In the early ‘60, freelance graphic designer James Harvey designed a box for the Brillo Manufacturing Company. In 1964, Andy Warhol displayed a bunch of simulated Brillo Boxes—he sillscreened the Brillo logo onto wooden boxes. These are key works of the Pop art movement. But ironically, Harvey was also a fine artist—he painted in an abstract expressionist idiom. Irving Sandler knew both artists, and tried to set up a meeting, but Harvey died in 1965 before he could arrange anything. The art world needs Warhols, obviously, but just as much it needs Harveys. Most artists aren’t rewriting art history—most of them are not even signing their work. Every day you are surrounded with the work of artists—they designed the pages you are reading on the device on which you are reading this post, they designed the furniture you are sitting on. The patterns on your clothes, your wallpaper, the building you are in right now. Artists like Andy Warhol float atop a vast sea of other artists. And as the Brillo Box story implies, the Andy Warhols of the world depend on a world of existing artists—in fact, Warhol himself comes from that vast underclass of commercial artists, He got his start making delightful advertising drawings. The massive and impressive oaks or the art world grow out of a loam of a vast artistic working class. At the risk of sounding alarmist, AI threatens the loam.
Most of the artwork done at that level is not terribly creative or expressive. For example, I have received hundreds of pieces of junk mail advertising candidates for the local elections we just had. Some artistic grunts designed every one of those flyers. Someone (the campaigns, I assume) hired some design firms to produce these flyers. So if you were a campaign manager, or any kind of manager for a public-facing enterprise, wouldn’t it be nice to be able to avoid hiring designers, copy writers, illustrators, photographers, etc? You could save money and time and not have to deal with creatives (who can be a pain in your ass).
As an example of this very process, I want to mention PowerPoint, the slide show software that comes as part of the Microsoft Office package. Making slide shows has long been a part of business presentations. But making a slide presentation was a labor-intensive process—you had to get designers to produce the slides. Those graphs of quarterly sales figures weren’t going to draw themselves! That was eliminated by PowerPoint. It was designed so that the manager no longer had to hire designers, either internally or freelance. (Even though I can’t prove this, I think PowerPoint made slideshows a ubiquitous part of meetings in a way they weren’t before.)
So my prediction is that all those low-level art grunt jobs will disappear, replaced by managers using AI. Will this affect the art world that we see in museums and galleries? Will Simone Leigh’s artistic vocation, for example, be affected in any way. (I am thinking about Simone Leigh because the MFAH just installed a massive sculpture by her in front of the Kinder Building.) Leigh still has a job because the infrastructure supporting her career is already in place.
One can imagine a situation where there slowly get fewer and fewer professional artists because all of the commercial art jobs will be done by managers using AI software. So the elementary school kid who goes on a field trip to the MFAH on a Wednesday and is inspired by Simone Leigh may find fewer art programs offered by the time she gets to college. The function of art as an expression of the artist will still exist, but art as communication (in commerce or ordinary civic life) will disappear. Art departments in colleges will wither as the demand for them declines. The art world will still exist because it is impossible to imagine humans not making art. We did it from the very beginning of our humanity. But its purpose has changed drastically as humanity has changed, and I think a big change is happening right now.
I am closing out this post with terrible image by one of my favorite artists, Gilbert Hernandez. Pretty much all artists I know hate AI, so the sentiment is unsurprising. But as a work of art, it is simply lazy. Gilbert Hernandez has been a mainstay of Fantagraphics since the early 1980s, but publisher Gary Groth should have said, Gilbert, try again.
I was curious how I would have created this cover using AI. I went online, looked up “free AI image generator”, had several options laid out for me, picked one called dezgo.com and gave it the following prompt: “Teenage boy dancing, his arms and legs akimbo. He has black hair. He is wearing a red t shirt and black shorts. On the T shirt are the words "fuck AI". He is in a white room.” I “modeled”it using a model called “FurryToonMix”, which presumably uses a lot of manga and anime as a basic style guide. Here’s what it spit out.
Why it included a red rectangle, I don’t know. If it had been created by a human artist, I would describe that a whimsical personal choice that went against my specific instructions. I changed my prompt to: “Teenage boy dancing, his arms and legs akimbo. He has black hair. He is wearing a red t shirt and black shorts. On the T shirt are the words "fuck AI" written in yellow in English. He is in a blank, white room. There is nothing else in the room.”
None of these quite followed my prompt right. Dezgo.com, you are fired as my AI illustrator! If you can’t follow simple instructions, I may have to go back to hiring human beings!
It took me seconds to get these images. Why does there need to be a substrate of commercial illustrators or designers to produce them anymore? Art will survive, but how it is produced and why will change. Think about how quickly human society changed when social media arrived.
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A nice example of AI not being able to produce hands
This lIfetime artistic grunt agrees with everything you said. Warhol's appropriation of James Harvey's product packaging design was a wonderful way to begin this, too. I can remember when Adobe finally made it able to draw a vector circle back in 1988 and we all thought computers would ruin graphic designer careers, but it didn't happen. I feel AI tools will be much more impactful as it matures.