Behind the Writing: "Rest Assured, Artists; You'll Always Be Better than AI"
Art is expression, after all.
It’s been a while, everyone.
I know I haven’t been active on my Substack lately—and I definitely should be—but I really have been hard at work on several writing projects. That and other personal life challenges.
Recently, however, I had an essay published in Reclamation Magazine. I’ve been a contributor to Reclamation for a while now, and I’m always grateful whenever they choose to publish my work. They have been incredibly supportive of my writing for the entire time I have worked with them.
Most recently, they published an essay that you can find here. It is a short essay about AI—in particular, AI-generated art. The essay explores the impact that AI-generated art is having on artists in the real world. With programs like ChatGPT, Midjourney, etc., AI is “revolutionizing” how people create content. I say “content” instead of “art” because I argue—in the essay, that is—that those are not the same.
The essay was published just a week ago and it has been received positively among readers, which I am very happy about. AI has been a frustrating topic for several artists. There is a divide between artists who are embracing the new technology’s capabilities and those who refuse to even go near it. Some artists fear—rightfully so—that AI could make their careers obsolete. If AI can write as well as you, draw as well as you, and create as well as you, then why would an employer prefer to pay you over using a tool completely free of charge? As evident from the layoffs at Buzzfeed which announced experimenting with AI to create their content, AI can easily become a labor issue.
But as I argued in the piece, AI will never surpass human artists. It lacks the human touch and human experience, which is necessary to form any sort of connection between the artist and their audience. The talking points for using AI to create content is focused on productivity. It can help you create it faster. It can make things easier for you. You don’t have to put in the work anymore. And so on. But those talking points reveal a capitalist view of art. We are not production machines. AI could be that. But not us humans. Call me a hopeless romantic, but we’re meant to be more than that.
The essay explored the idea of the human connection between artist and their audience, but there were some other points that didn’t make it into the piece. And I’ve been wanting to do a sort of “Behind the Writing” series with my Substack for a while now. So I thought, for the first installment, I can talk about the background and context of this essay, what sparked it, the research I did, and a few more points that I wish had made their way into the published piece.
Thus, let’s talk a little more about *sigh* AI.
1. AI is a fascinating topic for me.
Okay, so I’m deluding myself a bit. I actually find artificial intelligence very fascinating. It’s the philosophy major in me. I focused on ethics and morality during my undergrad, but studying philosophy was fun regardless of the subject matter. So despite the frustrations regarding AI and art, I can’t help but be curious about the philosophical questions these frustrations raise. No matter how you look at AI, it will bring up a lot of questions and possibly very few answers.
My initial idea for the article was simple: AI-generated art cannot compete with those of a human. In some ways, that thesis stayed the same. But the reasons for the thesis did not.
My knee-jerk reaction to AI-generated art was a long-winded rant that became the first draft to this article. It took me a few weeks to draft it, though. Prior to writing it, I had to do research, which meant trying out ChatGPT for myself.
2. AI is not as revolutionary as we claim…yet.
Initially, I did not want to touch it. I read through articles of visual artists getting their artwork and art styles plagiarized by AI software. I felt like using it would be a betrayal to what I believed and my solidarity for the artists. But I was writing about AI, and it is proper to get as much perspective as possible. Thus, I tried out ChatGPT.
And I was disappointed in it. I’ll admit that it could be because it’s still in its early stages—whatever that means—but I was expecting more from ChatGPT. It’s claimed to help you write your book, after all. But perhaps I was expecting too much too soon. I tested ChatGPT with a few prompts and were given simplistic results. One of them was to write a poem about puppies in the style of Charles Bukowski, and it turned out like this:
I don’t think Bukowski would have come up with something like this.
Another prompt was to write a scene about two men fighting over a glass of water in the style of David Foster Wallace. Anyone who has read Wallace would know that his sentences go on forever for multiple pages in stream of consciousness. But it came up with this:
The sun bore down upon the desolate wasteland, casting harsh shadows upon the two men who staggered across the sand. They were gaunt and hollow-eyed, their bodies wracked with thirst.
In the distance, a glimmer of light caught their eye. As they drew closer, the men could see that it was a glass of water, glinting in the sun like a beacon of hope.
But hope can be a dangerous thing, as the two men quickly discovered. They both lunged for the glass at the same time, their desperation turning to fury.
Their hands collided with a sharp crack, and the glass shattered into a thousand glittering shards. Water spilled out onto the sand, evaporating in the heat before either man could get so much as a drop.
For a moment, they stood there in stunned silence, staring at the shards of glass at their feet. And then, almost as one, they began to weep.
