Should Creators Ever Consider AI?

Introduction

Every so often I get challenged about my use of AI in my creations. While I see AI as a tool that needs to be used carefully, I do not consider it intelligent but do consider it artificial.

This article starts with an AI-generated image using Nightcafe and then a piece of AI-generated music using Suno.

I thought Einstein playing chess with a pigeon was a good illustration of how I feel dealing with AI.

How I Use It

I am not an artist or a musician and in creating stories on Vocal an image or video is required for the story. I used to use YouTube videos as the main image but they are often withdrawn from YouTube leaving a blank to introduce the story, so with that and advice from friends I started to use my own photographs and images from free sites, with a credit for the source, but I still got criticized for plagiarising others work, even though I credited them.

Then someone posted a piece about AI art generation and I thought that might be a way to go as whatever was created would be a combination of me and the generation tool and I documented it here.

There are issues with some AI tools stealing from artists and not crediting them and I am aware of that and would drop NightCafe if they were shown to be doing that.

I make my creations available for free on Pixabay, along with some of my photographs, and so far I have had 15,000 downloads and one $2 tip, but I am not trying to make money from my AI Creations. The thing is with AI art is it may look fine from a distance, but look a little closer you will see hands with six fingers, dogs with five legs and many more faults.

If I want a real work of art I would find a real artist, although I have been accused of taking the bread out of the mouths of children of real artists by using an AI Art creation tool.

Here is an example of real art, and where I can I do use real art.

My friend Paul Carrielies (also known as Bob) recently told me about Suno, which allows you to create AI music. I will use this every now and then, but I am not a good musician but you can check me out in person on my YouTube channel:

This is my stuff on Suno (use the arrow in the top right-hand of the link):

The pieces I generate are about a minute long, but I feel that this is in the same area as autotune and some electronic music devices used for techno and the like that result in stuff that could not be played by a human.

AI vs Real Writing

While I think AI might be useful for producing system documentation, it would still require checking by a human to make sure everything is correct.

I do not condone it being used for creative writing although I was tricked into sharing an AI-generated poem on Vocal by a friend of mine, but that just raised my awareness of it. You can check it out here:

While I have dipped into AI text generation it is not something I approve of, but would I be OK with an artist or musician using an AI text generator to write the promotional blurb for their music or art? Yes, I would. Would I be OK with them using it to publish a poem or novel? I would not.

Conclusion

I see AI as a tool that needs to be used with extreme care, like a chainsaw or an acid bath.

Thank you so much for reading, and I would love to hear your opinions.