Don't let any one make you fear AI. Don't let anyone tell you AI will take your job. Don't even consider a case where AI will cause there be less artists, there are going to be just, more.

If you do not read into anything more of the essay, all you need to know are these. AI is going to put artist's on steroids, No one will ever pay for AI images in future, All AI works will be as boring as your filters is today, into the next generation. So breath easy. Now if you would like to know how exactly read ahead.

What gives art value

Let us try to figure out what actually gives art value so that even non artists can understand why all this is true.

Let us consider the following narrative. A 5 year old something kid one evening see a beautiful moon rise and can't forget about it. That night he pulls out his sketch book and scribbles lot of vague lines which he thought represented the moon-rise, and signs it. What would be a value that be placed in this work of art?

I am pretty sure that even some of the artists in my readers might find it tough to answer that. After all most people struggle to value their own work, let alone artists. The answer how ever can be simplified into two things. The Artist's life and time.

In the beginning the art would be invaluable to just the parents. If their scribbles were better than what most kids in their age can make, their school too might be interested. But that is where it will end if the artist in the child ends there. However, the skies will light up if the story doesn't end there.

If the kid turns into a notable artist who is cherished by the world, years from then that piece of paper would be auctioned off at amounts that would stagger the population of the time. If the artists was politically and socially relevant too, the price may still be greater. Years on the price would only keep going up, as that piece of paper is over time becoming more unique and tougher to preserve. Yes, entropy comes for art works too. That story of the artwork, would continue to add to its value if it survives those harsh tests.

This is why Master Clint (Edmund Thomas Clint) is loved and cherished for his simple but mind blowing works, although he only lived to the age of six. No work of an AI how ever more complex, fitting to the golden rules and how ever large would never stay in the minds of people for as long as even one of this little wizard's work. For me especially the below work never fails to amaze me.

Types of work

Art is never finished, only abandoned.
- Leornado Da Vinci

To understand why we are paid what we are paid we need to look beyond just the idea of us doing work and getting paid and break down what we are getting paid for.

Work of thought
This is where the complex decisions that go into doing a work is creatively constructed. In art this would be the holy grail within each artwork that is revered, feared and all artist are paid for.

But, forget the technical decisions. As an artist works on a work he is influenced. By the morning that felt better than ever, the kitten that they just saw trying to hunt a fly. The couple that seemed to be fighting one moment and fell into each others arms the very next moment by the downstairs lobby. The fears of how a community is persecuted. The bombs being dropped in their city. Their lost love, for they had to flee their hometown. A pain of solitude that they learned to enjoy. Every being of that artist is pored into every stroke they make. The mistakes they make, only making it more of an art every passing day.

The thing about this sort of work is that, one can never finish it. Like for an architect a design can never be finished, for an engineer a design is never perfect, for an artist there always is something they could do to make that piece of work more priceless. A bit more of them.

Work of language
This is where the mind steps back and the course of fine tuned motor skills, management skills, economics, leadership skills and effort flow into constructing the art into reality. The simplest form of this might be getting a canvas and paining onto it with oil paint, or opening your digital editor and working through the colours and layers until we have what we want.

Some major artist may choose to not even touch the work but monitor and manage his assistants to complete the work as they want. Some may do it by hand and sometimes as a group of artists.

This part does not matter in the end because, when the work is done for it to have any sort of value and not to rust out in some warehouse, the artist need to do one single thing. To sign their work.

Signing and The Value of Thought

By signing a work, an artist certifies that the physical language form of the art (painting, sculpture, installations) into a mirror or to their works of thought. This is absolute unless you want your art to take a tour like Da Vinci's Salvator Mundi.

There s no grater proof that it is the artist and his link to the work that give it in-disposable value than the story of NFT. Digital art has existed for a pretty long time and artists have been making some amount from it. But, the moment there was a way for the artist to sign their digital work and prove its ownership through NFT, everything exploded.

It is not just NFTs that hold value for work by means of a certification. Maurizio Cattelan's "Comedian" is a brilliant example of what gives art value and what possessing it actually means to people. It is because the gallery holds a certificate from the artist that the banana they stick to the wall and replace every few days remains the original art work and every other banana stuck on the wall with a duct tape is literally "nothing".

