Will AI art make the human artist irrelevant?

Published : Apr 06, 2023 11:00 IST - 13 MINS READ It all started innocuously enough, with Wombo, a text-to-image AI app that was all the rage in 2021. The Contagion group, supported by the University of Oxford, is an initiative which “explores how AI, music composition, and narrative theory intersect to help us think in more innovative ways about how creativity and technology can be used to mutual benefit.” During the COVID-19 lockdown, while most of us were binge-watching or learning to make pourover coffee, the Contagion team was busy “curating the dataset, which is made up of literary texts, from the last 2,500 years of pandemic literature” and then running them “into our algorithm and the output for narrative probes”. I log into the Midjourney’s Discord server; the bot issues instructions, I have to go to a “newbie” channel, and then “Type /imagine and then do whatever you want—The bot will send you 4 images in 60 seconds.” After the first halting efforts, I find just the right phrases that can summon the ghost in the machine. His brand of cosmic nihilism seems to be an odd match with AI but the French writer Michel Houellebecq compares his writing to that of architecture, which “like that of great cathedrals, like that of Hindu temples, is much more than a three-dimensional mathematical puzzle… it is entirely imbued with an essential dramaturgy that gives its meaning to the edifice.” Chattoraj’s muscular, realistic style needs references, such as archival photographs or paintings, especially as ours is a period piece, set in the 1930s. “Too good” he says, adding ruefully, “there goes any chance for us artists.” “To me, these prompts have a strange magical cadence, a chant, word made flesh, especially as within seconds of their invocation, perfectly formed images appear.” Emboldened, I set Lovecraft walking the streets of Calcutta, a wraith amongst wraiths.