previous parts:
A very brief history of art: In the beginning…
A very brief history of art: growing up
A very brief history of art: today
A very brief history of art: fight them or join them?
A very brief history of art: where will it end?
Thus we’ll better cross off those ‘predictables’ that live on borrowed thoughts: to them it would make no difference whether a work is human- or AI-generated, and obviously decent AI works will sell cheaper than their human counterparts.
If we want something an AI can’t beat we should look for clients with a non-atrophic soul, a respectable culture and an independent mind of their own; comparatively rare as they can be, the humankind is still huge enough for them to constitute a respectable share of the market – anyway enough to support the real artists, if maybe not all those who tap the cellphone, upload the pic to Shutterstock and call it art.
Reaching such choosy, finicky, appreciative clients won’t be easy, and doing it alone looks pretty hopeless – the starving artist who tries to sell his great paintings on the sidewalk is a classic figure we’d rather avoid.
But the world hasn’t changed only for the worst: today we have an internet where many non-starving artists may join to offer their works to customers able to appreciate them. Or the same literate customers could gather and form a sort of very choosy ‘real art agency’ where only original, beautiful, unique works are accepted.
The brave new world
With a bit of luck there would be also some space left for the tap&upload ‘artists’: in order to supply the brave new microstock world the various AI’s will need to be fed with more and more new images, regardless of their quality.
OK, but…
… what if a particularly clever AI eventually manages to emulate a ‘soul’ of its own that a human cannot tell from a real one? Including attitudes, emotions and moods such as sadness, irony, anger, happiness, humor, enthusiasm, sarcasm and the like, in order to add a final touch of realism?
That would be an extended version of the famous Turing test, a philosophic minefield: if a machine succeeds convincing you (human) that you’re talking to another human being, then you should call it intelligent to all effects, like it or not.
You cannot pretend to play violin convincingly without mastering the art, right?
It’s pretty hard to swallow that much but, no matter how we may feel inside for reasons we ourselves cannot fathom, political correctness would demand that if an AI passes such a test we call it a human being: if we deserve equal treatment, respect and dignity regardless of our color, sex, origin, creed, mother tongue, intelligence, sexual orientation, shoe size and political affiliation, why should it matter if one is made of silicon chips and plastic rather than of flesh and bones?
THE END (so far…)
