Monet or Midjourney?: How AI has changed the face of art
Words by Ella Gauci
TikTok is known for its silly filters: click this button and it will look like you’re underwater! Or you can become the hulk for 15 seconds; the entirety of your face can be transformed in seconds. Last month TikTok released a new filter which instantly became a hit - one which created an AI picture based on inputted text. The filter was picked up by a number of trends as people put in birthdays, the names of exes, and even historical events to see what the AI filter generated. The result is often a blur of colours which occasionally forms a recognisable shape. Wowing users, this filter represents something much greater in the shrinking chasm between art and technology: the machines are here to paint.
My attempt at using the TikTok filter
The use of technology - specifically AI - in art is nothing new. From the 1950s artists like Vera Molnár and Frieder Nake were using computer programming software and algorithms to create pieces of artwork. In particular, Nake was crucial in taking computer generated art into galleries. Below you can see one of his many untitled pieces generated through the use of a computer. In 1971 he even wrote the piece ‘There Should Be No Computer-Art’ which discussed the varying discourse surrounding computer art at the time. He expressed his frustration at those who claimed that computer generated art was not ‘art’, asking the question of what function and service art had within society anyway.
Frieder Nake, no title, 1967, TATE
Public fears and disapproval about AI generated art have not changed significantly since Nake first started producing his work. In early September, controversy arose in the art community when game designer Jason M Allen won a $300 cash prize for his piece Theatre D’opera Spatial. Entering in the category for “digital arts/digitally-manipulated photography”, uproar occurred when his piece won. Why? Allen had used the AI tool Midjourney to create his masterpiece.
Jason M Allen, Theatre D’opera Spatial
The backlash against Allen’s win perhaps alludes to much wider fears about the growth of AI capability in general. The arts are often regarded as something innately human, tied to the image of the pensive painter or tortured poet. If a machine can beat a number of digital artists in a competition, what does that say for the limits of mankind?
In our current age - where technology infiltrates nearly every corner of our daily lives - it seems strange that art is expected to remain limited to the confines of historical precedent. Almost ironically, it is largely through social media sites such as Twitter that outrage over AI art has been vocalised. Users such as @VERTIGRIS_ART have commented that AI programs using images to create pieces of art ‘is art theft taken to the extreme’. They go on to say that ‘using other people’s years of work to feed it into an algorithm so you can generate something similar in a few seconds is just so morally foul’.
Mark Wilson - 'e4708'
In the case of Jason M Allen it seems fair to use this claim to corroborate the outrage at his win. After all, he did financially benefit from the algorithm which used other images to create his piece. But when the only artist to credit is an AI generator itself - as is the case with the TikTok filter - who exactly is stealing artwork?
The growth of AI art begs the question of what constitutes art itself. One could argue that the growth of AI-generated art is a feat for both technology and art; art is a discipline that by nature reflects the rapidly changing world we live in. Removing the auteur aspect of art is largely where I believe these fears about AI have stemmed from in the art community. Returning back to TikTok, it's hard to view the countless videos using this filter as an innate threat to the calibre of art being produced in the 21st century. What it does threaten is the notion of the artist.
