Defending AI Art
Honestly, We Need More Of It!
At this point, you must live under a rock if you have not encountered the “Studio Ghibli” trend on social media (and if you honestly haven’t, OpenAI updated the image model on ChatGPT that allowed people to transform their images to a Ghibli-esque aesthetic). While this led to a massive surge of Ghibli-styled pictures in my feed (which I absolutely love, by the way), it has also caused an increased set of posts from people hating the notion of “AI art,” some even going so far as to attack individuals in the comments of their posts en masse.
Now, maybe out of biases or mere convenience, I am incredibly pro-AI when it comes to democratizing art for people. Therefore, in this issue, I will debate the validity of AI art and discuss why it should be sustained.
Disclaimer #1: While I endorse AI art, I by no means stand for copyright infringement or any intellectual property violations. None of my perspectives are intended to promote stealing any other individual or entity’s works.
Disclaimer #2: The definition of “art” being considered is the one on Wikipedia, which says the following: “Art describes a diverse range of cultural activity centered around works utilizing creative or imaginative talents, which are expected to evoke a worthwhile experience, generally through an expression of emotional power, conceptual ideas, technical proficiency, and/or beauty.”
The “Miyazaki” Angle To This Debate
Ever since Sam Altman announced the update to ChatGPT’s image model and we saw a storm of Ghibli-styled images on social media, I’ve come across several people commenting on how Hayao Miyazaki, the co-founder of Studio Ghibli, is anti-AI. This is unsurprising, considering many of the studio’s works have anti-industrialization elements.
However, most people pushing this narrative provide partial context, where they cut the part of the video that shows a grotesque monster with unnatural muscle movements and that Miyazaki-san feels severely offended because of his experiences with a friend with a physical disability. Moreover, every one of those narratives conveniently forgets to mention that these statements made are not in the context of the AI-generated Ghibli-esque content we have seen today but from 2016, i.e., 9 years ago, when the state of generative AI was very different from what it is today.
While I don’t claim that Miyazaki-san’s opinions on AI art are different today, cutting a part of an old statement with an entirely different context is unethical, in my honest opinion.
Art’s Issues With Tech Are Not New
With all due respect to the art world, artists have protested technological advancements for centuries. The most significant example is photography, which may be considered a fine art today but was treated as an outcast throughout the 19th century ( we still have access to a 170-year-old publication calling it out!)
And I think I understand why!
Humans romanticize the labour and struggle behind our work (Akanksha Pandey verbalized this wonderfully on X). We don’t just glamourize it but also sell it to the masses. Therefore, work done in 2 hours must be less valuable than work done in 10 hours. Here is my question to these critics of AI art: if AI generates art with much less effort, why does its existence threaten you? If it were just the fact that its outcomes are based on existing prominent artists, wouldn’t fan art and imitation art threaten just as much? Or is it just that, for the first time in history, tools like these have been made accessible to the regular public at a price they can afford, which means that some people may have their livelihoods threatened?
At this point, some people may argue that using the works for inspiration is wrong. For them, I may refer to Ramiz Rahman’s words on how AI learns art. With that said, let me show you a little experiment. I asked ChatGPT to add me to the worlds of Indiana Jones and TRON, and it simply would not allow me.
This is because while art styles cannot be copyrighted and ChatGPT can implement them, it can’t use any direct elements in generated images. If you look at the eventual outcomes, neither can directly be placed in either universe, yet they are heavily inspired, which is what fan art is!
This is precisely what ChatGPT did with those Ghibli-esque pictures, too. It used general aesthetic qualities like soft lighting, lush nature, magical realism, and warm color palettes associated with Studio Ghibli’s works without using direct elements such as specific characters or scenes, keeping them within the confines of fair use.
Tech And AI Make Art More Accessible
This brings me to one of my strongest observations: art is finally becoming accessible to everyone, not just the privileged few. Throughout history, art has been a proponent of cultures, teaching us about times, places, religions, people, and much more. Yet, simultaneously, the powerful always decided which art should be sustained and which should be destroyed.
In many ways, technology has always been a friend of art. The internet has not only made it possible for any budding or accomplished artist to build an entirely new audience that would have been inaccessible to them (via social media, Behance, self-hosted digital portfolios, etc.) but also for art to be digitally preserved and made immortal (just look at the Metropolitan Museum of Art collection on the Internet Archive). Efforts like these also make it possible for me to sit over 13,300 KM away from this incredible museum and be able to appreciate the works sitting there.
AI has taken this another step further. For the first time in history, we can immerse ourselves in our favoured styles of art and literally see ourselves through the eyes of these great stalwarts of art and culture. This does not demean their work but allows us to celebrate them on our terms. It is flattery of the highest form!
Even if ephemeral, this artificially generated beauty creates a gateway that lets us explore these works of art, learn why they are the way they are, understand the meaning behind their pieces, and consider the implications of the times and culture they came from. Just imagine a future where you go to a museum and visit an exhibit about the Neanderthals, dinosaurs, India’s freedom struggle, Salvador Dali’s “Alice in Wonderland” collection, or Van Gogh’s “Cafe Terrace At Night,” and you get a chance to literally see yourself as a part of this environment because AI can generate personalized media? Does that not create an opportunity to bring you closer to the art, culture, or history? I believe this has the potential to make us far more knowledgeable and cultured people. If you think this won’t happen at all, look at the Google Web Search Trend for “Studio Ghibli” over the last 5 years and how it has changed since OpenAI’s update.
