I don’t know what to say, when I see AI creating art. Is it science fiction or will it be an abundant reality soon?

I saw this video – see below – on Twitter, sorry X. I am pretty convinced it will not go – exactly – this way, and certainly not in the suggested timeline. But still …

Before I continue, this video needs some nuance. Opinions about the impact of AI differ greatly. The example of the video is at the extreme side that predicts a huge impact and a difficult to imagine, maybe even quite dystopian future. (Also, I don’t know who this person @mikebrigandi really is, a professional influencer with I don’t know what interests, who apparently originally posted – and created? – the video on Tiktok.)

Others are not so dramatic, claiming that AI is nothing but a “glorified tape recorder and people’s fears about it are overblown“. I tend to agree with the latter, but … you never know. (I do know who Michio Kaku is – he is a theoretical physicist who popularizes science, sometimes maybe a little over-simplistic, but overall quite reliable.)

Especially, I doubt the bits on AGI (Artificial General Intelligence, equally smart as human intelligence) and on ASI (Artificial Super Intelligence, far superior to human intelligence).The ‘normal’ AI bit I do believe. I fact, I have seen it at work and … it works! And tools like GPT4 do give a glimpse of what AGI could look like.

Anyway.

It made me think. And it should make you think.

And … to be honest …

I don’t know what to think of it.

Is this the beginning of the Big Split, that I wrote earlier about?

Who knows …

Impact on art

One thing is sure. We are at the brink of a new era, the AI Era. As I said earlier, I am convinced that AI combined with RPA – robotics – will have dramatic impact on the process of art creation.

Now already, there are AI tools that:

• create paintings and drawings from a written prompt
• create texts, books, poems from a simple cue
• create sculptures from a 3D model from a picture.

Here’s just one example:

(Image credits – Roboticom USA)

And I am sure, there will be – if not already – AI tools that create an entire dance or ballet choreography, that create entire symphonies, that create entire musicals, etcetera.

It cannot be stopped. It will happen. And should we want to stop it? I don’t know. Photography didn’t kill painting, but it did change it profoundly … for the better, to be honest. AI and robotics will change the arts profoundly. That is a sure thing.

I may want to be part of that process, although it feels scary as hell …