Has AI Made Art Worthless?

AI is a topic that I get asked about a looooot, I think there’s huge amount of worry around and rightfully so, it’s the unknown, but something pops up every few decades to disturb the entire creative process (photography, digital art, 3d rendering) and things shift and adjust, so this isn’t the first and won’t be the last.

Overall I don’t see live event work going anywhere anytime soon, because if the finished outcome was the most important part, then photo booths would be everywhere instead of me and my 457 markers.

But I do see the editorial sphere/illustration world adjusting to this new way of working, personally, I’m hoping humans catch themselves before it gets too far and realise lets just keep the AI for the boring stuff so we can be left with the fun stuff.

However I wanted to write my general feelings and outlook for the industry and AI, and the way I’m wrapping my head around it is by looking at the music industry as reference.

Most recording artists don’t make money, or at least not a substantial amount, from their music anymore due to the introduction of streaming and the decline of record sales.

So the physical music, the actual song, doesn’t hold value anymore. You used to have to pay for the music otherwise you just couldn’t listen to it, so you paid for the access.

A song used to be 89p on iTunes, if a musician released a song they’d know it would generate 89p x units sold, which would be their income.

And they’d go on tours, do press and star in campaigns to highlight the music and in turn sell more singles/albums.

Now that music purchasing has all but disappeared, there’s two predominant routes for musicians to take to continue to capitalise on their creations.

First up, touring is a huge focus for a lot of musicians currently, so the emphasis on releasing a new record is no longer on making sales and getting a return on it, but instead it’s now a reason for them to go on a new tour, and a reason for fans to purchase tickets to hear the new music live.

So the album has gone from being the prominent commodity to now being an incentive or a marketing method for the primary revenue earner - touring.

The second route for musicians is to become a brand; hugely successful musicians, actors, celebs etc have always considered themselves a brand. They create a fan base and cultivating a specific image via their music, then appear in a big advertising campaign. This way the brand gets an endorsement from a cool celeb and their fanbases attention, whilst the Celeb gets a big payday and the opportunity to reach a wider audience to then funnel back to their music.

But that was big scale, the big leagues, now this brand thing works even in a much smaller scale. We’re in the age where content is king and everyone’s a brand, so musicians are using their music as a way of getting noticed by fans and gaining a following, yet the content their creating, the brand deals they do and the sponsorships they get are where the income stems from.

So the music is crucial but it is no longer the commodity, the attention of the fan base and the musicians endorsement is.

And the cooler the musician, or the more approachable the celeb is, whatever route their branding goes down, is the reason their fans will want to pay attention to whatever they do and that branding and fan base is in turn the reason a brand will work with them.

And the reason why I’m chatting about musicians and streaming is because that’s how I see the route of visual artists going now that AI is coming into the picture.

A finished piece is no longer the product, because if a company or an individual wants something they can just pop a few key words as a prompt and out pops ‘art’.

Book publishers, magazine editorials, art directors no longer need to hire an artist to create an illustration or piece of art, the same way listeners now no longer need to pay to access music.

When I was an artist director / marketing manager at a jewellery brand, we couldn’t create content quick enough, setting up an entire photoshoot for a few posts worth of content just wasn’t cost effective, the amount of attention an instagram post gets normally isn’t worth the effort that goes into it.

So to have something like AI where you could churn out pretty looking pictures featuring the jewellery to post on insta everyday would have been a god send, but I’m certain we’d still shoot with a proper photographer and model for an actual campaign shoot, because you’d want that control of the vision and concept.

So perhaps AI is a natural knee jerk reaction to the sheer amount of content we consume each day, a painting that takes you a week is viewed at for 3 seconds by a follower on insta, if it even makes it onto their feed.

So a lil rebellious conceptual view of AI could be, if you’re only gonna spend 3 seconds looking at something, I’m only going to spend 3 seconds making it. Not me attempting to justify it, I don’t think that was peoples intentions when creating AI but it’s an interesting way of looking at it.

But now that AI can churn an image out instantly, the commodity has moved away from being the finished product to now being the artist and their vision.

Some hugely successful fine artists already have this set up going, but the aim is mostly for brands to capitalise on the artist’s reputation, whilst the brands marketing reach boosts the artist profile which then funnels people back to paying exorbitant fees for the artists work in fine art auctions.

Look at Yayoi Kusama x Louis Vuitton, Damien Hirst x Alexander McQueen, Yoshitomo Nara x Stella McCartney as examples.

Back in the illustration/artist world, people think that soon the role of an artist will be reduced down to just being an art director who writes prompts into AI, but I don’t agree with that, I don’t see the physical process of creating a piece of art going away anytime soon.

And for us artists the process is a huge part of it, regardless of the commercial side of things, we enjoy creating art and people enjoy watching it be created.

Just because fast food has been invented doesn’t mean every meal is a Maccers, and people love watching the process of someone cooking a genuine meal from scratch. Doesn’t mean there isn’t a market for both fast food and fine dining.

What I’m seeing is that the finished piece isn’t the product anymore, it’s not the deliverable. Now it’s focusing on the artist, their outlook, their vision, the world they’re creating and then ultimately you monetise the sharing of the process and insight from the artist.

The aim for artists now should be to create a unique view with your artwork, your own style and your own platforms distinctive to you whilst cultivating a community on socials that want to align and be involved with your individualism.

So I no longer think the main commodities for visual artists now is a finished painting, it’s creating a unique world where your work, your style and you exist and the commodity now is charging brands the price of entry into your own curated world.

And if any of this is making your head spin a lil bit, I’m actually creating 2 new courses to help!

The first is launching soon, it’s a brand new drawing course that is going to cover how to find your voice more in your work, how to create work that isn’t just replicating what you see in-front of you.

We’re going to focus on curating and creating unique work that only you could have made, how to draw from your imagination, how to add narrative and concepts into your work, all of which will help you become your own artist. So stay tuned for that launching sooner than you think!

The second is a brand new career course which will extensively cover brand building as an artist and social media, that one will be launching in the new year!

If you have a unique style then its more likely brands and people will have to come directly to you for that style of work, which can help safeguard you a bit from losing out on jobs to AI, and this is what the drawing course will cover.

Whilst growing an audience will be covered in the career course as not only does that mean you have a second thing to offer brands as a commodity but it also means your work will less likely be replicated by AI or another brand due to the increased chance of them being called out for it by your followers and receiving negative press.

So keep an eye out for the drawing course announcement soon!

This is only scratching the surface and there’s like 10 different topics I’ve touched upon in this post that I could talk about for hours, but I hope this lil condensed brain splat was informative!

If anyone has any thoughts on AI send me a DM or email I’d love to read!

Speak soon!

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