When I first saw the AI art that came out, it shocked me, and I had stopped producing all artwork. Back then, AI had been giving me a sense of purposelessness and existentialism, and high levels of paralyzing anxiety. However, I had been able to reclaim myself. I started to write more in response to the AI boom, valuing human-man crafted work. I started to look within, and see how I can attach to superficial values (like getting likes, or focusing on results or appearance or quick outcomes), and I got more in touch with the process and intrinsic enjoyment. I valued authenticity and genuineness even more, repudiating society’s manipulation of people and artifice.
I see my own tendencies, rather than negated by AI, as being valuable today because of the superficial and senseless world we are entering into due to AI and the culture that led up to its development. I found a sense of purpose in combatting AI, and sharing my own voice in a way I have not done before (I usually avoid being outspoken). Though I would fall into spells of fear and paralysis, I want to keep committing to the fight. I see the value of caring for others’ plights due to AI, even in areas I am not directly affected (my career is not as affected, but those of others’ are). I wrote articles and made videos against AI. I am just bringing all I know to help the cause. I believe in the end, seeing how negative AI is will help us see more the value of being human, being authentic, and the disadvantages of unregulated tech.
What I would like to do is embrace being a visual artist again, as I have not done much artwork since the boom of AI, which I seen other artists do. I miss doing that, as making art helped me to see the world more beautifully. In the meantime, I found I had been appreciating human-crafted work more. In the beginning, AI made me not look at art for some time, but I am back at looking at real art and loving it more than I ever did before.
(The image in this article is a drawing I made called “Warming Me Up”)