Tears of anger, of frustration, of grief. Tears that flowed for all the things they had lost, and all the things they would never have.
And as the sun began to set, casting long shadows across the wasteland, the two men continued their journey, their eyes still wet with tears, their spirits broken but unbroken.
That’s definitely not Wallace. Again, perhaps I was expecting too much from the AI. But I don’t think it can do the revolutionary things we expect it to, at least for writing. It can probably help you with your writing. But I don’t think it can do your writing for you.
Not yet, at least. As mentioned, it could just be in its early stages in regards to creative writing. We’ve already seen what it can do for visual art. The technology is advancing rapidly and it could only be a matter of time when it can pass the Turing test for creative writing. But at the time of this writing, ChatGPT cannot win the Pulitzer Prize.
3. AI could be boring and frustrating for creative writers.
So the main selling point of AI is to help you out with your workflow and make it easier for you. And there’s plenty of options for you to use. There’s ChatGPT, JasperAI, Midjourney, Dramaton, and so on. These programs could make your life a lot easier if they did the work for you.
Or can they? At least, that’s the idea. But for some reason—and maybe this is just me—I could not learn how to integrate AI into my workflow. How do I make it come up with ideas for me when I already have so many ideas in my head? How do I have it write the stories I want to write when I’m already working on them myself? How do I have it write a poem for me when I find what it comes up with inadequate?
I have read the articles of others using AI to do their writing, their work for them. But I couldn’t do that myself. For one, I already thought that ChatGPT was unable to fully write what I wanted to write. What it came up with was not what I wanted to come up with. It never shared my vision. So that made the use of AI frustrating.
Furthermore, the more I tried using AI for my writing, I came up with another unexpected conclusion: AI is boring. Let’s say it can do your writing for you. Well, what are you going to do? You’re a writer. If you let AI do the writing for you, what is left for you? Writing can be frustrating, sure. But it’s the work that made me fall in love with it. I love coming up with stories, feeling my character’s emotions, expressing what I am feeling on the page, the rhythm of the clacking on the keyboard. I’m feeling that way as I type this late at night after a long and terrible day at work. Writing is my job. Writing is my life. Writing is what I’m feeling. Why would I want to give that up to AI? What would be left for me?
No. The writing is mine. It takes a certain kind of discipline to turn writing into a lifestyle. And there is a selfish sense of pride in feeling productive with your writing, to nurture your self-esteem by knowing you did it all on your own. Again, the writing is mine. I refuse to let AI take what makes me feel human.
4. AI cannot replace the human experience and connection.
I had a lot of thoughts on AI before I began, obviously. I have a lot of thoughts on it still. But despite all I mentioned above, the thesis of the article boiled down to one specific premise: AI cannot replace human art because it cannot replace the human experience and connection.
This was the most humanistic premise I came up with. Because maybe one day AI will be able to come up with Pulitzer Prize-winning works. Maybe one day AI will be able to replicate sentences like David Foster Wallace. But it can write about the human experience all it wants. It cannot write from the human experience. AI writes outwards. Humans write inwards, from their lives, thoughts, and emotions. AI can try to write like a human, but it will never succeed in doing so.
Perhaps, if we one day reach a Futurama-like reality, AI can write about their own personal experiences and history. But AI is not currently going to receive fan mail for their writing. It can try to write what I’m feeling, but it cannot understand why I am feeling it, or how. That belongs to us humans and humans alone.
I began the article by mentioning Septology* by Jon Fosse. It was the book I was reading as I conceived and researched for my article on AI. Jon Fosse was a revelation to me. I didn’t know anyone could write like he did. But that’s beauty of us humans. We are amazing in our own individual ways.
It helped to read Jon Fosse while I was writing my article. It reminded me of what us humans are capable of, why we’re so good at it, and why we’ll always be good at it. Humans are absolutely fucking incredible. AI cannot compare. Even if they one day find a way to write their own novels, they cannot write our novels.
If this Substack post felt like a bit of a repeat from the article mentioned, it’s because it kinda was. Exploring the context and backstory of how the article came to be only reinforced what was ultimately published. It’s validating, really—knowing that you have no doubt about what you believe in. And I believe in us.
Writing is a difficult and often frustrating endeavor. But AI can never take it from me. It can try. But writing is a lifestyle, a way to live. I will never give that up.
Until next time! Keep writing, everyone!
*This article contains a link to my Bookshop page. As an affiliate, I gain a small commission for any purchases made off that link. If you wish to support me so that I can keep writing, feel free to further browse my Bookshop page or simply buy me a coffee. Otherwise, subscribe to my Substack below. Thank you always for your support.