I believe that neural networks that create content — posts for Yandex Zen, memes, videos, bakery logos — at an industrial scale do not threaten creativity. Artificial intelligence has been given the task of a craftsman: to make a draft, draw an image, sketch out a text. Sometimes a text or an image does not need to be creative — and then we can say that artificial intelligence has taken work away from an illustrator or a copywriter; we can even argue about whether corporations had the right to use their work for training.
Look: in front of you is Malevich’s Black Square. Imagine that this is the painting itself, not just its image on a screen. Is this art or craft? Art — because it contains the author’s idea.
And here is another black square — created by me in Canva. Is this art or craft? Craft, because the only goal of creating a black square in Canva was to create a black square.
There is also a third black square — created by ChatGPT at my request. Craft. I simply said: make a black square like Malevich’s. And it did.
And here is the fourth square. This is what ChatGPT creates in response to the following prompt:
Draw a black square. It must be so absolute in its Suprematism that it alone can express the essence of mystical sensations. It stands fully alongside death and overcomes it. It is an absolute form that cannot develop or move. I transformed myself into the zero of forms and stepped beyond zero into non-objective creation.
I wrote the prompt, so this also remains craft. It would be art if, instead of brush and paint, Malevich had chosen generative neural networks — all these words about the Black Square belong to him, so one could imagine him writing a prompt like this.
But do you know where the art is in my case? Right here:
Yes, I am talking about the fact that this post, with all its black squares — from the world of art and the world of craft — is itself a work of art. It is an authorial statement. And yeah, sorry, I'm reusing the screen shot from Russian version.
Craft is something honed, reproducible, non-unique.
Art is the ability to reflect and to discover something new.
Even if artificial intelligence learns creativity, that will not make creativity inaccessible to humans. But craft is something artificial intelligence is already very good at taking away.
And finally, I want to show the paintings that my friend Nikita Shulaev creates for his home interior using Midjourney. And this, my friends, is art.
