The Creativity Country Club

False narratives and misdirection in the time of GenAI.

Trading Places, Directed by John Landis. Dist. by Paramount.

I make art¹ and like the vast majority of my artist friends, the last thing I want is non-initiated lay people moving in on my turf with their own stinky creative ideas or projects. Creativity is a rare gift that must remain exclusive to our kind!²

That’s why I continue to guard the mysterious and long-protected secrets³ of creative thinking, art-making, and storytelling that were passed down to me decades ago during my initiation ceremony (paddling and all) deep underground in the ancient Temple of Selfish Artists. This temple⁴, which is hidden EVEN on Google Maps, is home to a powerful and elite organization whose members consist of illustrators, writers, filmmakers, and designers. These superior individuals have sworn, on penalty of blinding by Wacom stylus, to keep the secrets of creativity, and its components, inaccessible to the general public⁵.

After all, it is common knowledge that the act of making art is one that has always been available exclusively to a mere sliver of our society⁶: those who have inexplicably developed impossibly rare talents like draftsmanship, composition, creative writing, and even good color harmony⁷. These god-like powers of creative wonder have always been out of reach for mere mortals; my fellow artists and I, who have enjoyed the spoils of our creativity monopoly⁸, sipping Aperol Spritz in our posh creativity country clubs where we bathe in hot springs whose waters imbue us with raw talent, will fight to keep these powers out of the grubby hands of the commoners.⁹

I do hope you will join me in keeping the gates to creativity fortified! This is what we artists want, above all. It is absolutely the top reason we are opposed to the proliferation of GenAI.¹⁰

1. From the Oxford dictionary definition of the word, Art: The expression or application of human creative skill and imagination, typically in a visual form such as painting or sculpture, producing works to be appreciated primarily for their beauty or emotional power. (Authors note: I see no mention of wealth or privilege as a prerequisite for art creation here.)

2. Everyone can be creative.

3. Learn all my secrets through hundreds of my free videos on YouTube.

4. No such place exists.

5. Artists constantly and generously share literally everything they know about making art on social media, in books, and in schools. Here are just a few public domain art books. And this will blow your mind.

6. Anyone can make art. And, it’s good for you.

7. Free, easy trick for achieving color harmony in digital painting.

8. Free online art classes from Princeton. Amazing free lessons from Proko.

9. Art is not some rare gift or mysterious talent. Art is a skill that is acquired through learning and practice. Anybody can learn more about becoming an artist, for pastime or profession.

10. Not so. Artists are concerned because this new tech is creating clutter at best (millions of same-same images polluting the web and search engines), it is illegal and harmful for creatives at worst (lawsuits are currently filed around data scraped without artists’ permission, artists are already losing work to GenAI), and it is an existential threat at scary-uh-oh-worst-WORST (disinformation abounds and prompting comes with an environmental cost).

A common claim used by proponents of Generative AI is that this technology will “democratize art” (or some variation of this phrasing). Hence the snarky bit of writing above. The implication (at least, as many GenAI fans online interpret it) is that creativity is being selfishly guarded and “gate-kept” by artists and until the arrival of GenAI, the average person could never hope to realize their own creative visions.

In reality, amazing artwork that has moved us all for centuries is simply the result of hard work and dedication to craft. One doesn’t become an artist because their parents were members of the Creativity Country Club. There is nothing aristocratic about the creative act. However, in an age of false narratives, convenience-above-all and instant gratification, it is easier to paint (sorry) artists as ungenerous creativity-hoarders, rather than to demystify the creative process and help others appreciate the time and effort required to produce truly great and timeless stories and art. And so, we find ourselves in a situation where this phrase, “democratize art,” has caught fire as a rallying cry amongst those who are happier to type prompts to produce derivative visual mud and claim the title of, “Artist,” rather than pick up a pencil and draw.

Closing thoughts: GenAI does not seem to be going anywhere for a while. I predict the text-to-image stuff will continue to take up space, even if many grow bored with it, and it will likely continue to do some short-term damage in the creative world. But if it’s here to stay, I want to see all tech companies involved step up and do the following:

1. Pay artists fairly (key word!) for any and all model training, not just going forward, but retroactively. This is the right thing to do, full stop.

2. I want to see the creation of A.I. tools that can be fully customized and used as non-authoring parts of the artist’s process; the tools should be practical, offer unobtrusive assistance, and never take away the amount of control or sense of true authorship that makes an artist’s work unique and personal.

3. Continuing this thought: build A.I. that improve the functionality of the existing tools artists rely on every day (selections, transformations, pixelation, color correction, brush modification, accurate mark-making, better line smoothing, more flexibility and granularity with any editing process, etc.), thus providing speed and efficiency that is required for professionals to meet their deadlines, without “doing the work for them.”

4. Ask real working artists what they want from this tech and collaborate directly with them to create it.

5. Teach children the importance of making things with their hands and with their own skills (no matter how limited or untrained). Teach them to understand the difference between prompting (ordering a pizza) and drawing (making a pizza from scratch).

6. The companies building and implementing this tech must all make it a priority to tell the public how the sausage is made and acknowledge that none of it would exist without the inspiring and beautiful creations of artists over the last several centuries.

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