The emergence of “A.I.-generated art” is sparking renewed debate among artists about the role of human talent and inspiration in modern works after the New York Times published a report of a creator winning an art prize with one of the productions. The rise of A.I.-generated art signals the fall of the Renaissance Man, as art moves away from its classical philosophical foundation of connecting man to God and replaces the role of man’s striving toward mastering skill with a “demonically inspired” automated knock-off.
The Times explains the evolution of art technology, from the introduction of photography to digital art and editing — but A.I.-generated art, the Times writes, works by “scraping millions of images from the open web, then teaching algorithms to recognize patterns and relationships in those images and generate new ones in the same style.”
“That means that artists who upload their works to the internet may be unwittingly helping to train their algorithmic competitors,” the Times continues.
A.I.-generated art is different than digital art in that digital art is original work, requiring talent and inspiration to produce. It is a new art medium but is still just a tool that takes a human being to operate and create a product.
The A.I.-generated art apps work by the user submitting text — a phrase they want to create art from — into the program, and within seconds, a product appears. Proponents of the medium claim it takes human creativity to come up with a phrase to submit.
The “artist” who won a prize with an A.I. piece is quoted in the Times article describing using the program, saying, “I couldn’t believe what I was seeing … I felt like it was demonically inspired — like some otherworldly force was involved.”
He is quoted again, adding, “Art is dead, dude. It’s over. A.I. won. Humans lost.”
Despite defending the use of A.I. to produce his prize-winning image, the artist admits that the medium signals the death of art — a tragic fact of modern culture that has strayed from the foundation that has driven Western society to thrive in science, math, art, and philosophy since the 15th century.
“Renaissance Humanism” is the intellectual movement that inspired Leonardo da Vinci, Donatello, Botticelli, and Michelangelo, emphasizing the realization of man’s full potential for his own good and for the good of society. It spurred a philosophy that sought to separate the individual’s relationship to God from being confined to church, and instead come through his life and works.
The “Renaissance Man” sought to master many disciplines, as well as develop new innovations, as an expression of his divinity. Renaissance men became masters in their disciplines, and in some cases in multiple disciplines, as they laid the groundwork for a culture of exceptionalism and exploration that became the hallmark of the West. In that pursuit, art became an expression of man striving to be like God, able to create something perfect.
Now, in modern art, there is no David, no Mona Lisa, no Birth of Venus. And it doesn’t totally come as a surprise that we now look to machine learning to produce works similar to Renaissance productions.
A Raphael painting of a Madonna and child, eating pizza. pic.twitter.com/oCX9p4rJ0g
— PizzaDALL-E (@PizzaDalle) May 24, 2022
The trend away from mainstream production of great works can probably be ascribed in significant part to the fact that most human beings have lost the patience and attention span to hone superior skills, and have instead moved toward proficiency in multi-tasking — performing many short tasks in rapid succession instead of focusing on excelling in one particular task.
Modern man actually has a shorter attention span than a goldfish, a sharp decrease over just fifteen years. A study performed by Microsoft in 2015 showed that human beings have an average attention span of eight seconds, down from 12 seconds in 2000. A goldfish has an attention span of nine seconds. Research showed this shift was due to the presence of new technologies in people’s lives, providing constant distractions in momentary hits of dopamine. If you’re still reading this column, congratulations, you are probably one of just a few — maybe try taking up classical art painting on church ceilings.
Another factor attributed to the production of elevated art is belief in God — the will to produce great work was always, ultimately, tied to the will to achieve spiritual elevation — which is also experiencing a sharp decrease in modern society.
Over the last twenty years, Americans’ belief in God has plummeted by double-digit percentage points, according to a recent Gallup poll. Depending on how the question was posed to respondents, Americans’ belief in God has gone down 11-15 percent from 2002. Without the presence of God in daily life, human beings become consumed with nihilism, losing the point of life, losing the point of struggle, so as to believe that typing a phrase into a text box is tantamount to any sort of refined skill or advanced pursuit.
Modern mainstream culture has abandoned the patience, spiritual capacity, and will to realize exceptional work, timelessness, divine creation. The final destination of that attitude is coming to accept a composite of past achievements, generated by an algorithm, as a new definition of ingenuity and intellect. We’ll even slap a ribbon on it and name it top prize.
Instead of the Sistine Chapel ceiling, today’s art establishment gives us a banana duct taped to a wall, a ripped canvas, aimless scribbling — and artists who can’t or won’t execute the point of art will be replaced by machines.
Investigative journalist and futurist Peter von Stackelberg made this point, writing, “Creatives … need to figure out how to have their art, whether created with AI assistance or not, valued in a way that ensures human artists can avoid starving in a cold, shabby attic.”
The adoption of more integrated technology in moment-to-moment life and the abandonment of traditional religion is progressive, we’re told. Living in the technological age with dwindling connection to the natural world is the future, according to our betters at Meta, Microsoft, and Wall Street.
But the impact it has on art is a metaphor for the impact it has on human existence in the West, as large swaths of our people abandon fulfillment, meaningful pursuits, and self-improvement for a world on autopilot that only has the illusion of human advancement. And when human beings are not striving for a higher world, when we plug in and disengage, we lose the hallmarks of Western culture that have given us the free, prosperous, and purposeful lives we always knew and aspired to give our children.
Emma-Jo Morris is the Politics Editor at Breitbart News. Email her at ejmorris@breitbart.com or follow her on Twitter.
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