The capabilities of a new class of tools, colloquially known as generative artificial intelligence (AI), is a topic of much debate. One prominent application thus far is the production of high-quality artistic media for visual arts, concept art, music, and literature, as well as video and animation. For example, diffusion models can synthesize high-quality images (1), and large language models (LLMs) can produce sensible-sounding and impressive prose and verse in a wide range of contexts (2). The generative capabilities of these tools are likely to fundamentally alter the creative processes by which creators formulate ideas and put them into production. As creativity is reimagined, so too may be many sectors of society. Understanding the impact of generative AI—and making policy decisions around it—requires new interdisciplinary scientific inquiry into culture, economics, law, algorithms, and the interaction of technology and creativity.
Generative AI tools, at first glance, seem to fully automate artistic production—an impression that mirrors past instances when traditionalists viewed new technologies as threatening “art itself.” In fact, these moments of technological change did not indicate the “end of art,” but had much more complex effects, recasting the roles and practices of creators and shifting the aesthetics of contemporary media (3). For example, some 19th-century artists saw the advent of photography as a threat to painting. Instead of replacing painting, however, photography eventually liberated it from realism, giving rise to Impressionism and the Modern Art movement. By contrast, portrait photography did largely replace portrait painting. Similarly, the digitization of music production (e.g., digital sampling and sound synthesis) was decried as “the end of music.” Instead, it altered the ways people produce and listen to music, and helped spawn new genres, including hip hop and drum’n’bass. Like these historical analogs, generative AI is not the harbinger of art’s demise, but rather is a new medium with its own distinct affordances. As a suite of tools used by human creators, generative AI is positioned to upend many sectors of the creative industry and beyond—threatening existing jobs and labor models in the short term, while ultimately enabling new models of creative labor and reconfiguring the media ecosystem.
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