AI has become more and more popular since the year 2022. At first AI was seen as a joke since it was not as advanced and the majority of it’s creations and generations looked “off.” However, in a fast amount of time it has advanced and people struggle with knowing what is and isn’t real. Due to more prominent and daily us of AI, there have been multiple controversies surrounding the technology. One of these is that AI will ruin human creativity. Art has been a way to express a person’s creative thoughts into one piece. Art slowly disappears for some people when they grow but, the roaming imagination carries on.
Grayslake Central senior Cassy Kalat is a hardworking student that loves and has years of experience with art. She was asked about her thoughts on if AI art is bad or not and said “AI art sucks! I think it is the worst thing to ever exist. It kills artists basically.”
The concerns of creativity dying and the loss of hard work made by human hands rises more. Kalat also said “People are getting lazy! They are like ‘Oh I’m not gonna pay a real artist to make this for me and instead I’ll just, you know, do it for free with AI!’ Then it just doesn’t come out as good, because it’s not real art technically.” Since AI has advanced, people all over the internet use AI as a quick and easy way to create any art piece they want to label as theirs. That alone has stirred up drama in art spaces online because people will generate an AI prompt for an art piece then tell everyone that they made it, even if there was no ‘human touch.’ Another problem AI is posing to artists is that artists who rely on their art for income and business are now in competition with AI.
Artist and art teacher at Grayslake Central High school, Mr. Brian Divis was asked if there were any positive impacts of AI and art. Divis said “It can! Other uses, not just within arts, it can take lots of information and put it together in a way that can be a little bit more understandable for the artist.” This is a valid point because artists experience art blocks once in a while. Art blocks happen when artists cannot come up with a solid idea of what to create, which is a setback that can last for months. It drains artists creativity because they cannot think of ideas but AI could help with generating ideas for an artist to create by themselves.
Divis also said “There have been lots of examples of traditional art media that have changed how artists have been able to express themselves.”
“The use of digital media and digital applications of drawing or painting, or creating that moved away from traditional things like oil paint, or graphite, or other things, or charcoal, or things that would be more traditional media,” Divis said. Art has evolved over the years with new techniques and inventions. People to this day debate about if digital artists are real artists or not. There will always be controversy about the newly added methods that are used and if they make an artist less of an artist or not. There is no solid prediction if AI will be one of those methods that artists will for a short time or if AI will destroy art entirely – only time will tell.
