Troll and Bot accounts are everywhere on social media. Ever since the worldwide realization of the use of bot farms in 2016 (with the American election), Trolling and Bot use has been professionalized. Fine Art is an area where I haven't seen a lot of examples of it though, or maybe just not obvious ones. Besides promotion pages (art being essential to Image-Based platforms like Instagram and Tumblr) the Art Industry has a proportionally lower representation of fake and automated accounts. Troll/Bot accounts are trying to accomplish the goal of sending you to a drop-shipped link or aggregating you to a paid subscription site. Even with Troll accounts that are just meant to spread misinformation, these heavily rely on the concept of truth and convincing people of the truth. Truth is in fact something fine art, or at least its sale, doesn't concern itself with. I suppose spreading fake news stories about existing artists would make sense as a use for Bots and Trolls in the Fine Art world, but we see very few examples of this. Usually, these artists are large enough not to be affected negatively by bad publicity.
AI art pages that function as automated content generators in the effort to build a profitable large following based on interaction are definitely still on Instagram and other social media, although not as rampant as at the beginning of 2023. These pages usually conform to a predetermined aesthetic, often outlined in the page information, thus functioning more as inspiration pages for people who enjoy the specific set of aesthetic traits (very similar to early Tumblr blogs). The only exception here is that the images shared on AI art pages are more or less totally generated using generative art programs (aka AI). Because the nature of these pages is that of "inspiration"... the "realness" of these artistic images is a pointless question. The main driver behind this AI content being created is engagement, not purchase. Contrary to dropshipping, Fine Art benefits from the one big sale, not from nickel and diming products through proprietary links. Artificially created artists are doubly so. Without anything big to finally purchase the product of Instagram content is the likes and comments and follows, namely the interaction.
This is what I misunderstood at the beginning of 2023 when I started a completely AI-generated Art Gallery on Instagram under the pseudonym Absolutely Nowhere Gallery (@angalleryca). The goal of this project was to see if I could create genuine interaction through images and captions that were created by two separate AIs (Stable Diffusion via HuggingFace and Chat GPT). The reception online was quite good, when colleagues or friends comment on the project they were excited about it, but I was unsure. I think now I believe that ultimately the Artistic process and its Inspiration, Creation, and nitty-gritty details are that which Fine Art as a Market is uncomfortable with, or at least views as a novelty. I mean more that these AI inspiration pages are everywhere and artists interact with the ones they enjoy or disagree with but as the consumers and purchasers of Fine Art, we are not interested in how the sausage is made. When an Artist has finally practiced and studied and worked to complete a masterpiece all of the background and trials they have faced are not important to its sale, at least not in its entirety.
When I first wrote about Art-based AI image generation at the beginning of 2023 I approached the topic from the position of labour work and its value in Art. There was a large backlash to the use of AI generative computing because of how it was trained on the data of unpaid artistic workers, which I highlighted in my previous writing. Going further through this process of understanding and using AI art has made me come to a realization, AI is modeled after how humans interact, these negative traits we see in it are based on how we dehumanize labourers and people.
The use of the term AI (Artificial Intelligence) I have outlined before as being curious, surely generative-computing is just too jargon-y for everyday use in clickbait articles? NO. Hold your robotic horses. I believe now that this is just an indicator of the true colours of the tool. AI is "Intelligence" like in similarity to Humans, by Indicating that the tool can have a sentience or a humanity it absolves the user of the tool of any of the guilt that its use causes through dehumanization. Furthermore, this absolution of guilt from dehumanization is one that the Fine Art world is intimate with. Because they don't really want to know how the sausage is made they pull the experience of individuals away from their capital-generating product. Therefore the real danger of AI used is the power to dehumanize faster, more efficiently, and without guilt. The reason the Global World is so obsessed with developing AI (especially Tech Companies) and how it can benefit business is that these fields are already so intimate with dehumanization that they crave easier and more productive ways to do it. Artists go through a lot to create their works, the process of producing visual art is laborious and sometimes it feels as if those who appreciate the work can't feel all the effort it took. Sometimes young artists become disheartened admiring those at the top of the Art World who seem to get their power and connections from thin air.
With all this being said, I would like to formally say that I am closing my AI-Art Gallery as a successful project attempted and returning the account to be my artistic burner account. This project was actually an extension of another Idea I've always thought of. What if computer programs could generate bestselling art ideas and a studio of human workers would fulfill them? If you look back at my other post about the interview with Chat-GPT where I prompt it to generate artistic traits and randomize them, this is one of the drafts of the previously mentioned idea. Would people notice or care if the mega-branded artist they are going to see is actually built like a Wu-Tang-Clan Random Name Generator of million-dollar artistic traits? Am I just aiming to turn a Pop-Artist into a computer program?
I believe that although the deck is stacked against us as young artists we can succeed despite those things. I think through changing our goals to be those not of capitalist achievement and desire, seizing the means of our dehumanization (AI) for our use to help us write grant letters, manage Instagrams or brainstorm, and staying united as a community of artists with different mediums and interests, we can prosper in the world we don't yet control. I am personally going to use these "AI" programs as tools going forward. I have difficulties writing and forming my ideas into succinct easy-to-process concepts. Tools like Chat-GPT will help me move forward with editing and revisions, and as an easier way to search the internet for answers to my complex questions. Ultimately once "AI" assistants can perform cold-calls and set up appointments that will help out too, because I don't make enough money to hire anyone else in the foreseeable future. Visual "AI" tools will help me establish moodboards of complicated ideas and help me jump out of the world of paper pencil and paint to get inspiration in digital space, somewhere I'd like to drift through a bit more.
Comments
Post a Comment