Creatives Have to Get With the AI Program

READ MORE: The Work of Art in the Age of Generative AI (Jon Randoff)

READ MORE: The Generative AI Canon (Jon Randoff)

If you’re an artist worried that your job is about to be replaced by an AI, fear not. As they say in the UK, “Keep Calm and Carry On.” The technology is irreversible, getting better all the time and is simply too commercially compelling not to have a massive impact on the creative industries.

However, artisan craft will always have a place and there will also be a premium for art produced by artists who know how to get the best out of the tool, says Jon Radoff, CEO of game platform Beamable.

“If your work is the manipulation of symbols, text and images — then AI is coming for you sooner than many of these physical jobs will be replaced,” he blogs at Medium. “Nowhere is this change producing greater anxiety than the world of art.”

Radoff outlines what he sees as the practical reality of the technology that will impact commercial graphics production first. It’s futile to wish it away, so get used to working with it.

He says, “These technologies will not be stopped, and they will not be cancelled — no more than you can stop the efficiencies gained by artists doing paint-overs on photo reference, or from applying digital tools in Photoshop.”

Part of the backlash against AI-generated artwork is the objection that it exploits intellectual property belonging to artists. The argument is that since models are trained on copyrighted works, artists are being ripped off.

Radoff dismisses this notion, essentially suggesting that the industrialized use of generative AI will not be stopped even if its training on data sets is curtailed.

He gives a number of reasons: the “ample corpus” of artwork by creators who are no longer alive and out of copyright; the commercial graphics owned by companies (not artists) who will be happy to license it. The companies building generative technologies could also hire artists to produce content where gaps remain in the training, and train from those instead.

However, those who eschew AI to continue making art as a manual pursuit need not fear. “Nothing will stop you from continuing to learn these crafts, just as one can still build furniture entirely from hand tools,” Radoff says. “For some artisans, applying craft skills in industry will continue to be valuable: because humans will continue to explore unique visions of art and creativity; or perhaps because the aura associated with human-crafted artifacts will become more valuable as machine-generated versions become more abundant.”

For the vast majority of working artists, Radoff thinks, the worry isn’t really about copyrights and intellectual property. “It is about having a craft that one truly loves, have made a massive investment in, and want to continue doing. And you want to be paid for it.”

There will be a counter-trend — call it retro or nostalgia for artisan made products in a world of automation. “There’s a market for it in ceramics, in oil paintings, in furniture, in jewelry, in food — so why not in digital products like games and online experiences?”

Those who are worried about AI tech owe it to themselves to master the skills that will allow them to stay relevant in the marketplace.

Another cohort will be excited about incorporating generative AI into their production process perhaps to disrupt the competition. Or we can look forward to entirely new products “where generative AI is at the core of the experience itself, bringing us whole new ways of living in the world,” Radoff writes.

“Whichever path you’re on, I know the future seems intimidating because these technologies are moving faster. It is happening: not only for artists, but for every kind of creator. The opportunity to scale-up our creativity exponentially is before us.”