An Artist's Advantage in An AI World
2-It’s a difficult time for traditional artists.
A recession is looming, budgets are tightening, and now AI art is taking over the Internet.
Pop in a couple of keywords, choose your favorite style, and BAM – a beautiful piece of art just for you.
No artist required.
Today I saw a post from a local artist bemoaning the AI trend. They said:
“Maybe for my next show I should just print a bunch of AI paintings, because apparently that’s what passes for art now.”
A commenter suggested that consumers who claim to care about art should continue supporting ‘real’ artists.
I think they’re both missing the point.
What if the AI art trend is an opportunity for artists to be even more valuable than ever before?
Quick disclaimer:
AI Art is definitely theft. No doubt about that.
And I predict that in 2-3 years these companies will “lose” in court, in one way or another.
Perhaps artists will compensated in some small way.
But, just like when Napster lost in court, it won’t matter. Pandora’s Box is open and this is the world artists have to work within.
The question artists should be asking is, “Given that this is the world we now live in, what can I personally do about it?”
This article is about taking back control of your art in an AI world.
Art vs Commerce
First, let’s be clear:
Consumers do not have a responsibility to support professional artists. Professional artists have a responsibility to create art that consumers want to support.*
There’s a long-standing mindset of entitlement in the art community. I know from my decade + of being a full-time magician and comedian.
Artists assume that consumers should support them, hire them, buy their art, simply because they, the artist, have put so much effort into creating it.
Sorry, it doesn’t work like that. Van Gogh died broke.
A Unique Opportunity
So if consumers don’t have a responsibility to support artists, and there’s an increasingly powerful AI ability for consumers to avoid artists altogether, what’s the opportunity?
Really smart artists are going to lean into the one thing an AI can’t do:
Connect with people on a human level.
And how do we connect with people on a human level?
By telling stories.
By and large, people don’t buy art because of the art itself. They buy it because of the story behind, about, or surrounding the art.
In 2019 an artist duct-taped a banana to a wall, called the piece ‘Comedian’, and sold it for $120,000 (three times, actually).
The people who bought it weren’t buying a banana, or a piece of duct tape. In fact, they were instructed to replace the banana and/or duct tape as needed.
Rather, they were buying a story to tell their friends at dinner parties.
Is that story worth $120,000? Not to me, but definitely to someone.
Or consider how much it costs an author to hire Chip Kidd to design their book cover.
You can get a book cover for $20 on Fiverr, $200 from an up-and-coming artist, $2,000 from a professional, or $20,000 from Chip Kidd.
(probably – I don’t actually know how much he charges)
Are Chip’s covers really 10x better than most professional artists?
Of course not.
But the author who pays Chip Kidd gets to say, “The guy that designed my cover is the same guy that designed Jurassic Park.”
It’s a story.
When an event planner hires me to keynote their event for $10,000 they’re not just getting a great 45-min keynote on human connection.
They get to tell the CEO, “I booked the guy who gave that famous TEDx talk with 3.5 million views!”
So, what’s this got to do with AI generated art?
Humans Love Stories
If you’re a traditional artist fearful for your career, now is the time to focus less on your technique and more on your storytelling.
Not just the story you tell with the painting, drawing, or sculpture itself. But the story about the art, how it came to be, what you were thinking when you designed it, what it might represent.
My friend Adam is an art teacher by day, and a world renowned puppet builder with 100,000 subscribers on his YouTube channel & podcast by night.
Before getting diagnosed with brain cancer, I was helping Adam work on a TEDx talk about this very topic. During one coaching session he told me:
“Today, people don’t buy art. They buy a piece of the artist.”
Artists who wish to financially support themselves and their families with nothing but their art have always had a difficult job.
It’s very, very difficult to weave a compelling story to a consumer that evokes a strong enough emotion to move them to part with their money.
That’s why so few would-be professional artists succeed.
What it takes is constant reinvention and regularly negotiating the line between what you want to create as an artist, and what the consumer is willing to pay for.
The Hard Truth
The world doesn’t owe artists anything. It’s scary, and it’s always been that way. But artists who do the hard work to stay relevant and meet the needs of their audience survive.
And the artists who last, be it decades or centuries, are rarely the most skillful technicians. It’s those who connect with an audience on a deep, emotional level.
An artist’s competitive advantage in an AI world is not their brush strokes, but their humanity.
👉 But I want to hear from YOU. Artists and non-artists: Does AI generated art represent an existential threat? Is it no big deal? Or something in-between?
*Here I’m using “professional artist” to distinguish between those who make a living with their art, and those who make art for art’s sake. The obvious exception to this entire article is non-commercial art. Artists who are not trying to make a living with their art have no responsibility to anyone. Nor are they relevant to this conversation.
