Photography, AI Art, and the Fear of Being Replaced
As I follow the ongoing controversy over AI art bots, I'm wondering whether, once the legal issues are resolved (by the development of systems that license all copyrighted IP, by definitive legal rulings or legislation that generative AI does not copy the training data, but rather analyzes it and thus does not infringe, or both solutions in tandem as the market drives the shift because paying licensing fees and ongoing royalties to artists gets AI operators more and better training data faster), the hostility toward the technology will be recalled rather like the initial hostility of many artists of the early nineteenth century to photography as it moved from scientific curiosity to commercial product.
Before photography, the only way to make an image of something was the hand of a skilled artist. As a result, images of places and people were deeply special, available only to the wealthy and powerful who could afford to commission a work by a professional, or those fortunate to be close to a talented amateur who might knock out a sketch with raw native talent. By the nineteenth century, with the rise of the middle class, new technologies such as engraving and lithography was making copies of artworks available to a wider audiences, but to have one's own portrait made was still expensive, leading to the rise of silhouette portraiture, which at least gave a suggestion of the appearance of its subject, if not the detail of actual drawing or painting. It required only an appropriate light to cast the shadow and a steady hand to draw the outline, which could then be enlarged or reduced by pantograph.
The earliest photography required hours of exposure, and was suitable only for landscape work or still life. But as better chemistry shortened development times (especially the discovery of methods to make latent images visible), it became possible to create portraits of living people. At first it required painful props and braces to hold the subject perfectly still for the minutes required to create the image -- but even that was available to a wide variety of people who would never be able to afford to commission an artist to paint their portrait, or even make a silhouette. For members of the rising middle class, having one's portrait taken might be a once-in-a-lifetime Event, but the mere fact that it was attainable was significant.
This was not lost on artists, and more than a few artists of the day condemned photography as an enemy of art, as a mockery of art, or even the destroyer of true art. Yet many artists, even some of those who publicly condemned photography, were already beginning to use photographic references in their artistic process, rather than relying on sketches and visual memory alone. But they considered photography to be a mere mechanical representation, which could not possibly be art.
Meanwhile, a new generation of photographers arose who were pushing the limits of the medium beyond mere reproduction. By careful selection of models, poses, and props, by exploring focal lengths, filters, and darkroom techniques, they were able to create works that they argued should be considered art on the same level as a painting of the same subjects.
Not to say there wasn't pushback -- one of the early artistic photographers had a significant struggle with the US Copyright Office before he was able to gain copyright protection for his carefully staged images. But in time artistic photography became a medium in its own right -- and even the pioneer photojournalism of Matthew Brady is now recognized as much for its artistic power in its composition and immediacy as its merely factual documentation of the US Civil War.
More recently, we saw a similar pattern of responses to the airbrush, initially viewed as purely for commercial graphic design, but now used in fine art as well, and to digital art software and tools such as graphics tablets. And I can say that yes, using a graphics tablet requires the mastery of a whole new set of skills, including being able to coordinate the movements of your stylus on the tablet on your desk or lap with the cursor on the screen in front of you (and being able to return the cursor to the correct place to resuming marking if you need to switch to the mouse to manipulate settings in your graphics software).
It's going to be an interesting few years or decades. But I firmly believe that, as long as nobody does something colossally stupid, we're going to see a new flowering of creativity both among professional artists who incorporate the technology into their workflow to create more in the same 24 hours in the day, and among talented amateurs who can now realize their visions instead of struggling under the limits of the skill in their hands -- and we will see more art available to more people than ever before imagined.
Before photography, the only way to make an image of something was the hand of a skilled artist. As a result, images of places and people were deeply special, available only to the wealthy and powerful who could afford to commission a work by a professional, or those fortunate to be close to a talented amateur who might knock out a sketch with raw native talent. By the nineteenth century, with the rise of the middle class, new technologies such as engraving and lithography was making copies of artworks available to a wider audiences, but to have one's own portrait made was still expensive, leading to the rise of silhouette portraiture, which at least gave a suggestion of the appearance of its subject, if not the detail of actual drawing or painting. It required only an appropriate light to cast the shadow and a steady hand to draw the outline, which could then be enlarged or reduced by pantograph.
The earliest photography required hours of exposure, and was suitable only for landscape work or still life. But as better chemistry shortened development times (especially the discovery of methods to make latent images visible), it became possible to create portraits of living people. At first it required painful props and braces to hold the subject perfectly still for the minutes required to create the image -- but even that was available to a wide variety of people who would never be able to afford to commission an artist to paint their portrait, or even make a silhouette. For members of the rising middle class, having one's portrait taken might be a once-in-a-lifetime Event, but the mere fact that it was attainable was significant.
This was not lost on artists, and more than a few artists of the day condemned photography as an enemy of art, as a mockery of art, or even the destroyer of true art. Yet many artists, even some of those who publicly condemned photography, were already beginning to use photographic references in their artistic process, rather than relying on sketches and visual memory alone. But they considered photography to be a mere mechanical representation, which could not possibly be art.
Meanwhile, a new generation of photographers arose who were pushing the limits of the medium beyond mere reproduction. By careful selection of models, poses, and props, by exploring focal lengths, filters, and darkroom techniques, they were able to create works that they argued should be considered art on the same level as a painting of the same subjects.
Not to say there wasn't pushback -- one of the early artistic photographers had a significant struggle with the US Copyright Office before he was able to gain copyright protection for his carefully staged images. But in time artistic photography became a medium in its own right -- and even the pioneer photojournalism of Matthew Brady is now recognized as much for its artistic power in its composition and immediacy as its merely factual documentation of the US Civil War.
More recently, we saw a similar pattern of responses to the airbrush, initially viewed as purely for commercial graphic design, but now used in fine art as well, and to digital art software and tools such as graphics tablets. And I can say that yes, using a graphics tablet requires the mastery of a whole new set of skills, including being able to coordinate the movements of your stylus on the tablet on your desk or lap with the cursor on the screen in front of you (and being able to return the cursor to the correct place to resuming marking if you need to switch to the mouse to manipulate settings in your graphics software).
It's going to be an interesting few years or decades. But I firmly believe that, as long as nobody does something colossally stupid, we're going to see a new flowering of creativity both among professional artists who incorporate the technology into their workflow to create more in the same 24 hours in the day, and among talented amateurs who can now realize their visions instead of struggling under the limits of the skill in their hands -- and we will see more art available to more people than ever before imagined.