What happens when AI generates art that objectively rules?

Am I part of the problem now?

Well, it happened a whole lot sooner than I thought it would.

A few weeks ago, in a group chat with some friends back in Canada, discussion turned (again) to art and art-like output created using AI tools. Like everyone else in this first quarter of 2023, AI is the topic we just can’t quit.

One friend in particular is vocally and adamantly opposed to anything artistic created by AI. He views it as an existential threat to humanity, and he’s the type of person who holds literature, film and other artistic output as the epitome of human expression. I can sympathize! Quick as we all are to share those YouTube clips of deepfaked debates between Biden, Tr*mp and Obama about which Kingdom Hearts has the best level design, that ideologically opposed friend of mine is the one most likely to chime in with something along the lines of, “fuck AI!” Fair enough, I think!

At one point, that friend suggested we’d never be fooled. Our heartstrings would never be tugged by anything AI-authored in the same way they so often are by human-made art. I quickly called bullshit, because of how little faith I have in humanity’s long-term ability to go on distinguishing between AI-made and human-made output of any kid. Sooner or later, I reasoned, we not only won’t be able to tell who’s responsible for what, we also won’t care either way. It’s only a matter of time before some of our favourite pop songs are 100% AI-performed, and AI-generated art adorns our walls (or bookshelves, or screens, or wherever else “art” might appear).

The thing is, at the time of this discussion, I had naively assumed that the “someday” I was describing was too far into the future to be given serious thought. It was a looming spectre. Some strange and distant turning point that we’ll all have to reckon with, when the time comes.

Imagine my surprise when that turning point came, at least for me, this past Monday.

It was actually that same naysaying friend who shared with me some AI-generated still images inspired by Stephen King’s The Dark Tower. We’re both massive fans of the books. He shared these images with me, and though my brain told me to be skeptical and dismissive, my heart told me, Bro these fucking rule. Look at these!

And, I mean, look at them!

These will of course resonate more strongly with you if you’re steeped in Dark Tower mythology, as I am. The reasons why I love The Dark Tower so much are perhaps fodder for another time, but suffice to say, I’ve read the books multiple times, and am passionately aware of the way they intertwine with a large portion of King’s larger bibliography. I even own the Japanese translation of the entire series, and I swear I’ll read it someday.

I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about the The Dark Tower. Its imagery and characters live rent-free in my head, and I’m happy to host them. What’s remarkable, to me, about these images, is how very like those thoughts they look. I’ve seen a wide variety of Dark Tower-inspired artwork, both the official kind and the fan-made stuff. A lot of it is extremely cool, because one of King’s superpowers is using words to describe evocative scenes that simply beg to be represented in visual media. It’s part of the reason why everything the dude writes gets adapted for the screen.

But all of the art I’ve seen so far looks like it was produced by humans. What an eerie sentence to write. What a destabilizing realization to make. It’s not a value judgment. Going forward, the concept of hey, this looks like it was made by humans will become increasingly salient.

And it begs the question: What does “human-made” look like? Well, until recently, the answer to that would have been, “Everything. It looks like everything. Because everything is.” But these Dark Tower AI stills have forced me to reckon with the aesthetics of AI art. Not for the first time, of course, but for the first time that stirs my soul. That’s what’s significant, this time.

They’ve got an ethereal quality to them, haven’t they? To me, they look as though someone has taken a screen capture of the contents of my imagination. At the same time, they also look like stills taken from a well-loved VHS tape from the late 1980s. This is, no doubt, an intentional stylistic choice by the human(s) who, it must be said, ultimately fed the instructions to the AI that pumped these pieces out. Schlocky 1980s VHS aesthetic lends itself so effortlessly to anything Stephen King related, it doesn’t even matter that most of The Dark Tower was written and published long after that decade ended.

Yes, you can make the argument that AI art is, at its root, still human-created to some extent, because (as far as I know) there aren’t any fully-autonomous AI artists out there… yet.

But still, here I am, openly fanboying about a series of weird AI-generated images. I had zero interest in the Hollywood-produced Dark Tower movie that flopped a few years ago. But if someone produced a movie that looked like this? Or a prestige TV series? I’d not only be interested, I’d be actively anticipating it.

What I’m wondering is… What are the political ramifications of genuinely loving AI-produced art? Need I place these images in a separate category in my mind? “Sure, they’re cool to look at, and they get my heart racing with the kind of exhilaration I had assumed only humans could achieve, but it’s only AI art.”

Somehow, I feel the need to apologize. Sorry, artists. I may have betrayed you.