Expression & Artistry in the age of AI
“Art aims to represent not the outward appearance of things, but their inward significance.” – Aristotle.
With a lack of inward significance, does AI spoil the creative act?
Will ‘big’ Artificial Intelligence (AI) compromise, minimise, or annex the quality of your self-expression, personal artistry, or new creations?
When I say ‘big,’ I mean that while AI has existed for a long time, its use has only become scalable in an unimaginable way in recent years. Thus, I’m referring to generative and agentic AI and the potential future of AGI (the hypothetical intelligence of a machine that can understand any intellectual task that a human being can).
What do you think? Is the creative process or creative act valid and inspiring — without the pain and glory of imperfect craftsmanship, hard-won, back-breaking work, spontaneity, experimentation, and intrinsic significance?
The definition of the word ‘artificial’ is a clue:
‘Made or produced by human beings rather than occurring naturally, especially as a copy of something natural’.
Yes, humans created AI, and its systems depend on human experts for their design, training, and development. But depending on the prompt's quality, AI establishes merely a naff or sophisticated emulation or copy of human intelligence.
What about Andy Warhol? He was the master of emulation, appropriation, and copying! His work led to controversial copyright disputes and legal battles, including the recent Supreme Court case involving Lynn Goldsmith’s photography and Warhol's ‘copied’ Prince series.
Emulation, yes, but at least Warhol was still human, with an inward compass (like it or not) guiding his work. His inner or higher self drove his style of repetition and intrinsic wish to criticise consumer culture deliberately. His ‘why’ is what made his repetitive Campbell's Soup Cans so conversation-worthy.
However, a blinding difference exists between human emulation and AI emulation, with artifacts born from large language models (LLMs).
AI programs don’t draw on their inward motivation, don’t engage in the often mysterious creative process, are potentially riddled with bias, and are hardly an energy-efficient way to practice artistic mastery.
Out of all these limits, the threat of lack of explainability is what concerns me most.
We do not know why AI thinks as it does or how it arrives at the conclusions or outputs it creates.
Meanwhile, you naturally sense your work's ‘what’, ‘why’, and ‘how’— paired with complex emotion, vulnerability, longing, self-consciousness, and inexplicable inward motivation.
To get there, you’ve got to drown in the messy creative process and surrender to the clunky unknown if you want to birth a strange creative miracle. Meanwhile, the effort to get there gives you a sense of meaning and gravitas to whatever you’re making.
AI doesn’t experience the birth, gestation, and contraction of creation the way a human being may. It can’t ‘live’ or suffer through it, be shifted by differing daily moods, nor can it explain its motivation (other than its best guess drawn from pre-existing big data).
Humans create, ideate, fumble, strain, fixate, tinker, experiment, and ruminate. We worry and sometimes cry about our work, going from a blank canvas to something that imbibes our talent, instinct, and sense of what must be expressed despite risks.
Whether we like it or not, we bring our energy, interpretation, quirks, memories, traumas, and odd sensibility to everything we make. Bringing our unique code or imprint of self-expression into the world.
Human storytelling, invention, and experimentation are mysteriously coded in our DNA and often spurred by our emotional reactions, self-awareness, physical body, and fragile sense of mortality.
Some creatives embrace AI as a relieving utopian assistant that helps them focus on the more essential parts of their craft.
For instance, I use AI for basic tasks like predictive text and editorial crafting, freeing my time for more creative endeavours. Like laundry or watching the final season of MAFS. I’ve also used AI generators for storyboarding, voice-overs, and artistic experimentations to test its limits (and my own). However, I could never claim it’s given me an idea, born through the things that emotionally move me.
Meanwhile, others flee or deny the application of big AI at all costs, led by their hunch that intelligence, when artificial, can’t hit the same note.
Differing points of view have varying merit. However, what might using AI leave us feeling?
Is it ours? Do you think it is genuinely earned? And is originality a possibility?
Think of legendary animation studio and director Hayao Miyazaki, who was heartbroken by OpenAI’s new image generator and its surge of Studio Ghibli-inspired images, stating that it was “an insult to life itself.”
Using AI for the creative process and expression generally comes with risks of bias, quality, integrity, dilution, and even a dull sense of perfectionism. In a way, it transforms and rewires us. In the same way, a creator might sell out to a corporation... Joining the manufacturing of sameness within algorithm-induced echo chambers.
