Imperfect

ai amplifies expression

Inspired by Kami's AI Art and being imperfect, which was inspired by my question from seek greener pastures:

If "there is just no point in using GenAI to tell your story", why do people continue telling stories through it?

I do enjoy the additional accessibility and iteration of creative expression that more "efficient" art production methods - like generative AI and prior tools - afford artists.

True expression is as embarrassing as you make it no matter its level of AI involvement, professionalism, or polish. Worrying about others' impressions of your art to where it keeps you from publishing, sharing, or distributing it is a larger-scale problem to solve than lazily blaming it on present-day AI systems. I wish you good luck with overcoming that struggle.

Artists interfacing AI systems still engage agency and vulnerability via the inception, editing, and publication of their art. AI systems and user-created workflows alike can become so dense, complex, and interdependent with other tools to great effect. Context windows alone provide so much opportunity to shape responses, conversations, and their outcomes.

Telling stories through generative AI doesn't have to be reduced to a button press either. Think about how abstracted that innocuous button press is. Think about all the communication that goes into global, hyper-connected maintenance and improvement of such systems. That sheer amount of coordination, like similar socioeconomic networks for less automated art forms, can be considered an art itself.

With how fearful some AI users are, how can their opportunistic, optimistic, and augmentative counterparts slip into the limelight? How could the latter creators serve as role models for how the former can healthily think about and engage with AI?

Like talking with a friend, AI can help me solve pain points, get my jobs done, or produce better works. Sometimes, like button-pushing AI system use cases, your friend's verbatim message is exactly what you need to move forward, cop wholesale, and/or propagate.

Here's a tiny example of generative AI improving something that I have made. As stated in shoot more shots, many of my blog posts get titled with help from generative AI to the point where I'm satisfied enough to publish them:

Iterating through AI-generated lists of short yet summative titles sometimes results in bangers. Other times, I find the answer myself.

Yes, generative AI can be a rehabilitative "crutch". People use AI art as putting themselves out there, especially when they otherwise cannot or would not. Traditional artists with decades of work but no physical ability to draw anymore can resume their pastime. Newbies just getting started can realize that they too can become artists, whether by overcoming the originality trap, honing their vision, or recreating tasteful works as practice. Such newbies can even incorporate traditional examples for a second opinion or synthetic benefits. For an example of AI acting as crutches in a similar discipline, check out this excerpt from cybernetic fusion:

Determined Quokka's Quietly Polite to Robots explains that AI can make conversations easier despite low sociability, egotism, and extremely specialized problems. Such judgment-free interactions enable free expression without having to worry about tone. Also, there's the accessibility factor. AI can be a force multiplier for coherent writing despite impediments like dyslexia, hand injuries, and more.

If art is "essentially communication" and "a way to share a part of you with the world", then I can see how typing into a generative AI prompt text box is art without even a single button press. It's writing after all.

How could a traditional artist that tries generative AI ensure that every appreciator of their AI-assisted art never construes improvements within it compared to their traditional art? Better yet, how does said artist acknowledge every appreciator?

As noted in kinder to robots, of course someone else can artistically communicate for you or on your behalf:

Whether by human or machine, the very nature of ghostwriting is counterfeiting voices that lived.

Art forgers, conservators, and students do too. It may not be a perfect process, but communication and intent are lossy by default. Miscommunication, misinterpretation, and misspeaking plagues the former. For the latter, think about how authors forget their intentions, have their intentions misconstrued or overridden by audiences, or don't even divulge true intentions before they pass.

Your preference for image prompts, text to rephrase, and a told story balances out someone else's preference for prompted images, rephrased text, and storytelling instructions. Corporate sterility, primitive handcrafting, and other such creative modes have their target audiences. "Beauty is in the eye of the beholder" shows even more nuance between said preferences and personal inconsistencies within each.

Uplift generative AI users embracing imperfection, vulnerability, and facing their fears. If you can't find any, search harder. They are bound to exist like how some, if not many, traditional artists suffer from perfection, invulnerability, and running from their fears. If AI art still isn't your cup of tea, pivot to artists living out the above qualities through whatever processes you prefer. Who keeps busy appreciating art in your favorite parts of the spectrum?

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