Can art die?
7d
A couple days ago, I got an e-mail from an artist whose work I've admired for long and from whom I hadn’t heard in a while. He used to call himself an "art hacker" and seemed to be what many of us would call "succesful" - he had good jobs in the entertainment industry, got well paid for them and was able to create amazing illustrations with innovative concepts, solid construction and beautiful rendering.
Then, around 2020, at what he said was the peak of his career, he quit. No, he didn't die - in fact, he said he was "alive and well". But he did quit his art jobs, "killed" his artistic persona, completely left the art industry and openly donated 90GB of his stunning digital artwork to public domain. He said it was a deliberate decision of "creative destruction" in face of realizing that, basically, mass-production entertainment was a flawed institution in our society. By quitting his career as an industry-standard concept artist, he said he could free his creative energy from restraints and direct it to fulfill other objectives.
As generative AI came around and started becoming more popular in the latest years, he wrote again. He said “AI is killing art” and seemed very concerned not only about the future of art jobs, but also about the future of humanity and modern society overall.
And below is the most recent message I got from him:
—
“By the end of 2025, most traditional artist jobs will be gone, replaced by a handful of AI-augmented art directors. Right now, around 5 out of 6 concept art jobs are being eliminated, and it's even more brutal for illustrators. This isn't speculation: it's happening right now, in real-time, across studios worldwide.
At this point, dogmatic thinking is our worst enemy. If we want to survive the AI tsunami of 2025, we need to prepare for a brutal cyberpunk reality that isn’t waiting for permission to arrive. This isn't sci-fi or catastrophism. This is a clear-eyed recognition of the exponential impact AI will have on society, hitting a hockey stick inflection point around April-May this year. By July, February will already feel like a decade ago. This also means that we have a narrow window to adapt, to evolve, and to build something new.
Let me make five predictions for the end of 2025 to nail this out:
1 Every major film company will have its first 100% AI-generated blockbuster in production or on screen.
2 Next-gen smartphones will run GPT-4o-level reasoning AI locally.
3 The first full AI game engine will generate infinite, custom-made worlds tailored to individual profiles and desires.
4 Unique art objects will reach industrial scale: entire production chains will mass-produce one-of-a-kind pieces. Uniqueness will be the new mass market.
5 Synthetic AI-generated data will exceed the sum total of all epistemic data (true knowledge) created by humanity throughout recorded history. We will be drowning in a sea of artificial ‘truths’.
For us artists, this means a stark choice: adapt to real-world craftsmanship or high-level creative thinking roles, because mid-level art skills will be replaced by cheaper, AI-augmented computing power.
But this is not the end. This is just another challenge to tackle.
Many will say we need legal solutions. They're not wrong, but they're missing the bigger picture: Do you think China, Pakistan, or North Korea will suddenly play nice with Western copyright laws? Will a "legal" dataset somehow magically protect our jobs? And most crucially, what happens when AI becomes just another tool of control?
Here's the thing - boycotting AI feels right, I get it. But it sounds like punks refusing to learn power chords because guitars are electrified by corporations. The systemic shift at stake doesn't care if we stay "pure", it will only change if we hack it.
Now, the empowerment part: artists have always been hackers of narratives.
This is what we do best: we break into the symbolic fabric of the world, weaving meaning from signs, emotions, and ideas. We've always taken tools never meant for art and turned them into instruments of creativity. We've always found ways to carve out meaning in systems designed to erase it.
This isn't just about survival. This is about hacking the future itself.
We, artists, are the pirates of the collective imaginary. It’s time to set sail and raise the black flag.
I don't come with a ready-made solution.
I don't come with a FOR or AGAINST. That would be like being against the wood axe because it can crush skulls.
I come with a battle cry: let’s flood the internet with debate, creative thinking, and unconventional wisdom. Let’s dream impossible futures. Let’s build stories of resilience - where humanity remains free from the technological guardianship of AI or synthetic superintelligence. Let’s hack the very fabric of what is deemed ‘possible’. And let’s do it together.
It is time to fight back.
Let us be the HumaNet.
Let’s show tech enthusiasts, engineers, and investors that we are not just assets, but the neurons of the most powerful superintelligence ever created: the artist community.”
—
Now I’m a fan of creative debates, so I figure bringing this discussion here could help put our minds to think together.
So what do you guys think? Do these predictions make sense to you? Do you think “AI is killing art”? Do you feel empowered enough as part of an art community to “hack the future” or so? And how do you feel about this whole scenario we’re currently living and witnessing?
Stay well! <3 And let’s share ideas!
