blurredlineswr122 - Tumblr blog

[blurredlineswr122]

✩Author's Note✩

From a personal perspective, after some lighter research, I do believe that AI is corrupting the arts, overall. I think the conversations can be complicated of course, and get relatively meta — if AI is human-created, then is everything it creates human-created, is the AI credited or the prompter pulling the strings? It gets messy and it gets messy fast, there's not a ton of answers, certainly not ones that I can provide. Overall, however, I believe that AI has no place in more formal elements of art. No computer should have the capacity or credit to create something that can be compared to art like that of Elisabetta Sirani, and it should not be praised the same. Art is often made in the creation of it all, not the product, thus AI is not producing art, there’s only a product, and there is no process. The same can be said in writing, AI it eliminates originality and the writing process that makes writing and stories what they are. It destroys the accuracy and research process and instead scrubs the internet for unreliable information that the AI crafts to what it thinks the prompter wants. This begins to corrode the integrity of writing as a whole and the writing process. Beyond this, it seems that AI has begun to dip into people's privacy, as seen in the matters of Scarlett Johanson and music artists like Bad Bunny. In the end, there has been little to no restriction on the use of AI and where it could and is going, and it has become an increasing concern of mine in the arts.

Art Left to Right: Timoclea Elisabetta Sirani, Portia Harming Her Thigh Elisabetta Sirani, Judith with the Head of Holofernes Elisabetta Sirani

[blurredlineswr122]

✩Scarlett Johanson and Open AI ✩

A recent piece of AI news can be seen in Scarlett Johanson’s accusations against Open AI. She claims that Open AI had requested to use her voice for the AI program, specifically the voice for Sky in the launch of Chat GBT 4. She, in the movie Her, had voiced an AI character, seemingly the inspiration for this chanced role. She is said to have denied the request, and when asked to reconsider she never got the chance before ChaptGPT 4.0 dropped, and the voice, in her words, “...is so eerily similar to hers that her closest friends could not tell the difference.” (Guynn). 

The response, was of course, that the voice was not meant to replicate hers. They claim that the voice actor was decided before they even reached out to the actress. However, Mr. Altman, the man who had reached out to Johannson and the owner of ChatGPT, had already tweeted out ‘Her,’ in reference to the AI voice and Johanson’s role. 

After receiving letters and being asked to detail how the voice was made, the voice, ‘Sky,’ has been removed. SAG-AFTRA, an important part of the entertainment industry's protection against AI, has gotten involved, siding staunchly with Johanson and expressing concern about the blurred lines and the rights that she has to her voice.

Works Cited

Guynn, Jessica, and Bailey Schulz. “Scarlett Johansson Says OpenAI

Copied Her Voice for ChatGPT’s Sky. Sam Altman Denies It.” MSN, 21 May 2024, www.msn.com/en- us/news/technology/scarlett-johansson-says-openai-stole-her- voice-chatgpts-sky-voice-is-eerily-similar/ar-BB1mKmzC? ocid=BingNewsSerp. 

[blurredlineswr122]

✩ AI and Music ✩

AI songs and music have been popping up everywhere, largely on social media apps like TikTok. In this, often people craft an AI version of an artist's voice and ‘make’ them ‘sing’ other artists’ songs, forging a cover. 

The first issue with this is that artists themselves often do not like it, minus Grimes who once again fought against the grain and enjoyed it. This can be seen in cases like Bad Bunny, who went on social media to discourage fans from listening to the AI cover, calling it, “a shit of a song.” (Chow). The issue here lies in the fact that these creators are using artists' voices and manipulating them to be what they want them to be. Much like the debate about using AI faces of actors, this seems to jump rope with the lines of what is okay and what isn’t, what belongs to the artist, and what belongs to the public. Here, it seems people are split, but many, like Bad Bunny, want their voice to be their own. 

Alongside this, these creations often sound flat and emotionless. There can be a change in pitch and volume, but at the end of the day, it is not a human behind those vocals. There is a lack of creativity and emotion in these recreations. Some musicians however have embraced AI, using it to help them with songwriting and looping tracks, but does that not take away from the musical process? It comes back to the debate on AI writing. Who is the author, and who does the credit belong to? All of this points towards a rocky turn for music, whether good or bad (bad) seems to be up for debate, but no matter what, not everyone is satisfied or pleased with this change and violation. 

