KI - Danger for Art? A comment by Otto Frühwach

For some time now, freely accessible and mostly free AI programs have been on the market that create pictures with voice commands, à la Kleiner Prince: "times a sheep!" .

The discussion to what extent art and artists are threatened by AI is in full swing. Many already fear the artistic fall of the West.

Is everyone an artist now?

So now the most artistically undemanding and unamatated images can generate pictures that were said about times of Ki: "There is talent." But after a short time we were fed up with these pictures and pictures and no longer impress them.

An artist is needed to create a work of art with AI! So the artist who paints or draws does not have to worry about AI.

Danger for the art of utility

The situation is different with the art art and graphics. In this area, the workplaces and sources of income of the active by AI are just as threatened as the farrier, saddle maker, tapper and jockeys by inventing the automobile a hundred years ago. But from coaches, chauffeurs and stable boys became mechanics, which is why you shouldn't panic here either.

Large companies will probably reduce their graphics departments from three to an employee who will then do everything with the help of AI. But the boss or boss of a small company will not hire the warehouser or the cleaner to design the flyer using AI. Instead, he or she will continue to commission freelancers. These freelancers can do the order much faster with the help of AI tools and, freed from the porch, devote more to creative people.

Theft on intellectual property

As for the mutual property of others, artists of all epochs did it and let their predecessors or contemporaries be "inspired" . Since the AI ​​programs had to be trained with images created by artists, I think that remuneration must take place here. This could be z. B. make quite simple by providing a certain proportion of the sales of the AI ​​companies of the VG Wort or VG Bild-Kunst .

If countless artists today abstract images in the style of Gerhard Richter's “rock”, do they then attack their intellectual property? These images "in no way inferior to those of judges and even his works of the nutritional value for the viewer. Nevertheless, such a picture is not a "judge", and only a few are willing to pay for a per thousand of the prize of a judge.

AI art can only be printed

With all criticism: Please do not forget that all images that were created using AI are only printed haptic. So they are neither drawn nor painted with oil or acrylic, accessible to the senses. And even if future printing processes should enable pasty printing with oil or acrylic paints, which will probably be the case within the next decade, the layperson will also be able to distinguish such images from hand painted. Just as you can easily distinguish the offset pressure from a screen printing or lithograph.

The attraction of the painted or drawn unique crowd will never be replaced by AI. "

Democratization of art by AI

How the Internet has democratized and has made it accessible to the art market and art -loving and artists, so a democratization of the art of art place through AI.

What do I mean by that? Everyone has the need to create something, but only a few are talent or physical ability. Through AI, people who could not even lead a brush or pencil through physical restrictions that make pictures visible in their heads through voice commands. With AI, all people now have the opportunity to create an appealing picture and enjoy it.

You can have it printed and hang on the wall and do not need to go to the decorative department of the hardware store. The counterpart to this is the billion -dollar peak of vacation photos. Even if the quality is miles away from that of an experienced photographer, people are particularly successful and attached to it because it is their "own" photo. Image generation through AI tools also has a deeply social and including function.

In my opinion, a painting or drawing artist does not need to worry that his art is endangered by AI. And, not to forget, even in front of AI, hardly an artist could live alone from his art?

Problems for photographers

The situation is different in photography. Above all, the landscape and nature photographer is forced to raise his art to a higher level and to work out more of your own manuscript, because it is enclosed by "photographs" of high quality from below. The mostly artistically working photographer can even take advantage of the AI ​​tools.

In addition, like AI art, photography must first be "printed" in any form, because the file in the digital camera cannot do anything interested in art. And the negative of an analogous photographer must first be exposed and enlarged in order to find a place as a picture on the wall.

"Everyone can do a do-it-all!"

My grandmother replied, asked what she thinks of the Beatles: "This is not art, everyone can do that, the electricity does the music" .

The assessment of works of art that was created in whole or in part with AI reminds me a little of my grandmother's statement.

Anyone can do AI images! That works at the push of a button! You don't have to have any talent! This is not art !

To believe that there is no effort behind a picture that was generated with the help or exclusively with AI, there is a fallacy. Many images painted in oil or acrylic are painted in half an hour, while it can take a whole night for an artistically high-quality AI picture. Apart from the fact that "effort" or "time spent" are not criteria for art.

I am convinced that hardly any of the important painters of the 20th century would have given up the artistic possibilities by KI if this option had existed at his work. But I also understand that contemporary painters and parts of the art world feel threatened and questioned by the possibilities that AI offers. You speak the right to be art.

This picture of me entitled "Assimilation" is, for example, a melange of manual acrylic painting and AI supported image generation. The question addresses where adaptation ends and assimilation begins.

Analog and digital

I love painting with ink, oil and acrylic and other colors. On canvas, wood and everything. With brushes, spatula etc. and works of art from all conceivable materials that can be found. But I do not put a limitation of using digital means and integrating it into my art. And the mixture of digital and analog techniques and processes is particularly attractive and interesting for me.

My conclusion: AI is just another tool that is available to artists.