I’ve been making art with AI for over a year now, and as far as I see it, these AI tools are just fancy paintbrushes. Okay, it may be novel to prompt ‘A cat by

I’ve been making art with AI for over a year now, and as far as I see it, these AI tools are just fancy paintbrushes. Okay, it may be novel to prompt ‘A cat by Van Gogh’ and admire the result, but it’s not using the tools to their fullest. Once the novelty of swirly cats wears off, people will realise it’s just another tool. Where AI really shines is through combining styles, materials and mediums together in ways that are not possible otherwise. It’ll take time to find out how to use them to their full creative potential, and that’s something I’ve been trying to do over the last year. I’ve got a paintbrush possessed by a drunk genie that knows the entirety of art history and the possibilities are endless. The people who say AI art is not art because it’s all done by AI are the same who said 30 years ago that digital art is not art because it’s all done by computer, or who 200 years ago said that photography isn’t real art because… I do think we’re going to see a similar movement to the Arts and Crafts movement in the 1800s. They reacted to the industrialisation of the decorative arts by deliberately focusing on traditional craftsmanship and rejecting mechanisation. If art no longer needs to be created by a human, then only the things a human can do will be valuable - ideas and craft. AI tools need ideas to drive them. Left to its own devices, VQGAN + Clip, for example, is perhaps interesting but not particularly artistic. Grey and smudgy. Throw in a few ideas however, really push what it can do, and the results are phenomenal. Handmade furniture is more valuable than an IKEA flatpack because it’s unique, someone put time and effort and love into it. Human-made art will become more valued than before, not less.