Chinese New Year scene created with AI painting tools. Production: Xu Baojuan.
Academic Controversy] Editor's note.
In the last academic debate, from the perspective of artistic creation, what kind of attitude should the two scholars take towards artificial intelligence (AI) - does it bring more opportunities or challenges to art? With the massive use of AI painting tools, there are more and more AI painting works. Are these works of art? This issue of academic controversy revolves around this theme. Yang Xiangmin believes that AI painting is the artistic creation of human beings in the era of artificial intelligence, and its artistic subject is still human and still has artistic quality; Song Shilei believes that AI is a technology and tool from beginning to end, and the works it produces have not yet acquired the independent character of art, lack subjectivity and originality, and cannot be called works of art. In addition, we have also captured the views of some readers, and we look forward to your active participation in the discussion on the current status and future trends of AI art.
As an emerging art practice, artificial intelligence (AI) art has sparked a lot of discussions about technology and art, especially the definition of art.
Human beings have been thinking about what art is for a long time, and have formed many famous views on the definition of art: Plato believes that "art is imitation", Aristotle believes that "art is knowledge", British philosopher David Hume believes that "art is the object of taste", German philosopher Kant believes that "art can transmit pleasure", German philosopher Schopenhauer believes that "art is presentation", British esthetician Clive Bell believes that "art is meaningful form", and American artist Douglas Murphy believes that "art is the pleasure that can be transmitted", and the American artist Douglas Bell believes that "art is the form of meaning". Davis believed that "art is virtual", and so on. From these definitions, we can feel that art seems to be a river, flowing through different eras, constantly changing, forming different faces. Based on the development of new ideas, new technologies and new media, art is constantly updated to form a new pattern and landscape. Therefore, we need to look at this changing and developing art world from the perspective of change and development.
The evolution of the art world, of course, includes the development of artistic tools. Tools are also extremely important for artistic creation. The mode of production and creation of human beings is developing and changing, and the mode of artistic creation will naturally change and develop, which is based on the progress of human invention and innovative use of tools. For example, modern products such as airplanes, cranes, and computers have undoubtedly greatly extended human speed, strength, and computing power. The development of human-computer connection and interaction technology is to make this extension more seamless. The advent of the era of artificial intelligence will surely open the era of artificial intelligence used in artistic creation. We often say that art is a reflection of the times, and it should not only refer to the content and style of art, but also the way of artistic creation. In this sense, AI painting art is a mirror that reflects the society in the era of artificial intelligence, which may constitute a new semantic meaning of "brush and ink should be in the times".
There have long been two different views on whether AI painting is artistic creation, that is, whether the works created by AI are artistically creative. One side believes that it is artistically creative, because its underlying algorithm design is creative and innovative, and it can also generate unforeseen new artistic results; On the other hand, there is no artistic creativity, because the AI system itself is an imitation of people, and the input information comes from the existing artistic information of human beings, and the output information can only be imitated in disguise. Artistic creation can only come from human beings, and artificial intelligence cannot form the understanding and empathy that only exist at the emotional and experiential level of art.
However, I believe that the main body of AI painting creation is still human, and human beings need to refine and organize an accurate AI painting creation language, including many key prompts such as artistic creation elements, composition forms, and style characteristics. These technical parameters can only be generated after the AI painting tool is fed into the AI painting tool, and for the person who is the subject of art creation, this process is a process of thinking and creating. For example, in order to find the right artistic keywords to stimulate or prompt the construction of a suitable AI art context, it is necessary to go through human consideration, thinking, experimentation, selection, and even "three thousand scraps" to obtain one or two satisfactory works, and then it must be tested by people as artistic objects. The subject and object of AI painting art are still people, so it can also be said that AI painting originates from people, belongs to people, and still belongs to people's artistic creation.
Especially from the perspective of the examination of artistic objects, we can feel that the level of art works, design works, and literary works produced by artificial intelligence is uneven. Just like human beings with the help of camera tools, some can only easily complete the function of modeling and taking photos, while others can be further improved into photographic art creation. Therefore, in judging whether an AI painting is a work of art, it is necessary to uphold the standard of art itself, and avoid generalizing and simply denying it.
