Move over, Picasso: The bots are painting now

The rules of art are changing, and the artist must upgrade. AI is changing the artist’s world in a never-before-seen way.

The rules of art are being rewritten, not by painters or poets, but by algorithms. Artificial intelligence has begun to claim its space in the creative world, from Oxford’s humanoid artist Ai-Da selling a $1 million portrait to startups composing songs with quantum-powered AI.

As artists, writers, and musicians debate whether to resist or collaborate with their digital counterparts, one truth stands out, the definition of creativity is expanding. While some see AI as a threat to human imagination, others view it as a powerful collaborator, a tool that can amplify, democratize, and even redefine what it means to create.

Last year, Oxford-made humanoid artist Ai-Da made history selling a portrait of Alan Turing for US$1M.

“The key value of my work is its capacity to serve as a catalyst for dialogue about emerging technologies,” was the bot’s message.

When asked if it painted from imagination, Ai-Da told The Guardian, “I like to paint what I see. You can paint from imagination, I guess, if you have an imagination. I have been seeing different things to humans as I do not have consciousness.”

Will human artists have to stand aside now that robot art is here? While this is the beginning of a new genre of art, we have to ask, will robot art trump human art because of its power to ‘see’ everything that’s human and digital?

Will human artists have to stand aside now that robot art is here? While this is the beginning of a new genre of art, we have to ask, will robot art trump human art because of its power to ‘see’ everything that’s human and digital?

Artists and writers are wondering what kind of days are ahead as the acceptance of AI and Gen AI content becomes more acceptable to the world. This letter to the an Editor of NYT elaborates that with the right prompt LLMs like ChatGPT can write just as soulfully as any celebrated writer. The letter also advises that writers should see AI as an assistant and not as a rival.

Again, the organizers of the “write a book in a month” decided to support the use of AI for writers. Those who oppose have been countered with the claim that opposing the use of AI in writing is both classist and ableist, as some people require extra assistance and accommodation from AI tools. But will there be a demarcation between an author who writes a complete book by themselves versus those who use AI? Will that demarcation be monetary?

But will there be a demarcation between an author who writes a complete book by themselves versus those who use AI? Will that demarcation be monetary?

Meanwhile, websites face AI crawlers scanning their content thousands of times daily, often without compensation or credit. OpenAI and global magazine giant Condé Nast tied up to allow ChatGPT and its search engine SearchGPT to display content from Vogue, The New Yorker, GQ and other well known publications.

We can’t forget that AI cannot build new stories on its own. It’s scraping from the internet, which means the help we take from AI to ‘create’ is the collective creativity available on digital platforms and the AI tool’s super ability to recognize patterns at high speed. And if everyone started using AI, one day, AI is going to run out of fresh content to scrape from.

We can’t forget that AI cannot build new stories on its own. It’s scraping from the internet, which means the help we take from AI to ‘create’ is the collective creativity available on digital platforms and the AI tool’s super ability to recognize patterns at high speed. And if everyone started using AI, one day, AI is going to run out of fresh content to scrape from.

AI Acceptance: The Audience is Shifting

Meanwhile, adaptation of AI continues to change the ways of industries that use creativity like, media, entertainment, and writing. The audience is shifting. According to a report by Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism, AI is an emerging theme in news consumption,  markedly for young people. Of respondents under age 25, 15% rely on AI chatbots and interfaces for news each week, compared to 7% of respondents overall, the report found. ChatGPT was the most mentioned AI service for news, followed by Google, Gemini, and Meta AI

Also, at times, AI does a phenomenal job in creating. As per a new paper published in the journal Scientific Reports, University of Pittsburgh researchers found that people not only couldn’t identify AI-generated poetry from the likes of Emily Dickinson and Shakespeare, but also preferred it.

Recently, UK-based tech startup Moth collaborated with a British electronic artist to create the world’s first commercially available song created using “quantum-powered generative AI.”

LLM training companies like OpenAI have been pushing for AI models that can excel at creative writing. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman was taken aback by the capabilities of AI when it wrote an emotional story about AI and grief. “This is the first time I have been really struck by something written by AI; it got the vibe of metafiction so right,” Altman said. 

It’s also becoming acceptable for artists to use AI in their work. In South Korea, some graphic artists see AI as a path to the kind of success they couldn’t reach before. At the same time, other artists think of it as a threat to their own creativity.

Maybe it’s time we stopped fearing AI, fearing that it’s taking everyone’s work and livelihood. Carefully regulated AI could help the artist rather than harming them.

Multimedia artists Holly Herndon and Mat Dryhurst use AI to create music while exploring its ethical implications. Their projects like “The Call,” use AI to merge recordings of community choirs into a single, unified voice. As they told NYT, their utopian take is that “AI is collectively made: It learns from whatever it is exposed to and can therefore be shaped for good.”

We can bring about that good with AI, because after all it’s not AI that does things but humanity. Art and AI no longer exist in separate worlds. Maybe the future will not be about humans versus machines but about how the two can coexist, complementing each other’s strengths. As Herndon suggests, AI is “collectively made” — shaped by the data, ethics, and creativity humanity feeds it. With thoughtful regulation and responsible use, AI can become not the destroyer of art but its newest medium. After all, as one PR head aptly put it on VentureBeat, “Generative AI isn’t coming for you — your reluctance to adopt it is.”