I’m writing this… flowing river of thoughts as they come. This last week of March has seen the internet flooded with a deluge of AI images, all of them depicting the style of the famed Studio Ghibli.
When I first saw the images popping up everywhere I thought one of two things. One: Wow, everyone’s on a Studio Ghibli kick this week. Then two: Oh, it’s AI. Well, that’s kind of interesting.
Those were my first two immediate thoughts. And then the week went on. And more and more images were being produced. More and more scenes of real life and other movies being transformed to look like Studio Ghibli art. This got annoying to me, only in the sense of when a song is overplayed on the radio.
Okay! Enough already, I thought to myself.
And then the week started to end. And while the images being formed continued, I started to see a video clip of the creator of Studio Ghibli himself, Hayao Miyazaki, from a documentary from 2016 called, Never-Ending Man: Hayao Miyazaki.
At the very end of the clip, a Ghibli producer asks, “So, what is your goal?”
The AI engineer replies, “Well, we would like to build a machine that can draw pictures like humans do.”
“Would you?”
“Yes.”
The camera then zooms in on Miyazaki’s stoic expression. Listening. Registering what was just said. The scene then cuts to Miyazaki creating art. In the video he says, “I feel like we are nearing the end of times. We humans are losing faith in ourselves…”
After rewatching that video clip of Miyazaki and his thoughts, I didn’t view the AI produced images of Ghibli style art as cute or funny or neat anymore. I was kind of just sad. Sad that generative AI will be taking over more and more jobs for artists.
But I was also reminded of something I have realized since the advancement of this technology in recent years. We as artists and creators can’t rely on our skill anymore.
Even the most technically skilled artist or the creator out there with the wildest imagination will eventually be matched by AI. Not because AI can create what humans can on its own, but because the world is so large that companies will take what artists create and use it to build their machines for the masses.
This is not a doomsday cry though. Please don’t misunderstand. I know AI is here and it’s not going back. I understand that in some ways AI has benefits for creators.
This is just coming to an understanding. AI cannot create. It can produce but not create. And it WILL produce. But artists can create. And they can find their tribe and build their following. It just takes time.
While this was all happening, I couldn’t help but think of Ed Piskor. The anniversary of his death was fast approaching.
On April 1st, in 2024, Ed Piskor took his own life after a barrage of insults and harassment was sent his way, after a small mistake he admittedly made. But that innocent mistake was morphed into a life-shattering allegation. Allegations that were like a sledgehammer pounding on a thumbtack until a great cartoonist took his own life.
Ed left a note to everyone. While it’s difficult to read, he said something poignant that I was reminded of this week.
“I wasn’t AI,” he wrote. “I was a real human being. You chipped little bits of my self esteem away all week until I was vaporized.”
I’m not sure where I was going with all of this. Like I said in the beginning this was just a flushing out of thoughts. Stuff that’s been stirring in my mind this past week and I had to get it out. But I did make one conscious decision while I was writing this. I made sure to not call AI “art”.
I have in the past. The term “AI art” is just easy to say. It’s slips off the tongue without a second thought. But I think I will start giving that term a second thought. Because AI cannot create art.
Yes, it can make pretty images. Yes, it can string words together to make a story. And who knows, probably in the very near future, it will be able to string together notes of music, along with words, and form songs, and then take the words from those songs and the notes from that music and make an album cover, and then string together words for a film script based on those words and songs and artwork. Then workup images to make moving pictures and put together a film.
All from that one simple note the AI machine spit out.
But you know what it didn’t do? It didn’t create that note. It didn’t create those words. And it didn’t create that artwork. It needed input from a real human in order to produce all of those things. Without the input of humans, the AI machine can only spit out what it can think up on its own. And in the end, all it is a digital machine. It doesn’t have thoughts and dreams and hopes and nightmares. It doesn’t laugh or cry or yell or smile. It’s just a machine.
We are humans.
We are not AI.
I am not AI.