Works Cited

Chow, Andrew R. “How Ai Is Transforming Music.” Time, Time, 4 Dec.

2023, time.com/6340294/ai-transform-music-2023/.

Art Used: The Musical Accompaniment - Antonio Barzaghi-Cattaneo, Gaspar de Crayer - Allegoria della Musica, St Cecilia and the Angel - Carlo Saraceni

[blurredlineswr122]

✩ Workers Against AI ✩

As we have seen in the SAG-AFTRA strike, which went well beyond AI and into workers' rights and equal pay, AI has already begun to have a negative effect on the entertainment industry. Part of the strike was the demand for workers to be protected from AI. There is the use of actors' faces without their consent, that they actively fought against. If they can just use someone's face on a much cheaper, exploited actor, what’s the point of paying the face the acceptable amount?

There were also the Writer’s Guild Association’s protests and strikes, which saw the incoming AI and demanded the stop of it, ““AI can’t write or rewrite literary material; can’t be used as source material; and [works covered by union contracts] can’t be used to train AI,” read the WGA’s demands issued on May 1,” (Richardson). They saw the threat to their careers, and as seen in the ways that productions halted, and my soap opera’s writing got even stranger than normal, the world saw the effects of the lack of writers and actors too. 

In the end, many of their demands were met, including that of the ones surrounding AI. There were restrictions put in place on the use of actors' likenesses, alongside the pay that they received. There were also limitations applied to the use of AI in screenwriting. Their demands were met as the world seemed to accept that AI does not fill the role of humans and does not satisfy within the entertainment industry. 

Works Cited

Richardson, Kalia, and Krystie Lee Yandoli. “SAG-AFTRA Members

Toast Historic Victory against AI: ‘It Was up to Us.’” Rolling Stone, Rolling Stone, 9 Nov. 2023, www.rollingstone.com/tv-movies/tv- movie-features/sag-aftra-actors-strike-deal-celebration-artificial- intelligence-streaming-hollywood-amptp-1234874168/. 

Collier , Kevin. “Actors vs. AI: Strike Brings Focus to Emerging Use of

Advanced Tech.” NBCNews.Com, NBCUniversal News Group, 14 July 2023, www.nbcnews.com/tech/tech-news/hollywood-actor- sag-aftra-ai-artificial-intelligence-strike-rcna94191. 

[blurredlineswr122]

✩Movies and AI ✩

While not completely perfect, not anywhere close actually, AI is beginning to make movies. It has begun to develop AI images, and thus videos, using human faces and animating them as if it is real human life and actions. Alongside this, as seen in AI writing, there is the potential for scripts to come from AI, leaving the process completely in the hands of AI.  

These movies are not perfected, as seen in the short film Frost, the way that the AI has human moves is often off and leaves an unsettling feeling. Humans often have a way of telling when something, simply put, is not human. Some movie makers, like those in Frost, do not seem to care, rather they have chosen to embrace that, “ ‘We kind of hit a point where we just stopped fighting the desire for photographic accuracy and started leaning into the weirdness that is DALL-E,’ says Stephen Parker at Waymark, the Detroit-based video creation company behind Frost,” (Heaven). If this concept is leaned into, I suppose it is what makes the movie entertaining, what makes it so unique. 

This short film seems to be a success, the style is consistent, and the script seems to satisfy viewers. It still has human support, of course, AI has to be prompted by humans and tweaked to fit the human vision. The AI is a puppet, and humans are the puppeteers, but the entertainment industry is used to flesh puppets, not AI-rendered ones.

Works Cited 

Heaven, Will Douglas. “Welcome to the New Surreal: How Ai-

Generated Video Is Changing Film.” MIT Technology Review, MIT Technology Review, 18 Dec. 2023, www.technologyreview.com/2023/06/01/1073858/surreal-ai- generative-video-changing-film/. 

