AI Art and The Creative Earthquake

The rise of artificial intelligence in creating visual works has ignited a profound debate about whether AI-generated visual content should be classified as "art." This is quite an age-old controversy that began before the rise of AI, dealing with the question of what is "art" or what makes art "artistic." AI is inviting us to reconsider fundamental questions about creativity, authorship, and the essence of what constitutes artistic expression.

At its core, the debate revolves around the competing definitions of art. Traditional conceptions often emphasise human experience, human intentions, and emotional depth. Some people, therefore, argue that nothing that AI produces can be considered "art" because a machine or program cannot experience life and, therefore, cannot create meaning, let alone meaningful art. This perspective values art, primarily as an expression of lived human experience.

Conversely, proponents of AI art suggest we might need to expand our definition. They argue that AI serves as yet another tool employed by human artists, similar to a paintbrush or camera. We have to remember how the camera obscura was invented to create visual images by people who did not necessarily know how to paint a lifelike portrait using brush and paint. With AI, we have a human prompt writer who provides creative vision. Let us also remember that AI is providing these capabilities to people who have no choice, even users with disabilities, who value AI as an accessibility tool that translates one's imagination into visual form.

In the past few days, at the time of writing this blog, the internet has been flooded with beautiful anime-style images, as millions of people are using OpenAI's latest image generation tools. It has become a global sensation, of which I am very guilty of partaking as well, but this has been raising important questions regarding technological progress and artistic values. This feature has flooded the internet with people's content converted into the anime style of legendary Studio Ghibli, and many have seen this as celebrating the great co-founder Hayao Miyazaki. The image generation capability of ChatGPT 4o goes way beyond Studio Ghibli, as I have also managed to generate images in the styles of other very popular Anime intellectual properties.

Miyazaki, however, does not mince his words: "I am utterly disgusted," he stated. "I strongly feel that this is an insult to life itself." His critique stems from a deeply personal place. After all, it is his signature style that is being copied and repeated by what he considers to be a "soulless" machine. He also said that he feels "like we are nearing the end of times. We humans are losing faith in ourselves." We can conclude, therefore, that Miyazaki reflects the philosophy that true animation requires human intention, emotion, and understanding of life's struggles and sufferings.

Authorship questions remain contentious, as these AI models are using vast databases of human-created art to generate new images. Critics say that this constitutes a form of "artistic theft" where algorithms remix existing works without proper attribution or compensation. After all, intellectual property is an economic legal bedrock that protects the livelihood of many creative artists, many of whom are losing income following AI art's emergence.

However, intellectual property law protects fair use and the creation of fan art. My critical question towards this is how different is it to a person who is obsessed with Studio Ghibli anime, repeating the same style in their own fan artwork, which is all over the internet as well. All one needs to look at is the DeviantArt page. I believe that AI generated content is more a threat to the fan artists on deviantart, who are also trying to make money selling fan-art prints, than the large studios like Ghibli and Toei, to be fair. We cannot exclude, therefore, that this might challenge legislators and policymakers to revisit fair use policies on fan art because, to me, I see no difference between the process of creating a fan art in Studio Ghibli style and using AI to achieve the same outcome. Fan art has its own debate on the difference between "imitation" and "creation." Can fan art, therefore, be called "art" if it is an imitation of other people's works? Is recreation, creation, therefore?

So is AI art "art"? That is a question that has to be answered in philosophical discourse as this is challenging established definitions, including the definitions of what a human is. If only a human can create art, does that mean that a machine that can create art, be considered human? And if a machine cannot create art, when the time comes that a machine's intellect is indistinguishable from the human one, isn't that simply biological bias, where we arbitrarily decide that art and humanity are the realm of biological beings only? What would give us the justification for that? Joseph Conrad looks at art as the creation of unreal worlds, which are more real than the real world - because they express something about the nature of truth of human experience. Why should we exclude a machine's ability to do the same?

Where do we go from here? AI has contributed to a massive debate that compels us to reexamine our assumptions about art. Rather than asking whether or not AI art is "art", we might instead consider how it is transforming our relationship with creative expression and what this reveals about human creativity in the age of algorithms. The answer may not lie in rigid catgorisations, but in the need to recognise the challenge to expand the boundaries of artistic possibility, the same way the first effective photocamera did more than 200 years ago, capturing an image for the first time technologically, without having an artist paint it traditionally. Ethicists, lawmakers, and most importantly artists and art philosophers, need to examine and assess the transformative power of this new technology and what it means to the future of creative communities and society in general. We may find answers in the impact by other historical transformative technologies. We need to adapt - that is for sure.

One other side effect to this anime-generating social media meme, however, is that flooding the internet with anime-style content has the happy side effect for Japan to, without any cost to its economy, contribute to its geopolitical soft power, promoting one of its most significant global exports. But that is for another blog.

Using OpenAI ChatGPT 4o - a portrait of myself reimagined in the style of the famous anime intellectual property "Gundam" with an accompanying matching mobile suit.