Essay: AI art only has the meaning we assign it
A bit of an attempt to see the forest for the trees in the AI debates
Reading time: approximately 7 minutes
Hello my friends and welcome again to what has become my series on AI. This is the third essay; if you want to know more about the controversy around image AI generators and how they work, check out the second essay in the series, AI image generators are probably not might could be evil.
To pick up the thread of thought where we left it, it’s best to go back to that important question that I asked but never answered in the last essay: If anyone can type in a prompt asking for an image in an artist’s style for $10 per month, why would anyone ever again pay the artist a commission to make their art?
There was a bit of discussion in the comments of the last essay about this question, and two working artists chimed in, with some great points. I’m going to be expanding on some of those here, because they had some of the same thoughts I did.
Firstly, I don’t believe fans of artists are going to run off to Midjourney and get it to spit out a copycat image to hang on their walls. Fans of art that touches them want originals or prints from the artist because they want to support the artist and help them to make more work. Many are also friends or family or parasocially engaged and want to be a part of the artist’s journey of making art and living. The heart of the question assumes that everyone everywhere can’t possibly conceive of spending more money on something they love when they could get a knockoff for less money. It’s been my experience that fans who have the money to spend on their favorite artists consider that money well-spent. The art a fan buys makes them a small part of the artist’s narrative, and I think that’s a really important part of being a fan that no copycat image can ever reproduce.
So if we’re not talking about fans generating Midjourney images in the style of their favorite artists, who is this “anyone” in the essential question that won’t pay artists to make art anymore? There are tons of people pumping out Midjourney images in popular artist’s styles, but are these people fans? Or asked another way: would these people ever have bought work from the artist before AI image generators became a thing? Probably not! I’m sure some people are just making these images as part of their exploration of the AI’s capabilities. Some people are making them specifically be to assholes to artists. And certainly others will print out the knockoff images they’ve generated to hang on their walls, but I think it’s a fair bet that most of that subset of people would already have bought art directly from the artist if they were ever going to do so. Is it really a loss if the person never would have made the artist a sale?
There is another “anyone” in the question, and I think that is really where most of the concern and fear lies. Artists are concerned that companies will stop paying for art and design, and freelance artists could lose income if companies can turn to Midjourney to generate images in seconds for pennies each. This is the heart of the issue, but AI isn’t really the problem here. The problem here, as artist Jake Parker puts it in his excellent YouTube video AI Art is the Symptom NOT the Problem, is industrialized art.
The race to the bottom for the lowest amount we can charge artists for their art and get away with it already happened in 2010, and it was called Fiverr (thanks to
for this example!). Although artists can charge more, the idea of Fiverr is that buyers looking for “small services” can come to Fiverr’s marketplace and find someone to do that service for $5. A lot of artists sell art commissions on the platform for that insultingly small amount, and many can’t raise their prices or they won’t stay competitive on the platform. The fact is, almost everyone who is looking for art to help them sell a product is going to pay a little as humanly possible for that art, because the price of it will cut into the profits the product will eventually make. This is the engine of what drives the art that Jake Parker calls industrialized art: stock images, Fiverr, even social media. These “all thrive because they’ve leveraged consistent and affordable art creation.” And yes, AI image generators means there will be some disruption to income streams for artists who rely on these industrialized art practices. But it doesn’t mean the end of art. It doesn’t even mean the end of artists creating industrialized art—not now, perhaps not ever.As I have mentioned before, I do use Midjourney to create images for this Substack. We’ll get to more on why I do that in a minute. First, a story about what it is like to use Midjourney to try to accomplish a goal, not just playing around to see what the tool can do.
