Who is AI For?
Every creative person I know either dislikes or hates AI. All but one creative friend, who I unfollowed last week. Well, more of a longtime acquaintance, and I can say that since I haven’t seen him since before the pandemic. That’s a long time to not be in touch with someone you know, or barely speak to. I have two artist friends, both graduated from RISD (Rhode Island School of Design). I have never wanted to go to art school until I listen to them talk about all the different and scandalous inner circles of art school. One of my friends Kara had an ex-boyfriend, he was always nice and reserved. Honestly, I totally forgot that I was ever following him on Instagram. He’s also an artist, more multimedia, his stuff was okay to me. A DM comes through from him, of all people and I literally said aloud to myself, ‘blast from the past!’ Inside this friend group msg chain is a link to his new website. Clicked on it and he has rebranded himself as an —--- AI Artist. Then, I DM’d my friend Kara, his ex and she texted back, “o/c that’s so him.” Not in a mean way, but she is right. It is so him. If anyone was going to relocate to the dark side it was going to be him. Even though they’re on good terms, they had made a deal to unfollow each other on socials (very smart), so she had no idea about this new rebrand. His account is private, weird for an artist, so I had to send her all these screenshots of the comments section. People were generally nice, but some felt dismayed by his new persona. One person commented, ‘bro, why AI?’ to which he replied back, ‘it’s the future’. Ugghhhhh.
Then I took a step back and questioned why the hell was I still following my friend’s ex-boyfriend? I had no problem hitting that unfollow button. (There’s probably someone reading this who wants to do the same. That’s cool, it’s probably better this way)
You will never be an AI Artist, because AI is a tool. It’s not an artistic movement like Cubism, it is literally a box of technology made of stolen human artifacts pushed into algorithms (I’m guessing) to vomit out actions or responses to your liking. It’s ordering and building your own custom pizza through an app. That is not a technique, it is convenience. And many people are choosing convenience over craftsmanship and legacy.
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