Think of what art is; above all, art should be expressive. I don't just speak about technical quality, or skill. I speak of expression. Think of how you talk to someone else. Think of what you say with your body language, your posture, by what you choose not to say and how you do so without a thought. Honestly and subconsciously. Think of how a word in and of itself is a predefined symbol to express a feeling, how that word is open to interpretation. Consider how limited that is. Art allows you to express beyond those words.
Essential to that expression is that honesty, in order to be honest you should follow specifically your instinct. If you see a piece of art that speaks to you it is worth to consider what specifically about it speaks to you, when you draw and you don't like something about that drawing it is important for you to consider what it is you don't like about it. I put the emphasis on you because we navigate networks that drive us to not consider ourselves; a piece of art is posted to a network where it is judged by others using highly detailed metrics. These metrics trigger a dopamine response in us, making us addicted to considering the network and others' validation in our art. Follow that impulse and you are considering how to please either the network or as many other people as possible. What do you lose in that impulse? That specific honesty and expression. You could still be talented and good, but you lose your expressiveness and honesty. Internally I keep calling this "product (or content I guess)" versus "art"
In doing so you lose your eloquence, you stop expressing these hyper specific feelings, you lean more into broadly recognizable patterns that please rather than challenge. I think this leads to us being not just incurious, but also isolated. If our art at large stops to be willing to be so specific and open in it's expression, we stop being curious and understanding. Think about where most conversation takes place, in how little text, how far away from others. Think about a Marvel / Studio dominated decade and a half of movies. The popularity of K-pop (when was, say, Bjork on the radio for the last time?).
Yet at the same time, I was walking through a plaza in LA with my wife, and I was looking around me; I was looking at signs, buildings, architecture. All things I would consider "products", yet everything speaks. The signage was made by someone, just as someone speaks with their body language the Denny's logo said something. So did it's architecture. So did the Boba-shop and my mother in law's salon. I look at the grime and the regulars and it communicates. I look at the pieces of fanart, which I consider "product" more than expression (unless you are, say, Margot Ferrick) and I see your linework and preferences.
AI takes these and works in a system of averages. It's its job. No longer can you put in explicit intent, but more important than that, gone is subconscious intent. In a very literal sense the soul is sucked out of whatever it produces. There is a complete absence of meaning, nothing to understand. Whatever I see in it relates to nobody and nothing, optimized as a "product" even more generalized through algorithmic averages. I believe this directly furthers incuriosity and even a loss of intelligence. It can not say anything profound, nor show it to you. All it says has already been spoken, all it does is remove the unintentionally spoken from it.
Value your own instinct, even if you do not want to speak, realize that you are speaking. Do not give into mere aesthetics, be considerate of them. AI is not new, these networks already existed, your human hand is essential, do not give it away to an algorithm of any sort. We all want to understand and to be understood. Learning your specific preferences is it's own sort of mastery and it's own sort of eloquence. If you create, you should channel honestly, even if you are just aesthetically predisposed you will be expressing something. to lose expression is to lose your soul.
amandla
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