Is Art Dead? Or is it Only Beginning?

Prompt: cyberpunk bed stuy brooklyn street corner

A few weeks ago, I got the opportunity to see some selected works at the Bishop Gallery. On one side is a striking image of an African queen. On another, there was art inspired by anime and graffiti. There were Basquats on the all, and who could forget, photos by the one and only Victoria Ford.

Flash forward a few weeks, and here I am on a janky Discord server using Midjourney AI to generate some impressionist paintings of Michelle Obama.

If you don’t know, AI art is here, and it's most likely here to stay. At first, looking at the initial images from DALL-E, I dismissed the art form. Sure, some images looked great–on a computer–but for the most part, 90% of what was generated by computers somewhere in the cloud looked….generated.

That is before I saw these two pictures that my dude Tarik Moody (of HYFIN) generated and posted to his IG. It seems all you have to do is type in “up close kendrick lamar behind a walk with be humble printed on it, style of basquiat” and you can get these glorious renderings that are ready to be printed and framed and hanging on your wall by the end of the day. I’m still blown away every time I see these photos.

But that got me thinking…is traditional art in trouble? Are artists, many of whom toil in obscurity with their sweat and tears going to be replaced by some code living on an AWS server in Virginia?

Possibly.

But is this truly a bad thing? I remember walking around the gallery and finding a painting that I was truly in love with. Something that, if I were on that Frank Ocean “empty my bank account” steez I would buy on the spot. However, it was the price of a nice Honda Civic and as much as I want to support, I can only do so much.

Contrast this to a photo that a computer took only seconds to generate. I’m ready to take this to a printer, frame it, and put this on my wall tomorrow. However, I know I’m doing this and possibly depriving a young, Black digital artist of a commission to make a similar image that may be more to my liking.

Prompt: futuristic black queen in space on dark planet

A digital art evangelist may say that projects like DALL-E and midjourney will turn even more people onto art, expanding the market by bringing more people into the fold who would later be inspired to buy or produce real art in turn. To be honest, I don’t really disagree with this take. However, one must wonder, as both the computing power and realism of these images increases, will we start to choose AI-generated art over our human counterparts? (Case in point, an AI image just won first place at a state fair and Colorado.)

Prompt: cute dog wearing streetwear graffiti background

And it’s not just art. AI and computer-generated content has invaded music, literature, and video as well. We’re steadily into a world where computers will start competing against humans for creative capital with no guardrails or regulation. Although FN Meka was not truly AI-generated, the parts were there to set up a world for a fully virtual artist. Very soon, we could have a chart-topping pop star where all aspects of a recording artist–from the look to the recorded music and even the music videos.

There is no doubt the future that we’ve been dreaming of as little kids is here. But as humans, are we truly ready for it?