I was reading around Substack and came across Comics Odyssey’s post The Word Became FLESH: Art and Creation in the Age of AI – On making art with the human body.
In it, the author who goes by Ulysses, wrote:
The rise of AI art tools has sparked fresh debates around creativity, authenticity, and what it means to make art. AI empowers a single user to accomplish what once required many hands. As Mary Shelly so deftly explored in her now classic novel, technological advancement comes at a cost. Reflecting on indie comics from the 1970s, I think about the hurdles creators faced – not just in finishing projects, but in building supportive collaborative networks around their work.
Those comics grew from community and friction. The creators didn’t work in isolation; they forged friendships and connections. Though filled with technological and financial chokepoints, this process generated creative possibilities unique to the human experience.
It’s fascinating to me that so many people outside of the visual art space are so supportive of using AI generative tools over humans.
Ulysses goes on:
That style emerges from the friction of limitation which carves a space where your personality can shine through.
And it is with this friction that humans remain human. I don’t call AI a tool when used in the arts. It’s the slop maker. Taking what it has been fed from the millions of data points and defecates out something that matches the inputs you supplied.
Here’s a comment I left where I used the HOETECC idea again:
The AI tools of today are not the algorithms of yesterday. AI is not a tool, but a replacement for a previous human expressions when it comes to creative works. Friction and all.
Want to see 100 visual variations of a premise? Type it into a generative AI image tool and wait a few seconds for each version. Presto. No human needed for the visual output.
Want to see 100 copies of a drawing you made? Take a picture, load it into a computer, and click print. Presto. A human was created the drawing and the printer was a tool that made copies of what you told it to.
There’s a huge difference. And as the future unfolds, we’re witnessing what individual people and collections of people (e.g. companies) value when it comes to human creative endeavors.
Support human-only-end-to-end-creativity-chains. Support humans artists.
Please support artists who enjoy the friction in their work.
