With AI-generated art saturating timelines and job boards, and digital tools rapidly redefining creative industries, Vertigo sat down with two UTS students – Sunny and Victoria – both visual artists with strong opinions and even sharper wit. Equal parts informing and unfiltered, this conversation dives into the blurred lines between tool and theft, expression and imitation.
Interviewer: First, why do you think visual art spaces are so queer?
Sunny: Because art, historically, has been something that accepts so many different people. Because art was never at the forefront of media or news, it was much easier to be expressive while hiding communities away from the mainstream where they were safe from scrutiny. I feel like now, that art space has been built as queer foundation, as queerness, which deviates from society’s norm, continues to flourish in that space.
Victoria: I think, because with dancing or non-visual art, you’re still limited by the medium itself. With visual art it’s like, pure self expression. You can draw any character, you can make any character, you can put in any colors, you can put in text and it's still visual art. Because it's such a big form of self expression, general society have to turn to that as a way to express themselves, and that in turn has created like a whole community doing the same thing which over time, has grown into the art community being full of all of these people just wanting to express themselves and communicate ideas and political thoughts through.
Interviewer: What would you define “AI Art” as?
Sunny and Victoria simultaneously: Dookie.
Interviewer: Anything else?
Sunny: Dookie, but more importantly, a mockery of real art. It feels so insulting because I feel that art is such an insanely incredible display of human emotion and passion. It’s all born out of a place of emotion, something that AI can never experience, so to say it can be better than something someone sat down to consider and really feel, just because it may look pristine at a glance, is just ludicrous.
Victoria: Well I don’t really want to call it ‘art’, it is just image scraping and mashing really. I would define it as a version of fraud. It’s an insult, sure, but it’s also just an evil misunderstanding that art is art because it’s human, not because it’s good. Digital image generation is just theft.
Interviewer: Would you say digital image generation/AI art has impacted the art industry positively or negatively?
Sunny: A bit of both, but mostly negatively? I think the only positive impact has been that a lot of people have turned away from AI to be more appreciative of real artists. The negatives are endless though, it takes away the livelihoods of most artists who live off commissions, and dismisses their talents anyway. People are forgetting art is a luxury that is accessible to everyone and are choosing a soulless environment destroying medium vs passion, dedication and talent.
However, it did positively impact my life because every time I feel lazy, I remember there are people who use AI art bots.
Victoria: We had an industry talk about this a bit ago with Buck Design. They were explaining to us the obvious negatives and how deep their roots go. Things like misinformation, which is massive in all aspects of AI, not just art, and putting people out of their jobs en mass. It’s been incredibly negative and has forced a weird shift, where companies are made to use AI so they don’t get left behind or called ‘difficult’. The way they do it is they'll have a few concept artworks and then they'll run it through the AI to generate more new ideas, and then they'll redraw what was given to them. Use it as a tool, even if they don’t want to.
Interviewer: How can you tell when something is AI generated?
Sunny: It’s like… ok… in the wise words of the one twitter user…
It also just looks flawless in a bad way. There’s the obvious six fingers and fucked up linework, but it’s all in the exact same anime style where there’s everything flying around and turns into mush and mess. It looks like a weird puddle of colours dropped onto a page, almost as if the AI’s inability to comprehend emotions and confusion to humanity reveals itself.
Victoria: The best way to describe it is like, perfect mistakes. Beautifully rendered hair that isn’t connected to the head. Clothing folds that blend into the background. Then the more obvious but still perfectly rendered 6 fingered hands – AI is terrible at hands. It’s all these mistakes that could not be done by a human being. A human can make a bad light mistake, they’ll never put an extra finger onto someone.
Interviewer: What should we do about it?
Sunny: Bring back public shaming. Bring back public executions. We must kill. In actuality, we need to boycott AI in so many aspects of life, because as soon as it entered the public, we all became so reliant on it. Schoolwork, replacing Google but with less accuracy, we’re allowing it to take over academia and the creatives. We need to recognise creative human achievement and turn towards appreciating the creative human spirit instead of diminishing and undermining it using another human made tool.
Victoria: There are no easy answers, and any answer just starts so many arguments. When someone posts AI and as an art student you’re like ‘pick up a pencil’ they will post the worst photo of the character holding a pencil and you've ever seen and they're like ‘why would I do that when I can do this?’.
We can't let it take over, obviously, so the best you can do is just take as much control as possible – use it as a tool. Buck Design try to use it as a tool to take control of the reins. They’re still doing the artworks themselves. It's just a tool, and though you wouldn't want to use it at all, it's just trying to force it into the process for the inevitable future where it becomes way more relevant and they have to use it. At least they’ll already know what to do.
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