Sorry mum, you're an artist and I'm here training AI.

AI image and video generation can feel really scary for creatives. They probably should feel scared. AI will be able to produce images that are 'works of art' within a matter of seconds. They won't be able to create real life texture, at least not yet anyway...

Now let me start reiterating this. I love art. I make art. I have grown up in the home of an artist. One day I might feel confident enough to call myself an artist more publicly. In the meantime, my second main job (first being a mum) is training AI models to be useful, safe and truthful. Another aspect I train them on is *creativity*. I won't disclose too much information because I don't know what I am allowed to say. lol. However, I realised quite early on that there isn't anything all that scary involved. After all, it is part of the human experience to herald feats of technology. Photography elicited similar feelings of resentment from artists at the time, yet it is what propelled art into its modern form. It freed artists to express themselves without the confines of realism.

My illustration for a children's book we are working on. Oil pastel on paper.

I know that this is simplifying things, there are so many facets to AI and its potential for both good and harm. It can reach into soo many sectors and I certainly have worries too. I am just not worried about art!

When news about AI 'creating' artwork first started circulating, my artist mother vented about how much distrust she had for AI and it really got me thinking, because I think if I hadn't gotten into training AI models I would have reacted the same. When art feels threatened, it reacts. However, that reaction will bring about something new too. Certainly it has re-ignited discussions about authenticity, the role of the artist, and perhaps further imbue the 'handmade' with even more significance than it already has. AI has also provided an avenue for some people to become creative in ways they may never have explored if they didn't have that AI 'helping hand'. This is not to belittle those people, but rather to view AI as a tool or a creative partner in as much as a camera is. Sure it does some of the work, but it isn't going to do that work without the initial input of the person. It requires a well-curated prompt. Nowadays, people love photography and have favourite photographers. However, when it first appeared on the scene, artists were hugely critical of it and believed it to be lacking expression and considered photography purely 'mechanical'. An 1855 article stated that photography lacked, “that refined feeling and sentiment which animate the productions of a man of genius.” Sounds familiar right? Except that AI is all the more interesting because it doesn't only replicate what is already out there but applies its own 'genius'. This is so threatening to humans because we really love to consider ourselves intellectually above and beyond anything else in this little world of ours. So much so that if something comes along to threaten our position as the 'most clever', well then it must be destroyed. I think AI should be fearing us more so...