Artificial intelligence (AI) is disrupting industries like media, design, and technology, leaving students worried that the fields they’re passionate about are being automated and diminished.
Since the dawn of time, people have been creating art. Whether it was sketches in caves, Renaissance paintings, or even a blank canvas statement piece, art has been an integral part of our society. It brings people together, allows them to express themselves, and share ideas across history. But now, AI makes creating art too easy.
So easy that you probably didn’t even notice that I used Chat GPT to write the opening line of this column.
Because AI can develop art in seconds, it has become easier, cheaper, and possibly even better than humans.
Even though machine learning has improved many industries, such as healthcare or education, we must remember to be delicate in how we utilize it, ensuring we use it as a tool, not a replacement for humans.
Unfortunatley, AI reduces the need for writers, design, and people. With the rate of its evolution, it provides unpredictability for those interested in such careers. In fact, over half of the students at South feel the pressure of AI impacting their future career, according to an unscientific survey of 324 conducted by The Oracle.
This undermines any hope of pursuing any artistic industry as it is being threatened by AI.
This will still impact on the other half of South students who aren’t considering artistic careers, as everybody is a stakeholder. Remember, everything surrounding us originally started out as someone’s design.
We all consume art under the expectation that it was made by a human. Creating AI art and passing it off as your own work is not only a sabotage of trust between artist and viewer, but also a massive waste of time for the audience.
If AI is not limited and continues to prosper, artwork will slowly recycle into a mundane compilation created by a computer under the guise of humanity. This eliminates any experimentation and creativity from the equation; artwork will remain the same for all eternity.
Not only will AI drown our world in mediocrity, but it could also have detrimental impacts to our critical thinking skills. Since AI technology is widely accessible, over reliance on the generative platform can result in people neglecting their own intellect.
But, even if we allow AI to prosper in artistic fields, it would still have large-scale impact on our environment, already struggling from climate change.
The worldwide need for AI power would be 10 times larger than it is now by 2026, as it uses significantly more electricity to operate than a search engine or iCloud storage, according to the Harvard Business Review. The impact on the environment from AI would create a dim future, not just for artists, but society as a whole.
And it will continue to rise unless we create change.
AI art should be banned, and we should refrain from utilizing it for artistic purposes. We must unite against AI art, not just for ourselves, but for our future, for the current industries, the environment, and for all mediums of art to thrive.
Next time you think about using Chat GPT, Google’s Gemini, Microsoft Copilot, or any of the other dozens of AI platforms to create art, think about how your one small action can contribute to a rapidly approaching dystopian future.
