Artificial Intelligence, Does it Impact Our Careers? - Cassidy James
Cassidy James
Professor Keston
November 20, 2024
Art and technology has always grabbed my attention. My interest deepened during our very first class with professor Keston. She showed us a photo of three artworks that looked similar and challenged us to identify the real one among the Ai generated ones. To my surprise, I could not tell the difference. While I thought this was interesting, Professor Keston brought up the point that this was an instagram post from the National Gallery of Art in Washington DC. This highlighted my concert because how can AI blur the lines between authenticity and imitation. While I thought this was an interesting activity, it made me question what happens when someone mistakes an Ai generated piece for the original? How can the average person who doesn't know anything about art choose which one is correct if I as an Art history minor cant even tell the difference?
The quick growth of the AI industry now with over $48 billion has made these tools ever present. There are “tools like Midjourney, Stable Diffusion, and DALL-E that take in text as input and output images, as well as image-to-image based tools like Lensa which output altered versions of the input images, have tens of millions of daily users”, Including myself (Harry H.). One professor introduced Midjourney in a project, encouraging us to explore how Ai might become a significant part of our careers in the future. I had another professor state “it's not about Artificial Intelligence taking over our jobs, but about who can use the Ai efficiently and cohesively to their advantage”. This perspective resonated with me and helped shape my perspective on AI. Since then, I have looked into different Ai websites to help me come up with different logos and from what I have seen and used, each site honestly got me nowhere. I ended up coming up with completely different ideas and did not even use what the websites suggested. There are two reasons why I think these websites did not give me good results. The first reason is that these were free websites, therefore it was not going to give me the best result, because free things never do. The second reason was because I probably did not put in a good description of what I wanted. Granted what I was searching for was basic concepts and were not well thought out, and that could be the problem as well.
https://www.design.com/s/logo?var=ai-logo-generator-dcom&code=25OFFSEM&utm_medium=cpc&utm_source=google&utm_campaign=usa_top_tier_v1&utm_adgroup=logo_generator&utm_content=698005341038&utm_keyword=logo+generator&utm_network=g&gad_source=1&gclid=CjwKCAiArva5BhBiEiwA-oTnXdH9Q8LzAGDQqliluzvWEezeAFAP2xESmgnqjyzJ4UQGdr9m68X2-xoCE-AQAvD_BwE
As an artist, I’ve worked hard to carve out my path by switching colleges, quitting soccer, and fully committing to my passion. Ai can create some pretty stunning visuals but I believe that it lacks a lot of creativity, emotional intelligence, and social awareness that a human artist brings. For now, there are Ai tools like Canva that help cater to those who cannot afford a professional designer or for those who are just starting out. While I respect their utility, I have refrained from using them and prefer to rely on my own ideas. Personally, my goal is to not let this affect me in any way. I plan to continue figuring out ways around Ai that help me when it comes to logo ideation and different concepts. On the contrary, I know that the way I use my words, and my grammar is not at the level it should be, which I have struggled immensely with since elementary. Therefore, I think using Ai sites like grammarly, and using Google Docs spell check are perfectly fine to use. My goal is to come across professionally and these softwares help me reach that professional goal.
With that being said, AI’s role is not just negative. It can complement artists by helping them progress further or inspire them, or give them a good starting point if they are in an artist block. For example, Ai powered software can help generate concepts quickly, giving you more time to explore creativity at a different level. On the other hand, you need to take caution when using. Ai relies on internet content, raising concerns about copyright infringement and originality. Vasquez points out in his YouTube video Is AI Taking Our Graphic Design Jobs?, “a business that doesn’t have good branding is gonna have a hard time standing out in a crowded marketplace.” Furthermore, Companies need a unique and thoughtful approach to branding that Ai cannot provide.
Still, the average person can usually tell the difference between AI-generated art and regular art, but there are exceptions. For example, the often-mocked Facebook posts featuring “troops” with extra fingers or distorted faces. I’ve seen Reddit threads that humorously expose these mishaps, but they also serve as a reminder of AI’s limitations. https://www.reddit.com/r/army/comments/1dtf0jj/large_presence_of_extremely_weird_aigenerated/?rdt=64323
When looking at this image we can look closely and clearly see what is wrong with the picture, but not everyone works the same way.