In other words, AI will never create real art, because it is finished the moment the algorithm ends. Art on the other hand, is never finished.

Imagine a movie from which we just remove the frames that says "Directed By". It suddenly seizes to be a complete work. That is the power of an artist's signature. Only the director may change it from there, and that means, the rules of time is making it rarer and impossible. Or, abandoned as Leornado put it.

Evolution of Tools

The humans long ago in the caves made art with stones, charcoal, dyes and leaves crushed into a liquid mush. chisels were invented and so was advance pigments and oil paint. We moved on to cutting devices and better abrasive polishing techniques. 3D printing and fabric circuits are getting incorporated into art. Advanced lighting and fluid dynamic designs too are becoming a part of art.

We cant imagine an artist or sculptor today relying on the tools that were used in the medieval times. The modern tools has allowed us to perform works of art more precisely and more inventively. They made artists better. They made artists more productive. They made more economic and democratic. But never can any tool ever replace the function of an artist. In the end the AI is going to be a tool that artists and every other professionals use to bring out more of their brilliance and do even more.

Some artist are going to continue to use the old tool even when others are sculpting with lasers. They will be paid more and considered valuable because they have given more to their art and in the process making them greater in some ways.

The Legal Sweet spot

If these are not enough to put you at ease there are legal reasons coming your way (our you should make sure it comes) that show exactly what AIs are.

The United States Copyright Office has recently issued guidelines on how any when images generated y AI can be copyrighted as original work. The common trend is that it can't be unless a human works over it and makes things a real production. The common trend in most other countries are not going to be much different.

This is exactly how law should see AI and it's output(can't call it work, can we). As long as our governments can continue to make this distinction things are going to go exactly where the artists want it. further the well understood concepts of plagiarism will keep staying stable, the duty shall fall on the artist to make sure the artwork is free of plagiarism, when they use AIs to generate parts of it.

A technical perspective

Further, as mush more AI engines may come up soon who can render more and more capable outputs, there will come simple and capable tools that are just a millionth as complex as the AIs that build them that can detect and tag them.

However the real technical side that is going to put artist on steroids are the following things that can allow artist to-

Project final work - Artists will be able to render and see possible samples of the final work as they are working on the art work.

Discover new perspectives - AI can allow artists to explore and discover perspectives like never before.

Real time lighting experimentation - Lighting is the toughest to get right as artists learn and AI would allow them to explore every form of lighting possible in matter of seconds.

Restore damages better - AIs can help art restorers do mindblowingly better by making lot of their research into the process super simple.

The know it all dumb assistant

A dream of any lone artist would be to have an assistant who has good know how about things and can simply follow instructions to instructions to help out with work.

AI is going to fit this role explicitly and at a much cheaper rate too. Arts are going to use AIs to render prototypes and sketched that help them formulate ideas and test their impact rather than actually make any sort of art.

A dumb assistant who is good at one thing, looking at every artwork in the world and can try and show you samples and modifications of samples there could have been for you to test and construct.

Conclusion; or why your friend will still pay you paint his DP

In the end AI generated images as a main source of personal representation digitally and otherwise is just going to remain a fad limited by time. It might be growing up in the 90s and seeing the world transition technologically multiple times, but I believe that any new visual technology often is just in demand because it is a novelty. Tomorrow when it comes as features embedded into your camera app, people will run back to their artist friends.

The reason for that is, "XYZ AI generated this" is going to run out of any special interest pretty soon. However, "My friend Alice, an artist painted this for me" would be a word repeated through human future.

Long live the artist. Fear not the fear mongers.
Long live art, Let it be yourself for a moment in time.
Ending this here; as a work of art is never finished, I seldom can stop when I start talking about Art and Tech. So I abandon this here.

Additional Note

Fear not those who tell that AI will render artists irrelevant. Fear not those who say AI now does art, why pay you. These people fall into the category who does not understand why an artist should be paid $5000 for a two hour job. They don't understand, they don't buy art, they don't preserve art.

Long live the artists.
Yours
Blaise