Artificial Intelligence in the Arts - Good or Bad?
- Nissim Ohayon
- Jul 8, 2024
- 3 min read
With the proliferation of Artificial Intelligence (AI) in so many areas of our lives nowadays, I find myself amazed, encouraged and also somewhat apprehensive about the pervasive encroachment of the use of AI in all that we do.
The truth is that I consider myself an early adopter of just about any technology I can get my hands on. AI was no different. As soon as OpenAI made ChatGPT available to all, I was there like white on rice. Being that I do a lot of writing for my work, I immediately found it helpful to accelerate more and more of my writing tasks through the use of AI.
Indeed, one of the platforms that I was working with even automated the hyper-personalization emails by automating a visit to the prospect’s LinkedIn page, and then inserting something learned from that profile into content in the email. Great concept, with far-reaching potential, but I won’t mention the platform here, as I was underwhelmed by the output, and chose not to allow this automation to send out unchecked messages.
Still, it made me think a lot about all the written text I see nowadays, and wonder how much of it was “accelerated” with the help of AI. Setting aside for a moment all the great use-cases for AI in business, I have been wondering aloud about the use of AI in the Arts.
In literature for sure, I now wonder whether the next novel I read will have been created mostly via AI, or was it the product of the author from start to finish? This goes through my mind as well, when looking at still and moving pictures. Whether realistic or fantasy images, it is not always obvious whether we are looking at the product of an artist, or of an algorithm written by a software engineer that has little to no experience in the fine arts.
This all came to a head this week, when my wife and I went to see the High LIGHT JLM, a laser light show that illuminates the night sky over my home town of Jerusalem. The spectacular presentation sets an array of lasers up to music with such mastery and precision that I wondered again, whether the organizers have leveraged AI to pull this off, or whether the light technicians are just having so much fun at their craft that they are just that good.
If it was indeed generated manually, and painstakingly designed by hand, is that better than using the power of AI to design the synchronization between the light patterns and the music?
If the light show was set to synchronize to the music with the help of AI, doesn’t the person leveraging the AI tool have artistic input? Is that less artistic than the lighting technician that does not use any AI at all? Here's a short clip:
While I don’t have answers to these questions, I do feel like we are traveling down this path at breakneck speeds, and we'll ultimately need to make a decision for ourselves as to whether we accept that even the arts will are being affected through the use of AI. It kind of reminds me of the LPs giving way to CDs and digital music. There still are the puritans that want to play their music in analog format on vinyl, but most of the world now has the benefit of having unlimited selection of all world music through apps that not only give you access to everything, but also select the music you hear based on your preferences, and of course, through the power of AI.
The result? More music. More art. With the help of AI.
What other areas has AI encroached into the arts that you are aware of? Do you approve? Disapprove?
Editor's Note: What percentage of this article do you think was “accelerated via the use of AI? Put your guesses in the chat, and I will eventually share the answer with you.
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