I just started my Instagram account, and I wanted to use Midjourney to make a border for my posts, to make my posts all aesthetically pleasing and matchy. (I think that’s what people like on Instagram? I really don’t know what I am doing…)
I wanted a border in jewel tones with cute little witchy-techy-alchemy symbols in it. I came up with the following prompt: instagram border:: AI alchemist witch style which got me the following results:
Well, I didn’t want a picture of an actual witch, and I didn’t want the images to HAVE a border, I wanted them to BE a border. I tried again and again to explain to the AI what I wanted. And two hours later, I completely gave up on my original concept. I had to go in a new direction, and ended up making swirly background images that end up mostly covered up by the actual image I want to post to IG.
It’s incredibly hard to force these AI image generators to make exactly what you want. Over and over again I have had an idea for an image to go with my posts, and I’ve had to completely give up on that idea and go in a different direction or use something I generated that only vaguely relates to the text. I assume that will change with time, but since the way the AIs teach themselves is called a black box process—i.e., humans don’t know what parameters the AI identified during its training to produce relevant results—moving toward more reliable results is going to be more than just a programming tweak. Right now the surprising results are part of the fun, but industrialized art relies on affordable and consistent, and AI image generators are only one of those right now.
Human artists are problem solvers and communicators on top of having the artistic skills necessary to create a piece. AI image generators can generate beautiful, surprising, entertaining images, but if they happen to be relevant, it’s only through the meaning that we humans assign them, not through deliberate intention.
So why do I personally use AI generated images? Honestly, because I’m not getting paid to write this Substack. I don’t have time to write and use my limited art skills to try to make my own images. I don’t have money to hire an artist for an amount that’s not insulting, and while I love and appreciate every one of you who read my work, you are currently a small few, so my Exposure Bucks are not exactly plentiful right now. When I eventually monetize my writing successfully, I would love to collaborate with artists to illustrate my stories! I’m honestly really excited for that day.
Until then, I fight with Midjourney for an hour or two to try to generate interesting and mostly topical images to go with my stories and essays. I decide to ignore the twisted, six-digit hands, and the eyes looking only mostly in the same direction, and the human anatomy proportions that look like they were created by someone who has only heard rumors about what humans look like. It’s at least more interesting than using the same stock images over and over. I also never generate images in any particular artist’s style, because doing that just feels gross.
I have said more than I ever thought I would about AIs, and I hope these essays have been interesting and mildly informative. I definitely think they have pros and cons, but I am pretty sure they aren’t going away. It’s technology that I’d rather talk about fitting into our lives appropriately than ignore. And I’d rather learn to use it ethically than pretend it doesn’t exist.
Thanks for joining me on this particular journey!
💖,
Elnora
Midjourney... what can I say? I wonder what would happen if I would invest the hours spent with this AI to actually create my own digital art... a topic for another time. I never get what I want. Sometimes I get something I might like. Most of the times I get frustrated.
So much goodness in this post. Again, I really appreciate the nuance you are bringing to it.
Going to watch the Sam Does Arts video filled me with SUCH rage at how some people do not seem to mature out of a "stop hitting yourself" childish mentality. Seriously, people who troll that way REALLY NEED A HOBBY.
The most salient point in your piece for me is the penultimate paragraph: I do not have the money to pay people a living wage for services. I dream about finding a perfect editor the way a lot of straight women dream about finding the perfect husband. I would LOVE to have a writer-editor relationship with someone, AND it's not gonna happen anytime soon. I can pay for some editing services here and there, but I do not have anything close to the income needed to hire someone to work on a full manuscript. I wish I did. The second I do, it's happening. This is high on my dreamy-creative-living-my-best-life-bucket-list. I even have people in mind who I would hire in a heartbeat if my income allowed for it.
Until then...I pay for ProWritingAid and for years I used grammarly. These apps provide a lot that an editor might at a price I can afford. That being said, there is nothing like actual human ingenuity and awareness when it comes to creativity. These apps can't understand the audience I'm writing for or what it means to help me refine and amplify my voice as a writer. They help, AND they are not the same as a skilled, trained editor. Just like AI art is not the same as a skilled, trained artist. It's a stand in for those of us who would absolutely spend the money if we had the means.