People assure me AI art is “soulless,” that unlike human artists AI can’t be “original.” It can only copy. This reflects a widespread misunderstanding of how human artists work: we copy, and there’s no such thing as “original.” I understood this 16 years ago.
We draw from more or less the same pool of culture that AI does, only our pools are necessarily smaller as humans simply don’t have the capacity for exposure to as much stuff. No matter, because all works carry the influences and language — be it verbal, visual, or musical — as the works around them. You don’t need to see every painting to get the styles and grammar of its time and place, just as you don’t need to hear every English speaker alive to learn English. But AI can read, see, and hear vastly more cultural artifacts than any individual artist can, making it capable of a much broader stylistic range.
All creative work is derivative. AI simply derives faster and better than humans.
What about Intention? The intention comes from the human prompter. All that AI art is prompted by someone; that’s its intention. Is that its Soul? No, its soul is the soul of human culture, that vast pool of source material it draws from and imitates. The same one humans draw from and imitate. Humans aren’t individual geniuses, we are imitators. Our “genius” lies in our shared* culture, and our skill in copying.
This is why I don’t hate AI, but marvel as it shakes the ground beneath my feet and blows apart my orientation to culture and my fellow human beings. Those who hate it believe in the myth of originality and think copying is theft. They were delusional 16 years ago when I freed Sita Sings the Blues, and they’re delusional now. Delusionality is part of shared human culture too, and AI will imitate, remix, and regurgitate it just like we do, only much faster and more efficiently.
And, perhaps admirably, without the ego.
*Shared despite countless delusional egos insisting it’s private property. Fools.
