This may not be necessary at all, but I just want to lay it out there. I do not think there’s a final or correct way of thinking or feeling about AI, but there is no denying that AI is here to stay and it is here to change everything, whether we like it or not.
Personally, it has already affected me, as I got laid off because of the economic effect it has had on digital companies and their pricing structures.
I am a very artsy person, not saying I’m good or bad, but I just like to enjoy everything related to art: music, writing, painting, fashion, etc. And one of the things I’ve seen affected on a personal level is my writing. Like many of us, I started depending on ChatGPT to write everything for me, and I’ve had to make a conscious effort to limit my use of it in my day-to-day as I kept feeling like my brain was losing a little bit of itself every time I had to ask ChatGPT to answer an email for me.
In a perfect world, AI would adapt to us, and it would only be used as a helpful tool for more manual and technical stuff. But the world is what it is, and it may have to go the other way. They’re going to keep developing new agents and uses for AI, and we are going to have to sit and watch as it takes the course that it wants, leaving us to just make it work.
In no way do I think AI is not useful; I think it is an amazing way to get access to a lot of knowledge. For example, I’ve used it to help me build this amazing web portfolio. Without AI, I would’ve probably given up.
But what’s scary is the legal aspects, the privacy, the deepfakes, the way it’s taken over so many creatives, and how people are just trusting it without giving it a second thought. As a young female, there are so many things that worry me about the privacy and lack of laws around it. And by how fast everything is going, I think that whenever they get to implementing some laws, AI will be on a whole other level.
I feel that the creative side of AI is where things get even more complicated. Should AI be part of the creative process?
The other day, I went to an exhibition called El culte a la bellesa (“The Cult of Beauty”), which traces the evolution of beauty ideals throughout history, analyses how aesthetic canons are constructed, and reclaims the bodies and forms of beauty that have been excluded from the norm. Interestingly, the exhibition also included several AI-generated pieces exploring how this technology is changing the way we perceive beauty in a negative way.
But isn’t that contradictory? They are using the same technology they are questioning as part of the statement. Does it work? Does AI have its own place within the creative industries? And, perhaps most importantly, does art lose some of its value when it is created with AI?
Thankfully a lot of big names in the creative industry, specially in films and music, have spoken against the use of AI, and they have put a light in some of the biggest concerns. These are the use of deepfakes, the loses of thousands of jobs in the industry and the lack of originality and purpose.
You can read here about a petition made in the UK to ask for everyone in Britain to be given ownership of their voice as part of their statutory rights.
Some other news about the film industry:
5 Actors Who Are Fighting a Battle Against AI in Hollywood Including Scarlett Johansson
At the same time, there are also people in the industry who are betting in favour of AI. One example is Martin Scorsese, who has shown support for AI as a tool within filmmaking.
This leaves us with a more complicated question than simply whether AI is “good” or “bad” for creativity. If AI becomes another tool available to artists, where should we draw the line? And what happens to the meaning, value and human intention behind a creative work when AI becomes part of the process?
There is no final conclusion in the general use of AI, but I do believe that it needs to be regulated because if we give away the creative parts of our lives, what will we have left? No thoughts of our own, no judgement, no boundaries, no originality, and perhaps nothing meaningful to fill our free time with. Why should we hand over the best parts of being human, creating, experimenting, writing, and singing, to a machine, only to be left with the mechanical parts of life? If AI does everything that makes us creative, what will be left for us to create?