Hello Liandro! Good to have you back with some thought provoking questions.
I’ll start by saying that I find this to be a very complex topic with a lot of variables which would require hours of discussions to cover everything. My thoughts on this are also not finalized and might change as I come across new information and discover new perspectives. I’m also talking about this in the framework of making money as an artist. I don’t think that artists who just want to create art for their own enjoyment will be affected by AI.
I’ll tackle each question one by one and try to keep tangents as short as possible.
“Do these predictions make sense to you?”
Pretty much yes. And it’s sad to see that this is the direction we’re heading in.
“Do you think “AI is killing art”?”
I’m not sure I would use the word killing. I don’t see how you could “kill” art. Maybe if you are able to completely erase it (physical or digital) and have no record of it whatsoever, then sure, that could count as “killing” it. But I don’t think AI is killing art.
What I do think, however, is that effortful human-made art will be drowned in a vast sea of AI generated, cookie-cutter, financially viable products, designed to maximize profit and increase user retention as much as possible. I also think that, unfortunately, this will be a successful business strategy for many studios. To me it looks like the majority of art “consumers” don’t really care how art is made, only what they see as the final result.
But let’s say I’m wrong, and most people do care how art is made. If I were to see a movie like Klaus and find out that it’s 90% generated by AI, then it would start feeling empty and superficial. However, for a studio, that might not matter. With a low enough cost to produce such movies they might need a smaller number of consumers to make a profit. And at the end of the day, that seems to be a major variable for everyone involved.
“Do you feel empowered enough as part of an art community to “hack the future” or so?”
Yes, I think there are enough artists taking this situation seriously who could, through unified effort, enact change.
One piece of the puzzle, that I think might help artists to “survive” this wave of AI, is to include themselves and their process in the marketing of their art. If more people start to associate the care, thought, and effort put into making a piece of art with the actual artwork, that might become a huge advantage over anything touched by AI.
As an example, I often go back and watch the behind the scenes of the LOTR trilogy. The amount of passion, attention to detail, and effort put into making those movies is, I think, incredible. That for me will always be light-years ahead of anything that an AI might generate.
“And how do you feel about this whole scenario we’re currently living and witnessing?”
It’s very disappointing. I don’t think that this was the area of human society that needed such a jump in technological automation.
In recent years we had more movies, TV shows, and games come out than ever before. The problem is that most of them are bad. Unfortunately, instead of focusing on quality over quantity, we’ve just made quantity cheaper.
There’s a lot left to be said about education, the mind numbing effects of social media, and passive content consumption in general, but I’ll end it here for now.
I’m looking forward to more discussions like these in the future!
•
6d
Hey, @The guy from BluishDot, thank you for the warm welcoming! 😄 Indeed there's so much more to mention. It feels invigorating to read your sensible and down-to-earth words, thanks for sharing!
I feel like a lot of entertainment has grown stale, and AI is serving the purpose of identifying the cookie-cutter stuff that makes one movie feel like you've seen them all, or the one game that feels like you played them all. When you get original enough as a human being, no AI will ever replicate your artwork unless deliberately told so, and even then, it can't replace your humanity. Try getting AI to generate an image of spiderman swinging from webbing out his butt to prove me wrong. If AI can do it, it's time to get more outrageous and innovative.
As I see it, AI is forcing us to innovate.
Mine dies every day. I sketch a bunch of stuff and throw it in the garbage right after. It served as a workout, it's clutter if I keep it.
•
6d
That's a courageous exercise of detachment! 😅
I don't think AI art can ever replace real art, ai will be use as a tool, and real art without ai use will become a new form of marketing tool to be sell as unique or luxury. I think we need to be at least up to speed with ai advancements and artist need to become entrepreneurs. Create our own studios and brands, if you lack a business mind set team-up with someone who can cover your blind spots.
I believe that even if ai can produce a whole movie by its own it will still require a real artist to guide it, in the long-run real human connection will still be saw after. I'm sure that if you put two pieces made by ai and a real artist there will be people who prefer the ai, but there will still be people who go for the real artist as well, that just means we need to stay on the top of our game.
Now is the time for independent creators to take the spot and let the old guard to rot in their mediocracy. Is happening in the indie scene with comics as well as books.
Whether you adopt ai or not in your work, put your art out there, sell prints, do commissions, look for independents that are willing to hire, post your animations or comics on Youtube, there's always someone who is willing to buy your work.
Yeah I agree with most what he saying and honestly their are a few I want to use to help me save time and energy.
i guess what ai tools would help with the creative process.
