AI seems to find its way into every conversation lately. It is quickly becoming a part of our daily lives through advertising, social media, and everyday tasks. For some, such technological advancement is seen as exciting, but what does this growing presence mean for an artist? AI has already become capable of generating images, writing entire papers, and generating fleshed-out ideas within seconds. What effect does this have on creative careers? I personally don’t believe that creative jobs will become obsolete. I choose to instead look at AI as a tool, rather than a replacement. The technology can produce an incredible amount of information and imagery quickly. But what it cannot replicate is the human perspective. Creativity involves the artist’s experiences, emotions, cultural influences, intentions, and consideration. These human elements are difficult to quantify. It can’t be simply replicated by something analytical.
As AI has continued to grow more prevalent, I, as an artist, have occasionally experimented with it. It is curious to see what happens when I give a program one of my ideas or designs and allow it to interpret it, generate its own ideas, or suggest changes. Then getting to compare it with my own interpretation and see how it contrasts or what it chooses to keep similar. I have recently begun to learn Tambour embroidery. I needed to design a color scheme for a butterfly. After manually sketching numerous ideas myself, I narrowed them down to two favorites. Out of curiosity, I decided to put those two images into an AI generator and asked it to create more designs based on my selected favorite images. Within seconds, I had nine new color scheme ideas, all of which were different than any of the ideas I came up with. When I compare the results, I still preferred my two original favorites, but I do think it goes to show how AI can be used by artists without eliminating the humanity in creativity. AI can be just another tool in your studio that helps you when creating or exploring ideas quickly. Is AI a threat to artists, or can it be a useful creative tool?
