's not get started on NFTs. But something new is happening with A.I. art -- and I would call it that and create a category for it. It doesn't need
validation by the art world. It doesn't need validation by any of us. It's already out there, and it will explode to a much greater extent. As photographer Stephen Payne commented on one of my
Facebook posts, "Most people don't have the slightest idea what's coming." Even those of us who are paying close attention have a hard time imagining how the future will unfold.
The real issue with A.I., to me, has to do with its undeniable ability to make us question reality. If we can be fooled into believing
that something is real that isn't real, that shakes our faith in what we see, and will have serious political and social repercussions.
I think A.I. is fabulous and exciting and terrifying. All the outrage about it needs to be channeled into figuring out how we can live
with it. It's not going away. And it doesn't really matter what we call it.
Cynthia Friedlob, 2/26/2024
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