Nick Cave on ChatGPT and the creative process

For me, a guy with a master of fine arts and a photographer, filmmaker and musician, the problem with AI isn't, that it is a automated process that creates stuff, but that the stuff it creates isn't usually the kind that will suprise yourself. My best pieces of music, film scenes and pictures always came from very special and memorable circumstances, or by tweaking a many factors for a long time, and by reflecting on the results a magnitude longer.

Beginner artists are already amazed at the fact that they managed to make a film, a drawing, a piece of music, a decent photograph. More advanced artists are much more about exploring the medium and figuring out what is possible.

My fear is that AI will make art much less personal and much less explorative. Or maybe it will just have the opposite effect? At the dawn of photography all the painters started to become abstract for a reason — why mimic, what the apparatus does better?

Some people just can't deal with that.

If genuine, unaided human creativity is so great then AI generated creations should not be much of a challenge.

The sad fact, though, is that a lot of human creation is really not that good in comparison, or at the least is slow and expensive, while AI creations are often cheap, fast, and good -- you can have all three.

We're seeing the same thing with the actors and writers striking. Sorry folks, if you're making me choose between embracing neoluddism or living with some artsy folks not having their dream job, I'm going to pick you being out of a job. I do not care that background actors are going to be replaced by AI and I do not care that AI is going to let 1 writer do the work of 5. Background acting is not anyone's passion and writing predictable soapy sitcom stories is probably not anyone's passion, either.

AI is going to give us better creative work not because AI will become super creative, but because people who actually have creative thoughts worth expressing will just do that instead of being crowded out by humans chasing the lowest common denominator. Now we have computers chasing the lowest common denominator, something they are very good at, and we have humans who will create when they feel compelled to create, not because they want to make money but because their creativity compels them to act, make, and do.

If a songwriter is being replaced by an AI, their skills are not something we're going to miss. Sorry, not sorry. Artistic sensibilities have arguable never been the driver of what music is popular and I don't see the issue in having AI replace the bubblegum rubberstamp dime-a-dozen trash that the modal artists must produce to make money. Again, now you are totally outmatched by the AI and you can actually focus on creating an authentically human work without being distracted by the needs of industry. If there is no market for that then it is not because of AI but because of our own preferences.

The "human spirit" is just a story we tell ourselves to justify our dominion over everything we see. I'd be more than happy to see it die. Humanism is great if you're a human, but life is moving in other directions and we can either adapt to the notion that our primate brains aren't magical engines of wonder or die alongside our brittle egos.

Rich person for whatever reason, thinking it worthwhile to pay for artists' expenses. Or house them, buy their works etc. So that artist could create art.

Modern day equivalent would be Patreon. But back then, usually 1, maybe a few sponsors. Or 1 rich dude sponsoring a small ensemble of artists. Just for... dunno. 'Social credit' / personal glory? Art lover? Bragging rights? Some kind of platonic or romantic relation between artist & sponsor? To leave something behind?