AI in art and the human ego
AI is now a staple in our daily lives. Compared to just a few years ago it has developed with such incredible speed and depth, it comes as no surprise that it has now set foot and has begun to gain credibility in a world previously thought to be inaccessible to it — the business of Art.
In 2020, a Russian design studio ‘Art.Lebedev’, revealed that one of its employees had in fact been an AI. Named Nikolay Ironov, he had been part of over 35 of the studio’s commercial projects and his designs in the real world had garnered internet buzz. He even has his own Instagram portfolio, with a side profile headshot and a bio that reads ‘Designer and neural network’
The studio says Nikolay can handle every step of the design process, from receiving a brief, ideating by running through metaphors and synonyms of the main concept, and iterating the design until the client is satisfied. Below are some of his works — honestly they look pretty legit, 10/10 would pick it up if I saw it in the store.
“Nikolay Ironov is much more than your run-of-the-mill neural network. This sophisticated system analyses information about companies, generates the essence of a concept, and comes up with an endless flow of related imagery. It can also compile colour schemes, handle compositional tasks, and come up with patterns and 3D models. Nikolay Ironov can replace a human at every stage of creating an identity — from searching for an idea to designing ways to apply an identity.”
(Check out the studio’s website that explains how it works, if you’re interested.)
According to the studio, Nikolay can “create a unique design, free from restrictive external influences such as environment, fashion and authority.”
But can he really?
First, I disagree that it is unaffected by external influences, as the structure of the code and ‘thought process’ itself is influenced by the programmer and the objectives that were initially set.
But second, whether or not it can create a unique design, and at the end whether its creation has value is the bigger question. Yes, it could be considered objectively unique in that it has never existed before. But does this automatically equate to value? Although his designs are seemingly independently created, if we take away the novelty that it has been created by an AI, doesn’t the fact that it was made by an AI actually lessen its value?
Humans create based on past experiences i.e., data that we have accumulated. In this aspect Nikolay is doing the same, however, what is different is that it had no agency in having these experiences. They were simply fed data or are programmed to seek out certain data. Uniqueness from randomisation & infinite variation, and Uniqueness from spontaneous ingenuity are two different things.
I’m thinking about the issue of Authenticity, the buzzword that is so central to personal and corporate success, especially in this era where everything is in abundance. People are more and more looking for emotional meaning and purpose in their consumption; artisanal has never been so hot.
In this environment, AI art creations feel similar to buying prints of Van Gogh’s Starry night at the museum shop; the original is authentic and made with the emotion and effort of the artist, however, what you’re purchasing is only piggybacking off of the original.
In this case, Nikolay was created with the emotion and effort of the programmer, but what Nikolay himself creates does not necessarily have emotion or effort.
The fact that Nikolay has been anthropomorphised with a name, assumed gender, a visual representation, and social media presence, is perhaps a framing device so it’s easier on our egos to come to terms with the fact that we were moved and in a way ‘manipulated’, by something that has no emotional self.
Although, in my opinion transparency works best. AIVA, which can create ‘emotional soundtrack music’ by itself, is marketed as a cost effective tool to help small independent creators have access to royalty-free music that they can use in their vlogs, films, etc. It isn’t trying to replace or even compete with Kanye West or John Williams, but it’s developing a niche for itself. People know what they will get, and they know the emotion and effort put into it will be quid pro quo. It also lets our ‘human superiority complex’ rest easy — the strengths being cost-effectiveness, the AI is not ‘getting paid’ as much as humans.
