AI can do just anything.
How about Art? Can AI create ART like Picasso or Hussain?
Oh! That is already done. Human artists must do something else. AI has taken over art.
Well, such nonsense comes from information savvy well-heeled men, usually over glasses of beer in a party. They believe that news notifications and gossip over coffee or beer offers all the necessary insights under the sun. After all views of such men or women hardly matter in the serious affairs of life on earth.
But the fact about picture generating AI is way more complex.
The most fundamental question is, ‘Can AI create art?’
To explore the answer to this question, we must ponder about what art is.
The definition of art has undergone radical changes through the passage of time. For example, painting a mango like a mango as we see, qualified as great art until Camera was invented. But post camera days, keeping a visual record of life did not remain within the purview of art anymore. Camera did a better job. Hence, realistic painting was not art anymore. That is how the definition of art kept changing with time.
Today, it revolves more around capturing some kind of truth on canvas. Often such truth is not reality but a subjective truth of the artist. And subjective truth may radically differ from what another person sees through his bare eyes.
What we mean by subjective truth is the experience of the artist himself. But how does such an expression come to life? The recipe of such expression consists of the socio-economic condition the artist lives in, the experience of the artist while interacting with such society, the artist’s personal pleasure and agonies arising out of living a private life and finally, the most important element, the artist’s feeling through this journey. The feeling of love, anger, fear, jealousy, pain and so on.
The final element, feeling, arises out of consciousness. From today’s perspective, an AI program is unlikely to enjoy or suffer the existence of feelings. It is unlikely to ever have consciousness. Because consciousness is related to one’s ancestry, the way one grew up, the DNA of the person. A computer program does not have a DNA. It does not have an ancestry. It is not partial to a village or a town or a country or clan. It does not suffer from the fear of death or anxiety of losing a loved one.
Hence, an AI program can generate an image like M F Hussain did. It can generate blank faces while rolling out images in Husain’s style, but it will never be propelled by the reason that prompted Husain to paint bank faces. Husain lost his mother soon after he was born. He thought of his mother a lot and never could see her face in his mind. This resulted in his blank faces on canvas. An AI program will not have mother in the first place.
A computer program does not have a DNA. It does not have an ancestry. It is not partial to a village or a town or a country or clan. It does not suffer from the fear of death or anxiety of losing a loved one.
Similarly, another example can be the famous painting by Picasso – Guernica. It was the first painting by him that was in black and white. Besides, Picasso had not painted politically sensitive paintings until then. Why suddenly he did he paint a black and white canvas with political flavor?
It is because in those days Picasso’s muse was Dora Marr. Dora Marr was a member of the communist party and a photographer. At that time the camera could take a snap in black and white only. Influenced by Dora Marr, Picasso ended up painting Guernica in black and white! Also, as a member of the communist party, Dora Marr was politically active and opinionated. Hence, Guernica turned out to be the first politically conscious painting by Picasso. But what was the driving force behind all this?
LOVE!
Picasso was madly in love with Dora Marr when he painted Guernica.
Can an AI program love someone? Or can you fall madly in love with an AI program?
Probably not.
We can draw endless examples to show that feelings and consciousness is an inseparable part of painting. And an AI program is not expected to gain that soon.
Can an AI program love someone? Or can you fall madly in love with an AI program? Probably not!
Apart from that, there are several unresolved issues with AI generated pictures. Who is the author of picture? The person who gave the prompt? The person who wrote the codes? The person who fed the program loads of data to train it?
If the above question itself is a grey area, then in case of a sale, who should get the money?
Whose copyright is it anyway?
If case if there is legal dispute concerning obscenity or racism or the likes, who should be penalized? The programmer? The person who gave the prompts? The person or persons who provided data to the software for training? No clue so far.
In fact, there had been plenty of erotic images painted by artists like F N Souza and so on. Such paintings are art when looked at through the lens of history. If we learn about what prompted F N Souza to turn into a desperate rebel during his teens itself, we shall appreciate the value of such eroticism on paper or canvas. If not, those appear to be vulgar.
Try giving a prompt to a picture generating AI program that should produce a nude human image. It will immediately ask you to change the topic! The programmer had taught it to avoid walking into legally troubled water.
So?
How much prospect does AI enjoy as artist? Probably none!
But yes, an AI program can be definitely trained on the style of a human artist. Once trained, it can roll out countless images in the same style. For human eye it will be impossible to detect that such an image created by AI is not actually done by the artist. To top it all, there are advanced printers and canvas today that can replicate the exact impression of an old piece in a few minutes. This means, thanks to AI, the fake art market will be booming in the coming days. And the legal framework will not know whom to sue in court!
(by the way...the illustration of this article has been generated by AI)
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