[blurredlineswr122]

✩ Artificial Intelligence and Poetry ✩

One world of AI writing that seems to be in limbo can be found in poetry. Poetry is often centered around the human experience, ranging from grief and loss to sexuality, to allegories of religion, to the very simple poems describing something, but they are the human experience, nonetheless. AI does not have a human experience, rather it searches the internet to make it appear that it has had a human revelation that it is incapable of having. 

As all AI does, when crafting poetry it responds to prompts and learns from the reactions. Poets, I would imagine, do similar things, but their ideas are theirs, they belong to them at the end of the day. They may take into consideration what they have been told, but they are not coded to listen, not obligated to in the same way that AI is. AI takes human response and crafts it based on the human reaction. In this, is the artist the AI, or rather the human that prompted it the dozens, or hundreds, of artists that it deep dove the internet to copy, and every person that has reacted to what the AI has done and allowed it to learn.

With this, poetry is not the story that AI seems to struggle to keep track of. It has the opportunity to be short and avant-garde, though it usually sticks to a basic format, which gives the computers more room to move, more room for error disguised as success. This can be seen in an article by The Washington Post called Does an AI poet actually have a soul?

While interesting, maybe even a bit ominous, it means nothing. It’s pulling from fears and entertainment that the AI knows that humans have enjoyed previously since it knows everything that’s ever been posted on the internet, whether we want it to or not. So, it has seen Terminator and Pacific Rim, and it knows our fears about machines, robots, and AI like Ultron, and it used that. It used data and logic where human emotion and soul should have been. Maybe AI is thinking, but it is not feeling. Poetry, I would argue, needs feeling to mean a thing. Interesting does not mean good, and it certainly does not mean art.

Works Cited 

Morgenthau, Josh. “Does an AI Poet Actually Have a Soul?”

Washington Post, 6 Aug. 2023,  webcache.googleusercontent.com/search? q=cache%3Ahttps%3A%2F%2Fwww.washingtonpost.com%2Fb ooks%2F2023%2F08%2F05%2Fi-am-code-davinci-002-ai- poems%2F&rlz=1C1VDKB_enUS1077US1077&oq=cache%3Ahttp s%3A%2F%2Fwww.washingtonpost.com%2Fbooks%2F2023%2 F08%2F05%2Fi-am-code-davinci-002-ai- poems%2F&gs_lcrp=EgZjaHJvbWUyBggAEEUYOTIGCAEQRRg6 0gEIMTQ2NmowajSoAgCwAgE&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8. 

[blurredlineswr122]

✩ Stories and Students✩ AI and Writing✩

Simply put, I do not think AI writing has yet reached the point of truly jeopardizing researchers, academics, or authors. The writing style of AI on a large scale tends to be dry, and even elementary, beyond that it sounds like it is trying too hard to make its point with its choice of language. Alongside this, it does not vet its sources as a human would be able to, rather it scrubs through the internet. A human can manage to understand that these are not all reliable sources, and can use them to interpret, a task that AI seems to struggle with thus far.

AI is also not at the point where it seems to be coming for any fantasy author’s job. The stories are dry and basic, they follow a similar plot of an elementary schooler reflecting what they have seen in Disney movies, rather than creating any sort of new concepts. It also cannot seem to keep track of itself within these basic plots. It seems to lose the point and topic at hand as it continues to try and spin a narrative. However, on a basic level, AI is still corrupting the future of writing.

Access that students have to this AI is chipping away at basic writing skills. Any job actually ever, at least in a more professional setting will require, at the least, basic writing skills. However, students are now able to lean on AI as an unneeded crutch. In using AI, students do not learn these basic skills, instead relying on the mediocrity of AI, though unreliable and often wrong. AI is taking away the opportunity for students to take the time and grow with their writing, the open access is too tempting, and too easy, for struggling students to use and abuse. 

How many writers are we losing to AI? People, students in particular, want to cut corners, they want the easiest and the most efficient ways of doing things, but how many great essays have gone unwritten, how many research papers have been flagged as AI when they could have been published with a bit of effort? Is the want for AI to make our lives easier actually making it easier, or is it making us worse at things that we have spent so long mastering and integrating into our lives and culture?

