While artificial intelligence can be an efficient tool for gaining or processing information, it’s a difficult topic for the art community. Some support its use to avoid art block by gaining inspiration from the images generated, yet others are against it due to its lack of emotion and unreliable copyright policies.
“Obviously, we want to keep originality in art, and the problem is if we do something with AI and say it’s ours, it’s not really ours. So, I think it can be a tool, but it needs to be used responsibly,” Fine Arts teacher Michelle McCune said.
McCune is the AP Art History teacher at FHC. While she is against using AI-generated images as “art pieces” alone, she does believe that AI can be a useful tool to improve artists, but not as a way to avoid art block. McCune wants AI to be an inspiration for young artists to improve their work in order to be better than AI.
“You don’t want artists to feel like ‘why am I creating art if AI can just do it and others accept it,” McCune said. “I do think either artists will have to keep redefining themselves to become better than AI and to be more unique, or we need to figure out how to harness it and utilize it in the work itself.”
However, McCune’s policies for AI in her classes differ from her belief that it should be used to improve an artist’s skill; the use of AI is banned for final pieces. This is not due to the school district having policies specific to AI, but the fact that if the College Board suspects the use of AI for any AP art final piece, it will cancel that student’s submission and refuse to grade it.
Not every teacher has the same opinion that AI is a tool of opportunity. Ashley Runge, who teaches Intro to Art, believes that as AI improves, it will create more problems for the art community.
“I think that it hinders and diminishes our creativity because you can type anything into the computer and it’ll just give you something,” says Ms. Runge. “It’s theft from originality and creativity.”
Runge is a strong believer that AI is a danger to art, for as it improves, the images will become harder to recognize as AI-generated. However, when it comes to being a tool for theft and creativity, her belief remains in the grey area.
“I would consider it neither (a tool for theft or creativity) because the point of it is you’re putting something in and it’s gonna spit something out, I don’t know if it’s necessarily theft and stealing, but there’s no originality,” Runge said.
While teachers are either supportive or against for the sake of future artists, artists at FHC are clearly, strongly against the use of AI, seeing it as a tool for theft and a shortcut to ”real” art.
“A lot of my friends definitely don’t like it and say ‘It’s just a shortcut,’ and like it’s kinda like taking someone’s talent that they worked really hard on and putting it down the drain because AI just did this in like a minute,” senior Madison McGowan said.