In addition, you can also refer to the method of "Turing Experiment" to determine whether the AI painting is art or not. Alan Turing, the founder of artificial intelligence, once proposed an experiment to test whether computers can think intelligently, that is, one person asks a question to a computer, and the computer and the human answer at the same time, and another person who does not know to distinguish whether it is a computer or a human answer. In this experiment, some of the computer's responses, which were thought to be human responses, were not recognized. With the advancement of artificial intelligence technology, there will inevitably be more and more artificial intelligence artworks such as art, design, and literature, which can pass human-computer discrimination tests similar to the "Turing experiment". Since people cannot identify whether a creation is made by artificial intelligence or by an artist, the work created by artificial intelligence should be a work of art. Of course, due to the efficient output of the artificial intelligence platform, it will also form waves of aesthetic fatigue, and it will also experience multiple expansion and hierarchical grading. After all, AI painting has to be the same as other art genres, unremittingly pursuing excellence and perfection in artistic quality, and in the end, only a few can enter the list of fine art, so it is unlikely that "everyone is an artist".
It is undeniable that AI painting, with the blessing of computer programs and algorithm design, can indeed greatly reduce the creative labor and time consumption of painters, and exponentially greatly improve the production efficiency of paintings. For example, it can be "literally illustrated", which can be quickly stimulated by key prompts to generate visual images, and can surpass the previous visual experience; It is also possible to "generate pictures with pictures", and the artist's personal works can be "fissioned" by the artificial intelligence platform to optimize and generate new schematic pictures. In addition, the powerful information integration and computing capabilities of the artificial intelligence platform can also provide new creative inspiration for painters, and assist in completing information collection, element integration, abstract deformation, optimization and adjustment and other tasks in artistic creation thinking activities. It is precisely because artificial intelligence has crossed many technical thresholds in the field of art, making it more convenient to realize the dream of turning art into reality, and artificial intelligence painting tools are also regarded as a dream factory full of creativity and innovation. In 2023, the "Notice of Call for Submissions for the First China Digital Art Exhibition" issued by the China Artists Association officially included "artificial intelligence art" in the category of submissions, which is equivalent to in fact recognizing that artificial intelligence painting belongs to the category of artistic creation.
In short, artificial intelligence is a technology that simulates human intelligence, which belongs to the external manifestation of human intelligence in the new era. The AI painting produced in the field of art in the era of artificial intelligence is essentially the "human intelligent art" created by "human artistic intelligence" based on "artificial intelligence technology", which of course still belongs to the artistic creation of human beings.
The human world is facing a new cognition triggered by the upgrading of science and technology, and the art field is also experiencing a sense of crisis due to artificial intelligence technology. In fact, as early as the beginning of the 19th century, Hegel's "Lectures on Aesthetics" sprouted the "final conclusion of art", which led to multiple viewpoints in the 20th century, such as "the end of art history", "the death of the artist", "the end of aesthetic experience" and "the end of art theory". However, in the 21st century, the "final conclusion of art" has become a meaningless false proposition in theory and practice. As Romain Rolland said, "Art, like life, is endless." "Art will always go hand in hand in human life.
The relationship between science, technology and art is not contradictory and antagonistic, but all ways for human beings to explore the world and understand themselves. What science and technology bring to art is not a crisis, but an important opportunity for the development of art. Taking the technological progress represented by artificial intelligence as an example, whether it is the pursuit of artistic ideals of technological advancement or the exploration of the transcendent artistic realm, it will inevitably inject new forces into the development of human art and expand and enrich the extension space of human art. Without the addition and blessing of new technologies, art is more likely to lose the momentum for development.
Humanity is entering the era of artificial intelligence, and it may come out of this era in the future. After all, the era of artificial intelligence is still dominated by people, and the art space of artificial intelligence still belongs to the space of order under the leadership of people. It can be briefly summarized that artificial intelligence painting is still a human intelligent art, and it is the artistic creation of human beings in the era of artificial intelligence.
Author: Yang Xiangmin, professor of Nanjing University of the Arts).
Project team: reporters Zhang Yumei, Yu Yuanyuan, Xu Xinyi.