AI has easily been one of the most talked-about topics in recent years, since LLMs and AI assistants became the norm – and for good reason. At this point, no matter which side of the AI debate you stand on, I think we can all acknowledge that AI has its uses. It’s great at data analysis; it can churn out mostly accurate information, and it’s been proven to be largely responsible for transforming businesses with rapid productivity boosts in certain industries, like tech.
But today, I want to discuss one of the more controversial aspects of generative AI: its ability to create. Its images and videos are now able to traverse the uncanny valley, its music has entered the charts undetected, and its prose (to an extent) has been able to fool readers. So, allow me to try to answer the simple, yet complicated question: can AI replace human creativity?
Can AI Make Art?
So, what exactly is art? We all know that a painting is art. Or a poem. The same goes for novels, music, sculptures, photography – the list goes on and on. But what makes all of these forms ‘art’ in the first place? Well, if you were to look up a definition (which I just have), you’ll find something along the lines of ‘a form of human expression that combines skill, creativity, and imagination to create something’.
Though there isn’t necessarily an ‘agreed-upon’ definition of what art is, almost every definition out there tends to include the same word: ‘human’. So, is generative AI capable of making art? Is the phrase we’ve grown accustomed to seeing in recent years, ‘AI art ’, just as oxymoronic as it appears?
Well, we can all agree that AI’s proficiency at generating images, words, and music has become a matter of great interest to business leaders who are always looking for ways to cut costs and improve productivity, but let’s be clear: generating content is not the same as being creative.
Why? Well, here’s a little AI crash course. Generative AI platforms, like ChatGPT, Gemini, and Claude, work by identifying patterns in vast datasets and then using those same patterns to produce new outputs. Though the results can seem surprisingly impressive, they are never original. Every single piece of AI ‘art’ is a product of the material that the model was trained on. Put simply: generative AI mixes together a load of existing ideas to generate a new twist.
Why Is Art Fundamentally Human?
But I don’t just want to sit here, sanctimoniously dunking on AI from my superior human high ground. There are still questions we need to ask. One of them should be, ‘Are human artists not influenced by the art that came before them? Doesn’t that make their work just as unoriginal?’
Sure, there are plenty of human hacks out there who copy their work from others. Being human doesn’t automatically grant you the status of ‘artist’. Anyone who does that is just a fraud. But there is a larger conversation to be had about cultural awareness and influence.
Though human art is influenced by what’s come before, that’s part of the fun a lot of the time. Kill Bill wouldn’t exist without 1970s kung fu cinema, just as Star Wars wouldn’t exist without the samurai and western films that flooded cinemas in the 50s and 60s, not to mention old adventure serials like Flash Gordon. Yet these works of art are original; they carve out their own spaces in the culture, products of the films, novels, and paintings that came before, along with the humanity, lived experience, and the hard work poured into them by the people who created them.
How Does This Apply to Commercial Art?
I think it’s time to take a break from all of this airy-fairy philosophising, and instead look at something more concrete and practical. So-called AI creativity is most prolific in business settings, where the motivations behind creativity have always leaned less on the art and more on its ability to convert regular people into customers or clients.
Not to say that advertising isn’t its own art form; there are endless examples of expertly crafted adverts that can result in emotional responses (one way or another) from viewers. But we all have to admit, due to the core focus on commercial success, business settings were always going to become the first major testing grounds of AI creativity.
AI is being used for banner ads, posters, social media ads, and web design. Sure, it’s easy to see the appeal. But plenty of businesses are also discovering the limitations of AI creativity, and where a human is required to step in and intervene. Lots of early adopters have now shifted to AI primarily for concept art, for example, before a graphic designer or artist steps in to expand upon that initial agreed-upon concept.
The same can be said for web design. Plenty of business owners are looking to cut costs when setting up their online presence, which is understandable given that it’s an early expense required often before the business has generated any revenue. But the downside is that, as things stand, generative AI has trouble factoring in business goals, priorities, target audience, and more. A national web development agency, or a design agency in Manchester, would still be able to juggle these factors, albeit at a higher cost.
