AI is completing art, is it losing meaning?
By: Riley Duignan

If you’ve explored anywhere on the internet, whether it’s Google, TikTok, or Instagram, you have used and seen AI. And whether you mean to or not, its value in human progress and advancement is undeniable. If you search a question on Google, you’ll likely get a summarized answer from “Google AI,” which is an automatic search engine. But what if AI begins taking over art?

AI has advanced in such a short amount of time, from not being able to generate well-composed and realistic photos and videos, to being able to literally trick audiences into not knowing what’s real or AI.

Many creators online have used artificial intelligence to generate photos of the individual’s curiosity. If you give AI a prompt, it will generate your photo for you. And many use this to not only create art itself, but also finish the famous and long-unfinished pieces.

AI art epidemic
Creators on various social media platforms, such as Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok, gain a massive amount of views by taking credit for a piece of online art, not art created by them, but their AI bot. It’s become a famous phenomenon, with creators literally taking credit for a piece of art created by AI. Some find this an amazing creation. AI can help bring your ideas to life, it looks nice, and it doesn’t need credit. But this epidemic of AI art has created multiple questions. “What is art, and can AI really create it?”

Though that is a moral and opinion-based question, it is only a fact that art has always represented one’s individuality and passion. Art is a representation of humanity. It has always been done by hand with the ability of an artist. And no matter what, a piece of art will always have a story and meaning behind it. So if it doesn’t have one, is it really art?
Many say no, but that is up to your interpretation!

Because AI can use a picture to generate another, it is able to finish many pieces of art. There are many pieces of art, such as “Unfinished Painting” By Keith Haring, or “The Entombment” By Michelangelo. And many creators online use AI to finish these pieces of art. Odd right? It’s in our blood that we humans naturally stay curious. We have a drive to finish or understand something that is unfinished or not understood. And now that AI exists, we can scratch that exact itch. Even if a painting is unfinished, it’s still somebody’s. It was once and will always be a representation of somebody’s talent, passion, and interests. If AI finishes a painting instead of the actual artist, does it have more or less value? We have always put such high value on paintings that are unfinished. If the artist has passed, there’s no way we can recreate or ever finish the paintings. It would be seen as disrespectful to touch and finish an artist’s piece of work that has passed, so is it any different if a computer does it?

Here are some examples of AI completing artwork:

Unfinished Painting, Keith Haring

The Night Watch, Rembrandt

Though this painting was finished by Rembrandt, the original large canvas painting was cut on the sides in 1715 to fit into a new location. Now, the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam possesses the painting, but instead of curing it and leaving it be, they used AI to reconstruct the sides of the painting that were originally cut off. Do you think this is an okay use of AI art, or not?

The idea of AI art and whether it is fundamentally right or wrong is up to you; it’s arguably one of the biggest moral dilemmas right now. What do you think? Is it good that AI can finish paintings that were left unfinished?

Sources:
https://news.artnet.com/art-world/operation-night-watch-1982686

https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-57588270

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/keith-haring-painting-artificial-intelligence-180983563/

https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/keith-haring-painting-ai-backlash-ruined-meaning-rcna131974

https://www.myartbroker.com/art-and-tech/articles/should-ai-complete-unfinished-works
https://www.corralldesign.com/writing/ai-harm-hypocrisy