Should “AI Art” Exist?
I recently came across a rather moving Instagram post by @andheriwestshitposting about how people can derive meaning from this “borrowed beauty” created by art.
The comments are divisive, with strong advocates for and against AI art lashing out there. Yes, there is a lot of ethical ambiguity around how licensing should work in such circumstances, and I am definitely not an expert on that problem. However, if art styles could be owned, that would be devastating not just for AI but also for the world of art. As Stephen Wolfson wrote in the Creative Commons blog:
However, style is not generally protected by copyright, and that’s a good thing; if one artist were given a monopoly over anime, grunge music, or other styles, that would frustrate copyright’s core purpose of supporting creativity.
Furthermore, Catherine Stihler took this further in her article on generative AI in the Creative Commons blog, sharing how all creative work builds on past efforts:
A founding insight of Creative Commons is that all creativity builds on the past. When people learn to play the cello or paint a picture, for instance, they necessarily learn from and train their own skills by engaging pre-existing works and artists — for instance, noticing the style in which cellists like Yo-Yo Ma arrange notes, or building on surrealist styles initiated by artists like Dali. Similarly, while Star Wars invented the character of Luke Skywalker, it built on the idea of the hero’s journey, among many other elements from past works. People observe the ideas, styles, genres, and other tropes of past creativity, and use what they learn to create anew. No creativity happens in a vacuum, purely original and separate from what’s come before.
The truth is that generative AI platforms are tools in the hands of creators, just as the camera is in the hands of a photographer and the paint brushes are in the hands of a painter. Yes, one requires far more effort and struggle than the others. However, the simple truth of the world is that doers are impacted by the pain and struggle of the process, whereas the end-result or outcome impacts consumers. If that were not the case, we would not choose McDonald’s or Domino’s over other restaurants, H&M or Zara over our local tailors, or Swiggy or Zomato over our nearby grocery store.
And I am not saying that the outputs of GenAI tools are at par with those of these artists. They are inspired, in essence, and can only be close imitations at best. Moreover, the works of institutions like Studio Ghibli are defined not just by aesthetics but even moreso by their underlying meaning and message. These underlying messages are not inculcated in the outputs by the tools but by those who wield them. Therefore, unless one of us can develop a narrative and underlying message to stand side-by-side with Spirited Away, Kiki’s Delivery Service, and My Neighbour Totoro, it’s safe to say that ChatGPT is not surpassing Studio Ghibli (or any other contemporary) in any way.
Concluding Thoughts
In an earlier conversation on Twitter, Akanksha Pandey mentioned that art’s power lies in its ability to exist without function, and I concur with her note that more than its origin, art’s merit lies in the manner in which it lights up our souls. The way art lights up our souls is very individual and subjective, but the truth is that in the last 5 days, AI art has done precisely that for far too many of us, leading to one of the most peaceful and wholesome phases on social media in a while.
Therefore, I will leave the readers here with a little thought about AI art. When we decide what moves our feelings and sparks our curiosity, why the heck should anyone else decide whether it is art or not?
You write well. But I do disagree. There is nuance to this topic that many people choose to blatantly ignore and unsee. This is exactly why I think art education is important.
Art isn't about pretty and aesthetic work. Its about human expression of feeling, expression of morals and a reflection of the time period they're in. AI prompt generated images will never be art to me. Because AI doesn't have thoughts, its not enraged or empathetic or bored. AI doesn't "create". It regenerates off of a prompt and trains its data model with existing images on the internet for which OpenAI does not acquire consent to or commision the creators fairly.
As for the accessibility argument - Art has always been and will always be accessible. I follow a lot of incredible artists who live with auto-immune diseases and chronic pain issues, even cancer and they have still found a way to make art. Heck even animals make art. There's a million youtube tutorials that teach you how to make art in less 5 minutes or even an hour.
Making art into an industrial process is what Miyazaki is against. People who truly appreciate art and understand what it stands for cannot accept machine made slop. Art is supposed to motivate you, inspire you. Its supposed to want you to be a student of life, find small things in life to be grateful for and slow down to live, not just exist.
If you cannot have patience for art, you do not respect art. People love Ghibli movies because it helps them connect to their humanity. It helps them appreciate humans around them, teaches them to be grateful for their priveleges, to be grateful for nature and makes them aware of socio-political injustices taking place in the world. People love Bob Ross because through teaching how to make art, he also taught people life lessons and to always consider "mistakes" as "happy accidents".
It saddens me to see people that refuse to understand that humans aren't meant to do 9-5 corporate jobs. That's capitalism. They are meant to live amongst nature, appreciate life and CREATE.
Its okay to be excited about a new technological advancement. What isn't okay is to justify it and refuse to acknowledge it. That by participating in such a practice you are morally responsible for your decisions. What’s not fine is pretending they exist in a moral gray zone where no one is accountable.
What we should be doing is pushing for ethical guidelines and not just shrugging and saying, "That’s just how the world works." Which unfortunately speaks to every individual's moral compass differently.
AI "art" will never be art. AI "artists" will never be artists if they continue to use prompts instead of a pencil.
That's my thought on this entire fiasco.
was a nice read, well done!