AI is simultaneously feared and celebrated. It’ll bring death to this and that. It’ll bring greatness to this and that. Somehow it’s both. I think it can do great things in fields like science and medicine, and I think it can do harm in things like creativity and art.
I don’t mean copying art, someone’s writing, or using someone’s likeness. Humans are doing that already. Sometimes poorly. Sometimes expertly. But I think AI will strip the life, the love, the hurt, the grief, and every emotion that creativity, music, and the arts bring to life.
Has AI found plot holes in my writing? Yes. And that’s a yes with an asterisk and a disclaimer. I actually clarified the said plot hole a chapter later, but AI didn’t notice it. I was stuck on a rhyme I needed for something I was working on and asked AI for help. It went off the rails with a response, but sparked an idea in me that finished the rhyme.
I tried an experiment to have AI write a story based on an idea I had that included two very specific POVs. It mangled the characters. It mangled the story. It mangled the idea, the timeline, and it was so badly disorganised and written, that I laughed. I mean a proper LOL.
Maybe someone who spends hours upon hours training whatever AI they’re using might get better results, but in that time one spends training, they could be creating. And as creators, that’s what we want right? To be creating. To be making. To be giving our art to the world.
I’m sure there will be “non creatives” who see AI as a way to make art and make money from the masses. There’s already rumours and whispers of artists on Spotify who may or not be real. There will be people who are trying to cheat the system, and there will be those who are creating and see AI as a tool for clarity and communication and at least for me, the grammar police.
No matter how much memory the AI platform of choice has or doesn’t have, AI is still oddly a bit human in its consistency and continuity in that it sucks at remembering what it’s previously done no matter how much directive you’ve given it or how much you remind it. It can make mistakes just like a human. The visual mistakes are glaring in AI generated content. Six fingered hands, backwards feet, eyes devoid of life. Those are things a real human or an artist would catch if it wasn’t created with that intention.
I’m not ashamed to admit I’ve used AI’s help in cleaning up a paragraph or action scene. I get wordy and long winded. It can act like an editor. But it’s cold, a bit boring, and loves an em dash. It doesn’t offer a description nor does it offer feelings. It’s A to B to C. Sometimes, it’s like a toddler covering its ears and stomping its feet and screaming, “I’m not listening! Here’s A to C to Z to B.”
I find AI as a creator frustrating. It doesn’t understand complex emotions. Hell, it doesn’t understand simple emotions. Justin Hawkins wonderfully points this out in his video, What Age Are We Living In? Maybe one day it will, but it’s not today. Today, at this moment, AI doesn’t move me to tears with its lack of emotional creative words, but maybe tomorrow it will.
Photo by Tara Winstead