Ultimately, while Ai has its place in the creative world, I am confident in enduring the value of human artistry. At its core, art is a human endeavor. It is something that draws from personal experiences, emotions, and cultural context that Ai could never replicate. While Ai can replicate styles or even produce visually compelling pieces,it also lacks emotional depth, individuality, and intention that a human brings to their work. It is not about generating an image, it is about being able to tell a story, solve a problem, and make a connection with the target audience. These are all qualities that no algorithm can ever replicate, no matter how technology advances
As artists and designers we have to take that responsibility to navigate the art world with openness and discernment. Artificial Intelligence tools can be extremely powerful when they are used as an extension to our creativity. This can help us explore new technologies, refine our process, and challenge ourselves, but our work should not be defined by the capabilities that Ai has but how we bring our ideas and concepts to the table. If we embrace Ai in the right direction and do it thoughtfully and ethically, then we can actually expand our potential without discouraging our craft. It is not about rejecting the technology but integrating it in a way that complements us.
Works Cited
Harry H. Jiang, Lauren Brown, Jessica Cheng, Mehtab Khan, Abhishek Gupta, Deja
Workman, Alex Hanna, Johnathan Flowers, and Timnit Gebru. 2023. AI Art and its Impact on Artists. In Proceedings of the 2023 AAAI/ACM Conference on AI, Ethics, and Society (AIES '23). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, 363–374. https://doi.org/10.1145/3600211.3604681
Vasquez, Eric. “Is AI Taking Our Graphic Design Jobs?” YouTube, YouTube, Feb. 2024,
www.youtube.com/watch?v=9iW1i7xDD1o.
Cassidy,
ReplyDeleteAfter carefully reading your post I wanted to share my thoughts on Artificial Intelligence & why there may not be an ethical approach to its use. I find it admirable that you try to find a middle ground with AI as a means to maintain order without too much disruption. AI is a revolution in process since the 1960s when university professors treated it as a niche in computer science centers across the world. While it may not be fully substantiated just yet, I am certain that the data that was collected from us since the early inception of the internet has been collected for the sole purpose of generative AI. The fact that AI bursted on the scene with GPT 3 out of nowhere to me seems to be suspect. It can be argued that it was still a niche area of interest and it clearly was, but my fears rest in where Open AI received its data from and how did they specifically develop their models? There was an interview with a high ranking individual from Open AI in which she could not answer a question honestly on the use of YouTube videos being used to train models (audio transcriptions and video data, etc.). She froze and could not answer it directly. This tells me that large data companies such as Google, Facebook, Apple, etc. were likely all culprits in making a fortune off selling our data for profit. In the tech world it is all about efficiency without much moderation from authority figures until it crashes and burns due to folks not understanding it. AI was fully developed with the intention of reducing economic burden of hiring more people. While we can be mindful and use AI responsibly, we must know that each prompt was built off the backs of real people, who will never be recognized. As artists I find it necessary that we fight back directly to these soulless automations as their existence is to target our line of work and humanity in general if used incorrectly. I agree that these tools can be used to extend the reach of our creativity, but it will be a road to hell (with pure intentions).
There is a deeper, darker side of AI that goes beyond Artist Implementation that I have not seen mentioned much. As an avid fan of the TV series, Black Mirror, I know how poorly this could impact our lives. Entire Internet personalities can be generated without a second thought. Could you imagine someone losing a loved one, just for a bully to torment them with a replication of their mother or father being in a fake, tortuous, situation with an AI deepfake video? This tool can be used to destroy people's minds on a large, industrious scale. Imagine the political echo chambers we have today in which either side believes in a completely different sets of truths; How we could now back those truths up when reality inconveniences us? As artists, we have a very important job to dictate how future folks will remember our era of time long after we are gone. If we want to win against this machine, we have to protect and maintain our legacy as people who rose against this oligarchical technocratic "utopia" in favor of truth, no matter how rough it appears to be.
It's a noble path to become an artist because nobody would wish to support you until long after you support yourself and build a reputation as a fighter who does not compromise. AI will have a large impact on our reputations if we choose to embrace it; Especially so when public opinion eventually sways in favor of broader regulations and scrutiny.
ReplyDeleteWhile this reply is mostly a train of thought, I would like to invite you to look at your work as not just beautiful, but influential. I chose film as my major because when I was young I caught onto how the media was able to influence everyone's beliefs without resistance. While this has changed with the rise of rebellious alternative media it's only just the start of a long fight. Media is more destructive (or productive) than nuclear weapons because while the blast is instantaneous and fallout may last a couple months to a few years. What we choose to believe & embrace via our media will have implications for hundreds perhaps thousands of years. We must create wisely.