AI can never be as alive or as culturally deviant as we endeavor to be. It can never achieve our lived experiences, and so it does not have the power to take our voices away; it doesn’t understand. It sets a higher bar for all writers linguistically, but it will never take away the souls of the living. In the real world, it takes our jobs, and it reveals ever-darkening corners within corporations' greed. When it comes to independent artists, it advances us at a terrible cost.
AI, like most artists, is derivative. Its problem is that is all it is. Every poet is a cannibal and every artist a thief: however, that is not their defining factor. It shouldn’t be: derivative, fun artists from Bob Ross to Greta can Fleet can only be taken at face value and then thanked for their entries while others work to advance the craft. This is the same token familiarity of AI art (though a little off, as it doesn’t often fully understand the assignment yet), even at its most abstract—that is, before keeling off into the uncanny and most deceased-to-its-core to the point where its life is only breathed into it by its critic. AI art is inherently empirical; it cannot create new art that is not based in some way on some established mechanic.
At its best, its abstraction lacks soul; it can only advance its derivative nature before sprawling into abstractions that can only advance our art and challenge us to be better. At the same time, AI simply shows off what computers can do; it cannot demonstrate the limits of human capability because it is not human. Only its creators and interpreters can humanize whatever it produces.
