Why I love using AI in my art, and don’t agree with the hate.
I love creating things.
Before I became a software engineer, my main hobbies revolved around art. I started with music production, and used everything from digital audio workstations like FL Studio to barebones audio editors like Nero Audio Editor (if anyone remembers it) to make my tunes. I then continued with being a hobbyist writer. I wrote a few books and short stories, using the old reliable Microsoft Word and iCloud Notes. And then as a software engineer, I became obsessed with the idea of building a web application as an art installation, and used the good ole’ vanilla tools to do it, like a version of VSCode that had no AI in it.
Why do I make art?
If I’m honest with myself, part of the fun of making art is the idea of sharing it with the world. I say “the idea of” because I never did put too much time into sharing it, beyond publishing some of my music on Soundcloud and YouTube, and some of my books on Amazon. Nothing ever did blow up as I’d imagined it during my creative outpouring, but the “dream” of having someone dance to a tune that I’ve made or be inspired by something that I wrote was and still is a great creative impetus.
I enjoy the possibilities and the process.
Beyond this “dream” is the enjoyment of the process. When I make music especially, I can go into a state of flow and get lost for hours on end. To build sounds that make me feel things, that make me dance, that I want to hear a dozen times one after another…it’s such an incredible feeling, that when I come out of a creative session I feel energized, despite the amount of energy that gets used up.
Writing has become more of an arduous task as of late, and is a lot of the times a process of self-discovery as much as it is creation. Especially when it comes to writing fiction, I can be as surprised at what my mind conjures up when building the narrative as much as I do when I watch a movie, and I can see where bits and pieces are inspired by my own life. And when it comes to writing non-fiction…well, let’s just say that my writing non-fiction has shaped my worldview more than almost any other activity I’ve engaged in.
In the end, the process of making art has had a profound effect on me, and when I don’t engage in it I am all the poorer for it, both in terms of happiness and depth of thinking. Which brings me to my next topic.
When do I stop making art?
There have been times in my life when making art took a backseat. Whether it was putting a bigger focus on relationships, or switching jobs and job roles, or increasing my working hours, there have been many events that triggered a decline. It always picks back up in the end, because not doing it feels a lot like holding my breath…I can only keep it up for so long before I start feeling the consequences.
But although the particular reasons for not making art can be many, they all, at the end of the day, spell on common problem: Time.
Making a good song takes time. Writing a good short story or novel takes time. Designing a good book cover takes time. Time, or lack of it, is at the heart of it. Enter AI.
How does AI help?
One of my first contacts with generative AI was in software engineering. Here, I loved using AI because it saved time. It saved time in both creating code in certain situations, and it saved time in researching solutions.
My second contact with generative AI was in making images. When I was young, my drawing class teacher proclaimed me as an “anti-talent” when it came to drawing. But that didn’t stop me from having all sorts of ideas for drawings and images. So when I first heard of Dall-E 3(from OpenAI), I signed up to the waitlist so that I could get access as fast as possible. And when I got my hands on it, I generated a gazillion images with all the crazy ideas that my mind could conjure up. I made clothes with some of my designs. I made logos for some of my websites. I made images to populate my book. So AI allowed me to make something that I did not have the ability to do — unless I had more time.
These two use cases — saving time and allowing you to do what you cannot do by yourself are two ways in which AI is invaluable.
I’ve come a long way in my AI usage since its humble beginnings — I lead the AI team at Fanvue, where we look to incorporate AI to save time for the platform’s creators, and allow them to do things that they cannot do on their own. But my work is also time-intensive, and so I have little time left to be simply creative. Luckily, my work also offered me a chance to be at the forefront of the AI space, so I’ve started using AI for my creative process as well, in order to be creative quicker.
I can now get a song done, complete with a music video, in a fraction of the time from what I used to, by leveraging platforms like Suno and Luma labs.
I can also write a short story that I had an idea for in a fraction of the time I used to, using tools like ChatGPT and Claude.
Of course, there is no free lunch. There is a flipside to using AI — having the time to sit down and write something from scratch without reliance on AI filling in the blanks, or making music using basic tools involves you much more in the process. But that doesn’t mean that one shouldn’t use AI — it is just a different process, that brings its own rewards and drawbacks, just like everything else.
Is it still art when you use AI?
Now some argue that using AI in the art making process isn’t actually making art. That somehow, having AI in your workflow somehow cancels out your ability to express yourself. It’s not you who’s making the art piece, it’s the AI. As someone who loves making art and who also appreciates AI, I respectfully disagree. To demonstrate that making art and using AI can be complementary, I’ll point out two new ways in which I’ve used AI in my creative process.
- Music Video
Ever since I started making music, one issue that I’ve had is making the video for my track when wanting to post it on Youtube. And ever since AI video generation became a thing, I’ve been experimenting with using it for music videos. Here’s a latest example:
Now the process of making this video required my input at many steps, but AI was heavily involved. AI was also involved in making the song. And yet I feel it as a piece of art I’ve made as any of my previous works that were AI-free so to speak. AI just allowed me to focus my creative outpouring into the prompts that I’ve used and the combination of tools, rather than on hiring actors and renting out rollercoasters and a bunch of heart masks.
2. Text to Story
Sometimes I only get a few minutes to pour an idea that I’ve had for a story on paper. And so, I started thinking of how to make such an idea come to life in the short timespan possible. It’s why I’ve built storytveller, a platform that allows you to go from text to video story in a click.
There are other solutions out there that allow you to go text to video, the key difference with storytveller is that it’s focused on improving the story rather than optimizing for click bait, or just having a general solution that’s ‘good for anything’
Here are some examples of what I’ve generated so far:
One key thing to note is that without AI, my making these pieces of art would not have been possible. Sure, I could have worked a heart-shaped mask and tried a bunch of crazy editing, but I still wouldn’t have been able to make what you see in the That’s Just Love video. Or I could have hand drawn Narcissus as he was made in that Storytveller video, but apart from the fact that my time wouldn’t have allowed me that luxury, I still have no real clue how to draw. And to be able to make 2–3 videos like these per week, minimum? Well that would have definitely been impossible.
What I’m trying to say is that the AI not only can be a valuable tool in the process of making art, but it can unlock whole new artforms.
So, when I hear someone say that using AI in your creative process means that it’s not art, I see a lack of imagination. The idea isn’t to use AI to make the same kind of art that was there before, but to make new kinds of art. The question is, where will imagination take you? The sky’s the limit.
Humans have found ways of expressing themselves throughout the ages with the mediums that they were given. Caves? Cave drawings. Paper? Writing. Canvas? Painting. Now AI is a new medium, and it’s fresh with opportunities.
