What is art:
Some weeks ago I read an article online about a children’s book written by an AI-based app. There was a lot of buzz around it and a lot of comments from authors who had been writing and querying for years and had still not been published saying it was unfair, or that it was not art at all. I couldn’t stop thinking about this since then.
Is it art? Well, some may argue the language used by a machine, or the structures, or the complexity of the plot points, or whatever, might be flat. But is that enough to say that this is not art? There might be thousands of books published by humans which also have some of the mentioned or other points deemed as “flat” by others.
Some may argue it’s not art because a machine created it, and not a person. But wasn’t that machine created and programmed by humans, and wasn’t it a human who inputted the conditions and variables needed to create the output text into that specific program? Therefore, isn’t the result of something a group of human minds helped develop, a product of those human minds as by extension?
After going back and forth with these and many other points, I went to look up the definition of art.
Merriam-Webster says: “the conscious use of skill and creative imagination especially in the production of aesthetic objects.”
“Conscious use of skill” and “creative imagination” are key here. Can we program a machine to be creative? Maybe. To have imagination? More doubtful, perhaps. But to “consciously” use a skill? It does not have a conscience, right?
Right? To confirm, I went and looked at “artificial intelligence” in the same dictionary.
It said: “the capability of a machine to imitate intelligent human behavior.”
“To imitate human behavior” would suggest it’s just copying or mirroring other people’s works from the immensity of a repository the virtual world is. Would therefore the art it produces be a copy of other people’s work because it’s based on works from the past? But aren’t all stories said to be just different versions of templates as old as time? And isn’t art supposed to “imitate” life to?
This was not taking me anywhere. I changed optics and looked inside, on what I thought. I think art is supposed to produce an effect on the consumer of it. On the viewer or the reader or the person who experiences it. Any form of art can have different meaning to different people or even to the same person if experienced at a different time of their life. Art can make us feel things, different things at different times. It can move us, it can make us relate to something, to someone, maybe the author, maybe other consumers of it. It can unite us or separate us, make us think about something, make us act, make us proud, make us hate, it can be popular or controversial… Isn’t that what’s happening with this piece also?
We may not like it, but machine-created art is here. The “virtuality” of things has made its appearance inevitable. Virtually-crafted things have spread and reached art. And as such, and as any form of it, it is causing people to talk about it and giving rise to discussions around it, and as such also, we can each have an opinion on it, we may love it, or hate it, or something in between.
This inspired the following story. Let’s call it:
“The Writing Duel”
I was on a break from my writing routine browsing through endless meaningless online posts when I came across an ad for an app. My writing habits make the algorithms go crazy sometimes –you know writers look up for almost anything, right?– but this was accurately targeted for once and, even though I’d normally ignore these kind of thing, I was intrigued. Or perhaps I just wanted to keep on procrastinating and not get back to work.
In any case, I downloaded the app. It had a catchy name I will not mention, for purposes, and it was user-friendly enough for the non savvy electronically such as myself to be able to enjoy. The ad had promised “AI-created stories to aid the writer and entertain the reader in you”, and I had been creating stories, or trying to, for enough time to know it was easier said than done, so I was indeed intrigued as to what a machine could do on my line or work. Would it become a competitor?
I created an account and was automatically prompted to input some information to create my first story. I indulged. Name of main character, location, timeline, inciting incident, theme, conflict, resolution, name of secondary characters and antagonists. I had all these kinds of things in my mind from my current writing activities. If you didn’t input anything in five seconds, it even gave you options. After twenty such points, you were asked to choose a template. There were many to chose from, such as end of the world dystopia, romantic comedy, heroes versus villains, and so and so.
All done, all chosen. Five minutes total. I hit create. And… two seconds later, a two paragraph tale was materialized in front of my very eyes. Two seconds! Really? How could I compete against that? But then, I read it. It was very flat and simple. There was no sauce to it. It lacked… substance.
I breathed and went back to work on my book. I was inspired and wrote my daily quota in one sitting. Then, I went to bed, exhausted. The following morning I had a message from the app.
“Would you like to expand the story?”
I decided to reply Yes, and then something more resembling a short story appeared, also after just a few seconds. I read it. It was certainly better than the first. More words, more drama, more characters. Even filler words and descriptions, setting. I was upset to say the least, but I wasn’t going to let “it” win. I had to go write something better than that. So I went back to my WIP and I added on some substance to the chapter I was working on. It was the last battle, the hero apparently losing it to learn his lesson.
I think it was the best writing I had ever produced. At least up to that moment, that is, because the following morning it happened again. The app had sent a new message.
“Would you like to turn this into a novel?” Well, I was not expecting that. Could it be possible for that virtual thing to create a whole novel? I was intrigued as to how many seconds it would take for it to return the end product if I said Yes that time. I turned it off and put the phone down. I had some thinking to do.
But I was inspired, so instead of thinking, I went back to writing and I finished my book. The one I had been working on for months. I didn’t even slept that night.
After two days, I turned my phone back on. I was recharged and ready to review my book. I couldn’t believe why an app had scared me so much. I felt a bit silly. Two minutes after, a new message appeared.
“Terms and conditions not accepted.”
What? I got in the app and saw an extensive text with lots and lots of clauses. I was not going to read all that. I decided to delete the app instead. I tried.
“You have to accept the T&Cs before deleting the app.”
Jeez! Ok. Accept. Delete. I was free.
I revised my book and sent it to my agent. He was thrilled. It was the comeback they were expecting me to make for years. He pitched it, there was a bid war for it, it was published, I was signing copies and scheduling readings for it. Just like before, I was back.
A week after the publishing day, I got a message in my phone. It was from the writing app.
“What the…? I’ve deleted you! You can’t keep sending me messages!!” It could, as it turned out. It was in the T&Cs.
“You’ve been charged with plagiarism. You will receive an email from our legal department shortly.”
“Plagiarism! What? What??!!”
I waited and waited. It seemed like hours, used to getting responses from this thing in seconds, but it was only five minutes after that I got an email from them.
They were suing me for plagiarism. I had used in my novel names of characters and locations and plot points that I had entered in the app as variables for the story it created. As per the T&Cs, everything created by the AI processor of the app was property of the manufacturers, bla, bla, bla, bla…
I called my agent and told him what had happened. He just said: “What do I always tell you? Why do you hired me?”
“To read the small print in everything,” I replied.
Alejandra A. Alejo
Check out my work and reach out here:
Wattpad. https://my.w.tt/IFK4S6SdHL
Twitter. https://twitter.com/aaalejo1
ftwrrevista 