“Art is dead, dude. It’s over. A.I. won. Humans lost.” – by “artist” Jason Allen, who has an AI piece that stole first place in the Colorado State Fair digital art contest
Does Jason Allen, who claims to be some revolutionary force in art, know anything about art? Does this statement he made expressing art as some sort of zero-sum game, spat out in the style of an attention-seeking 8th-grader, capture the essential spirit of art and why we engage in it in the first place? There is a big change going on in the art world through AI, for sure, but I highly doubt it is of truly valuable progress for us at a deeper, meaningful level.
The essence of what art is and has been for millenniums is alive and well, Mr. Allen. You are not part of something that killed it. I am sorry, but you are not mature enough to say that. There are millions of artists of the past and present, not just the great and remembered ones, who are in a better position than you to speak on the matter of art. Anyone who has genuinely engaged in art, whether it is the great masters of the past, professionals and hobbyists learning and developing their craft, and even children engaging in art understand what art is more than you.
What they did, and continue to do, is build a real connection with the essential spirit of art. When they connect with it, they experience the ineffability of the artistic process unfolding and coming alive before them in their work, a process which brings them in touch with something deep within themselves. It is a beautiful feeling that is not boiled down into the statistical and random machinery of AI. AI may only appear to have it, so long as it stole from the living expression of the spirit of art from others, ripping off what was made by the heart.
The spirit of art, when genuinely felt by the artist, is a healing process which can be self-transformative. It is a human process, a living process, a vulnerable one that is raw and organic. No one who has genuinely had this experience would say what Jason Allen said about art being dead or a zero-sum game. He either never knew what art is or has completely lost touch with it and his soul long ago.
AI Art from the beginning dishonored the experience of artists and connection they have with the spirit of art. With a lack of sanctity and respect for artists’ heartfelt creations, it took them all the art world without permission and churned them in a soulless factory operated by power-hungry companies. Art is the area of life not supposed to be subject to the same impersonal pragmatism as the other areas of life, the “zero-sum” game Jason Allen reduces it all down to. In fact, it is the area where we find reprieve from it, to find balance from it. Art has now been much more fully exploited by this impersonal pragmatism than ever before.
AI Art is a disservice to the public, as it teaches them to normalize having input that is plagiarism and that is impersonal factory-production of artwork. If you don’t agree, the CEO of Midjourney nonchalantly said with his incredibly strong moral spine, and with a smile, “I don’t really want to be involved in [plagiarism]…[but] I might be.” This teaches people not only a poor relationship of art that disrespects artists and treats it as a zero-sum game of being part of colonializing their art for gain, but a poor relationship with life. Do we want to teach people, our children, and our future generations a way of going about life that it is okay to use people with such soullessness and exploitation as is being done to artists now?
The CEO’s excuse that part of the art world operates this way anyway is a poor one. There is much of the art world that does not operate this way, and sees this plagiarizing, exploitative approach as the enemy and contradiction to the authentic spirit of art that they are fighting for. The CEO has made plagiarism easy, accessible, and normalized at a much more massive scale. By stealing artwork, he made artists fearful to share their creations that express the spirit of art, and thus what is truly meaningful for humanity. By seeing artists authentically do their work and get in touch with this spirit, people are transformed to live authentically, deeply, richly, and better. Though the CEO had predecessors who abused art, he outshined them, tipping the power significantly to the soulless, exploitation, the impersonal, the idea of a zero-sum game of colonializing the artworld—opposite of what the spirit of art teaches.
Let us not let this continue to happen. I know it is a difficult time for artists, but I believe from my heart artists are more needed now than ever before to teach the spirit of art—to demonstrate to the world the value of genuineness, authenticity, to cultivate enjoyment and appreciation of the organic process of art, and the real satisfaction that comes from honest work. Art teaches and captures the simple lessons in life in a subtle yet complex way the intellect cannot, which cultivates a real depth and happiness to humanity which it cannot. AI may have a vast “intellect” but it is not wisdom. For no matter how much it copies it can never truly teach and capture it, because wisdom must come from and be inspired by what is raw and real within—a genuine connection with meaning. We must keep going or else humanity has something dear to lose.