It can also be devoid of creative hunches, inklings, or miracles, which many creative people strive for. The thing that brings hope, momentum, that feeling of, ‘this is it’.
Imagine a ceramic artist who spins the wheel so perfectly that every vessel comes out of the kiln the same way — unless prompted to be ‘perfectly imperfect’.
What about a novelist experiencing writer’s block who decides to distract themselves with a basketball session and returns with a completely new and groundbreaking idea, almost certainly dropping into their awareness like magic? Can an experience like this ever disrupt a programme?
If humans use AI, no matter the degree, will things become too beautiful or too good to be relatable? Will human weirdness and genuine unpredictability dissolve? You might wonder what art or self-expression is without such themes, especially when the struggle to get there is no longer evident.
But let’s play devil’s advocate for a second. Perhaps I’ve got it wrong. Will we apply our creative uniqueness and use AI as the slave of our beautiful madness? Can we genuinely conquer it, use it, and exploit it? If we can, I imagine that would require a pre-programmed power imbalance in how AI is built.
Nobody can enslave something if it’s not forced into a state of lack. People in ancient Egypt were slaves because they had debts to pay or an extremely harsh life to escape. To become enslaved, they had to be tricked, coerced, forced, or have little choice. Can we similarly build AI so it enjoys selfless service to humanity and creativity? If we did, would we all become unhinged narcissists?
As far as I can judge, we hunger for the imperfect beauty, vulnerability, and mistake-ridden process that human art imbues. It reflects something profound about ourselves and adds to our sense of collective striving despite the odds. It also uplifts our self-esteem.
Putting the dangers of AI biases aside, there’s a real risk of a civilisation with a reductive and vanilla creative essence, with outputs that circulate the same whirlpool of current human intelligence rather than genuine new creations.
Can award-winning filmmakers craft an original script using an AI template? Maybe, if they are fucking clever. Might a biologist discover new forms of ancient life using current data? Unlikely.
Yes, AI could be the ultimate tool for expressing more of what we already know and elevating what art could be.
However, it always comes back to the major flaw I outlined earlier. AI can't fully explain how it arrives at decisions or why it makes specific predictions; it relies instead on complex algorithms and vast datasets.
Somehow, the use of AI in art makes the creation feel ‘spiritually dead’.
Think of the groundbreaking artworks of Swedish artist Hilma af Klint. Many people are visually in awe of her retrospective “Paintings for the Future”. However, it goes deeper than that. As humans and long-time voyagers of art, we also want to know the explanation behind her process, as it brings us closer to the meaning of her art.
Hilma af Klint shared her deeper motivation with us:
“I want to acquire genuine knowledge of our Earth's existence and the elements found in the centre of the universe.”
And her notebooks revealed what was guiding her work — spirit guides and entities.
“Accept, says the angel, that a wonderful energy follows from the heavenly to the earthly,” she says.
Whether you believe her or not, this information surely emotionally grabs you on some level. You’d have to be a robot for it not to.
Stepping away from her art in any gallery, you’ve got to wonder, what is the force that drives human creation? Where are our ideas coming from?
This thought alone transforms us, making us feel that perhaps we aren’t just tiny specs surviving 3D reality.
And if that’s the case, what’s the point of creation without a slight hand of divination?
Divination can be a triggering, stigma-packed word. Put simply, it’s an attempt to gain unknown insight through ritual or practice. For Hilma, it was painting.
Since artificial intelligence creates outputs without knowing how or why, the ripple effect may be catastrophic and lacklustre.
Missing the special ‘thing’ that often accompanies human creativity — call it a spark, divination, whatever you like. AI can’t explain what inspired it beyond its original prompting, leaving the maker and the audience far less moved by its making.
With AI, is the sacred power of art diluted, as ‘inward significance’ (as Aristotle says) is nowhere to be found?
And finally, in the popular words of Rick Rubin, ‘The artist's real work is a way of being in the world — not the output.’ Who do we become if AI does most of the tinkering?
The topic around AI’s use for creatives and artists will twist and turn as time passes. As we face the future head-on, do we need to become warriors for the creative act? I fear, yes.
Human-made creations may become engendered relics, like your grandmother’s wall tapestry. But in time, will its human-made value eventually skyrocket? I hope so.