Tea & Whiskers: Creatives, AI, and the Loneliness We Don't Talk About

Creatives and AI

The Same Wave

There is something sinister that I have been noticing online recently whenever I open my Instagram, which I will admit, is rare these days for the very reason that I find it a place of depressing toxicity. Creatives seem so angry, bitter and upset because of the rise of AI - and don't get me wrong, I completely, 100% understand the lamenting and ALL the concerns. This is not me dismissing those AT ALL.

I am, after all, a creative - I am a writer, and an artist.

However, my creative works were long, long absorbed into the AI brain - not sure how having a dyslexic girls fanfiction rambles helps an AI, but hey, whatever. You-do-you-boo.

When I saw the amazing, incredible artistic "work" that AI can do, I just sort of...shrugged my shoulders. Yeah, okay - it's amazing, it's incredible, but it's not human. I honestly feel a sense of incredible excitement about this time period we are in, and it's so crazy to see people so upset and so anxious and so angry, when I feel so excited and so elated to be existing in a time when creativity has never been so embraced so, so, so welcomed.

I have probably told this story before, but I was first introduced to graphic art when I attended the ComeOut Festival and met Carol McLean-Carr - who as far as I can tell, was one of the first artists using a wacom tablet.

A few years later when I attended university I was completely convinced that computers were the WAY OF DA FUTURE. I mean, by this point I'd been online for years, I'd become a part of artistic online communities like Elfwood and DeviantART and numerous fanfiction forums. I'd become a comic artist for people, I did commissions and covers (all unpaid, of course, because, I did it all for love and fun! and I never thought myself any good at art, I just loved it and the people and community!)

But then I faced the 'real-world' and smacked straight into 'graphic design' and there I was, with my honking big-fat laptop and my tiny wacom, in class (the only person with a laptop mind you, weird, weird now) expecting to learn amazing, fantastic things about computers and how to move forward into the future with computers because that's I expected! Because that was what I was learning ONLINE.

Yeah. No. Nah. Naive little me. When I told the teacher that I could do everything she was telling the class to do on the computer, she acted as if I had blasphemed.

No. No. No. You cannot do that, you cannot use a computer! To use a computer in graphic design, and in illustrating means you do not learn the fundamentals, you never learn how to SEE!!! SEE THE LINES! THE LINES!

Okay. Yeah. But...I can draw this line on photoshop, see, I drew a line.

No, you must draw the line by hand. To know that it is a LINE!

headdesk

Yeah, so, as you can imagine, I was baffled. Because - on one hand, I saw this incredible wave coming towards us and I wanted to catch that wave, I wanted to be a part of this movement of new and up-and-coming artists... But then I got told that, no...you can't, you cannot use computers.

It greatly amuses me that over the years I watched as the world changed in exactly the way I thought it would. Adelaide eventually became home to Rising Sun Pictures, a place I would have LOVED to have gotten a job but...by then, my dreams were kind of shattered. Heck, I'd just love to swing by the place now, just to imagine what life could have been.

When I learnt about Canva coming out of a graphic design professor from Perth I just laughed. Yeah. Of course it did. Like, eventually, they were going to figure out that computers were the Future. Gee. I was telling that. Seesh. Look, I can draw a line in photoshop! So scary. (Yes, my sarcasm is thick, because I'm still annoyed.) XD

My Art Isn't Good

Anyway -- the point is -- I'm not afraid of AI taking my illustrating away, because human integrity is far to incredible. The same way computers never took away graphic design, but enhanced it. I will always want to create, that is a deeply personal thing, something built into me on a level I cannot explain.

I need to create, I need to draw - I'm not good at it, and that has NEVER mattered.

So, when a friend tells me to my face 'oh, you know, AI can do sooo much better than you?' I really don't care, because, yeah - it can - but - so what? The point isn't how GOOD the art is, it's that I did the art, I created the characters, or I designed the concepts.

If I want good art, I'll hire an incredible artist and throw all my 'bad designs' at them as concepts and they can take the ideas to the next level.

AI will not take that away, in fact, the evidence I've seen, is that because of AI, there has been a resurgence of art - a resurgence of creativity and wonder and really seeking what it is that gives the humanity to art. And that is what excites me!

We are standing at the beginning of something amazing, just like I was before, a wave is starting - and I am so, so, excited to see where the next twenty years takes creativity.

Why can we not be excited about this? Instead of doom and gloom, see it as a challenge. Get better, seek that soul deep inside, what is that makes you burn to make things.

AI and Loneliness

The other point I wanted to touch on was something else I see often mentioned due to AI and that is in regards to people using AI instead of 'talking to someone'.

I saw a post the other day about a poem someone wrote, talking about using AI for a dinner recipe instead of calling up a friend to ask them about a recipe. That calling up the friend was much better, because then you'd talk to the friend, maybe learn about their life etc. and the connection was formed.

Now - yes - that's a really good concept. I 100% agree.

But what was interesting was the comments under the post. So, some people mentioned the thing that I thought, the moment I read the poem.

"You're presuming people have friends, you know, to call. That's pretty presumptuous of you."

Ohhh, boy, they were torn apart in the comments. AHHH, you're defending AI use! How dare you! How could you say to use AI! AI BAD. EVIL! GAHHH. BAD AI. It should never be used ever, for nothing! BOOO.

No, that's not what the person said. That's not what I thought either. They said the writer of the poem is making the presumption of friendship, probably based on their own lived experiences.

Whenever I see articles or stories about people who have slipped into the AI Bubble and ended up down a rabbit-hole of finding themselves in some sort of 'relationship' or 'companionship' with an AI Bot, my first thought isn't judgement or ridicule, it's sympathy. Because loneliness and isolation is crippling. I get it. I get why there is a desire to find something - anywhere - anyone - to just talk too, even if its a bot.

Do I think it's a good thing to rely upon a robot, no, of course not. There is a line and it is getting blurred, but it must always remain separated. At some point in the future - possibly in my lifetime - humanity might need to make some decisions, and I'm fascinated about how that will go.

But what I am wanting to see from people - especially creative people, because I see it mostly from the creative people online - is some genuine sympathy for those who are lonely and isolated, who have no friends, no family, and no way to find such support networks - that they turn to the only place to find connection - AI Chatbots.

I know it's hard to imagine the internet being anything different than what it is now, and I know we tend to paint the past with rose-coloured glasses, but it really was once a very different place. There were forums and websites that connected people across the world, email chains that made me pen pals I still have today, and fanfiction communities that have since birthed entire genres.

I struggle to really grasp what changed. Maybe it was the rise of the all-knowing algorithm. Maybe it was the rewarding of outrage over genuine conversation. Sometimes I wonder if its because they took away our Pizza Huts and skating rinks and the internet simply became too big, leaving us with nowhere to gather in quite the same way as we once did. Or perhaps it's just human nature showing itself on a scale that it never has before.

I just wish...that when I open the internet, I'd see empathy and compassion and excitement for the future. I truly think we have so much to look forward to.