AI Art: When Technology Falls Short of Personal Connection
I LOVE this post and the 'ponderability' of it, much like our King of Pondering, Michael Jacobs so often writes. Dorie Dillard Austin TX shared such an interesting and FABULOUSLY thought-provoking post here. I can understand the disappointment the recipient felt but, I also feel that had she ever experimented with AI, she would understand the sense of 'creativity' the giver put forth to create such a gorgeous print. I also feel that had the recipient considered what was going on in the gifter's life, a totally different perspective & appreciation for this gift would have been the reaction.
When anyone gifts me wall art, I feel SO blessed and cannot WAIT to find the perfect spot for it on my walls! I feel like many pieces of my wall art are reproductions and certainly not 'originals.' My art snobbery would never win over a gift from a friend - NEVER - especially when it was created with thought and love, maybe just not with the stroke of my friend's brush! So what? Right? It's the thought that counts!
As I mentioned above, we simply do not always know what is going on in our friends' lives. So, one final thought I would like to share: I recently lost a dear client who had ALS. She was incredibly creative with a design eye like no one I've ever known. Had she created something for me using AI with her limited dexterity, it would have been my most precious piece of artwork - literally, for the rest of my life.
ANOTHER NOTE: AI imagery is NOT the negative, nasty, risky...and all of the other negative adjectives you can think of - that a couple of folks may shout from the highest mountaintops. It's perfectly harmless and is quite challenging to learn - just ask our AI experts, Paddy Deighan MBA JD PhD, Brandon Jordan, Dario Ferreira - and others.
FINAL NOTE: The image at the top of this post was the EASIEST image I have created with AI. Here is my prompt - short, sweet and to the point:
"Create a real life image with a beautiful sunflower background - van gogh impressionism style - with AI in the foreground"
Thank you, Dorie, for the food-for-thought-provoking post! ❤️
Recently, I read an article in the spring issue of Wired Magazine by Megan O’Gieblyn, who writes about philosophical guidance on our encounters with technology. In the piece, she responded to a question from a reader who felt conflicted after receiving an AI-generated painting from an artist friend. The painting was personalized and beautifully framed, but the recipient still felt a sense of disappointment and wondered if those feelings were justified.
At first, I was taken back by the question. But after pondering I understood the nuance. The gift giver, an artist, chose an AI-generated painting rather than creating one herself. Should the recipient really feel disappointed, given the saying, "It’s the thought that counts"? I generated a painting in DALL-E3 from a prompt of "Paint some flowers in some bright colors with a sunset." It took me 1 minute.
Megan explored the concept of a gift, describing it as something that comes into your possession at no cost or effort, existing outside the economic concepts of debt and fair exchange. She suggested that the friend's disappointment stemmed from the realization that the AI-generated painting required no real creative effort from the artist, beyond the initial prompts in AI. As an artist, the friend has a unique creative talent, yet chose to offer something that lacked the personal touch of her own artistry, making the gift feel generic and impersonal to her friend.
While AI is fascinating and fun to experiment with, especially for marketing and other applications, I believe nothing replaces human artistry. Megan insightfully remarked, “There’s a difference between art that achieves a sublime universality and a product that is benignly universal.”
AI-generated images, in their current form, often feel like creations by committee, designed to meet specific market goals rather than expressing genuine creativity. It will be interesting to see how this technology evolves over the next decade, but I hope it enhances rather than diminishes the personal connections that true artistry brings. What are your thoughts on how this friend felt after receiving her AI painting for a gift?
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