Art Used (Left to Right): Caravaggio - Saint Jerome Writing, St. Luke - Writing Master of the Parrot 1525-50, Hans Holbein le Jeune - Portrait of Erasmus

[blurredlineswr122]

✩ Painting and The Worth of Art: Hugues Merle and The World vs Artificial Art ✩

One of these is a Hugues Merle piece from the nineteenth century, one that sold for between two hundred and fifty to three hundred and fifty thousand dollars. The other is AI art. Disturbingly, at a glance, the two are similar. They reflect a similar aesthetic of the post-renaissance and the composition of more romantic portraits. Even the use of light can be said to be similar, the focus of the light on both their faces. Alongside this, in the Hugues painting it comes from the window, in the AI it comes from the fire, both natural light sources displayed in the pieces.

When further analyzed, the mirage falls away. The AI art is too smooth to be anything but that, artificial and computer-made, while the Hugue piece shows brush strokes from hours and days, years, of painstaking work. Yet, they are still grossly similar, similar enough that they can be compared in the first place. They are similar enough that one has to pause and wonder which is which, real versus AI at least at a glance. 

That is degrading. It is degrading to any artist that a computer can spit out an image, an image inspired by hundreds of years of artistry, in seconds. Whereas Hugues spent what was likely years on his interpretation of Hamlet and Ophelia. He took a story and brought it to life, he spent time and money, and this was his life’s work. His entire life was painting, his collection is vast and famous across the globe, including pieces like Mary Magdalene in the Cave, which haunts Pinterest, Tumblr, and art history classes. The AI art on the left was prompted by what was likely a teenage girl who is too into fantasy novels, (she is relatable, do not get me wrong) but there is no effort put into this art. Is it art if there is not an idea, or at least a person, behind the creation? Is it art if there is no thought and effort, even Duchamp who presented a urinal as art signed his name, and had a distinct concept, even if it did not take him the years it took Hugues to produce? A computer and AI have none of that, humanity, concept, nor signature. It has, instead, swept the internet and taken fragments of the artists’ past, as many artists do, but rather than putting its spin on it, it cannot because it has no spin, it has no life.

Which is what makes this so confusing, and so disheartening. The AI art can quickly be decoded as just that, AI, but still it serves its purpose, with a glance it deceives the eye and mind as a piece that took work. AI will only get better, and its ability to render art will only get better, and grow greater, adding the mistakes that real artists cherish as a part of the process, and becoming more and more convincing. What will the difference be then? Will we be able to decipher a Rubens from a computer if we are not experts? Will we throw out the greats, (Very flawed humans, don’t get me wrong. Rubens married his 16-year-old niece when he was 53, but they were humans and wonderful artists I suppose.) who changed the meaning of art time and time again, for a computer that takes their very designs, because they are faster, more efficient, and smoother? Even though it is just a culmination of the humans that came before. Will it be the downfall of the very artists that built them? It shouldn’t be, but oftentimes humans seem to prefer efficiency and technology as opposed to art and credit where it is due.

Works Cited

Hugues Merle Paintings for Sale | Hugues Merle Art Value Price

Guide, www.invaluable.com/artist/merle-hugues- 6kmc4o2cj1/sold-at-auction-prices/. Accessed 20 May 2024

Pin from Luna on the art board: Renaissance paintings, vintage art,

historical art." Pinterest, 15 May 2024, pin.it/z2aIkV85u. 

Art Used: Hamlet and Ophelia by Hugues Merle

[blurredlineswr122]

✩ Blurred Lines ✩ Directory Page ✩

The effects of AI on the arts.

AI is corrupting forms of art, writing, painting, movie media, and music.

✩Writing✩

Stories and Students Poetry

✩Painting✩

Painting and The Worth of Art: Hugues Merle and the World vs Artificial Art

✩Movies/Entertainment✩

AI and the Creation of Movies Workers against AI

✩Music/Voices✩

AI Music Scarlett Johanson and Open AI

✩Author's Note✩

Final Thoughts

Art Used (Left to Right): Eva Gonzalès - La Toilette (The Toilet), John Everett Millais- The Martyr of Solway, Ser Lawrence Alma-Tadema - The Favorite Poet

Art Used in Header:

Background: Victor Gabriel Gilbert - The Ball Profile Photo: Hugues Merle - Thoughts Far Away