THE ECHO

By Alaina Moon // Reporter • Illustration by Sunny Smyth

The first crime of AI witnessed by art teacher Margo Wallace was not murder, but theft. She saw the untouched crime scene. Society was still reeling. Social media was flooded with the witness testimonies of artists, all having one thing in common: their art had been stolen. The culprit was obvious. The motive, however, was not, but it would not stay hidden for long. The truth is AI needed sources.

Wallace is one of many who has seen the mass murder of human creativity in today’s world. AI drafting stories, producing art, animating, and creating videos, chipping away at human imagination bit by bit. It was a mass takeover. Be that as it may, it was not introducing something new. Instead, it was stealing what already existed and writing it off as its own. In one-word: plagiarism. Despite its best effort to be a real artist, AI is still artificial, and try as it may, according to Wallace, there is an aspect that cannot be replicated.

“There’s no soul in AI art. You can see it, even when you’re scrolling on Pinterest and you’re like, ‘I can tell that’s an AI image,’” said Wallace. “There’s no depth in the emotion behind AI art. But you sit in front of a Monet and feel the heat, the light, and the emotion that went into that painting, and you’ll never get that out of AI.”

Continuing into a different medium, Creative Writing teacher Vanessa Gutierrez said she experienced a crisis of modernity when she first heard of AI’s debut.

“I felt very pressured that students would not use this tool for good but would rely on it more heavily for not creating their own work, plagiarizing thoughts from other people and then utilizing it as something to keep them from understanding the material fully,” Gutierrez said.

Gutierrez has found ways for AI to be used in the classroom despite her initial reaction. She said how at times these classroom exercises have allowed for AI to be exposed for what it really is.

“Sometimes I’ve used it to show students how terrible it actually can be,” said Gutierrez. “There really is not a lot of creativity when we’re looking for things that are more individual.”

Film Literature teacher, Kathleen Carpenter, said her first encounter with AI in the industry was hearing about the SAG-AFTRA strike for film a couple of years ago. She discussed it with her class at the time which prompted much conversation.

“We were having really interesting conversations about why actors were striking, why writers were striking, and it all was having to do with why the industry was heading towards having jobs really being taken over by AI, and how the industry was having to pushback against that,” said Carpenter.

AI can do a lot more than it could in the past. That can be due to technological improvements, new ideas, and many other things; however, the question is can AI really steal jobs from creators, and can they make a comeback? Carpenter said with that it is possible; it will just take some push back from creatives against those whose sole goal is profit. She stated that she believes there is a need for human-led creativity.

“The people who run everything, they just want to make money as cheaply as possible,” said Carpenter. “But the creatives, as we’ve seen with strike, when they’re able to push back, we’re able to still get a lot of good and creative work.”

In the end, human creativity will be present in one form or another: from the careful curation of a Renaissance painting to old black-and-white movies to the world’s hottest novels. AI can steal, mold, recreate, forage, and play-off its “creations” all it wants, but as Carpenter said, human imagination and creativity will not be going anywhere.

“No matter what the industry wants to put out, no matter what capitalism is pushing to be cheaper and easier,” said Carpenter. “People are always going to create just because they want to, and then there will always be people who are interested in what they’re making.”