Why artist Ellen Maidman-Tanner changed her mind about AI art
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My very good friend Ellen Maidman-Tanner creates amazing landscapes in oil and draws portraits in pencil. (And she takes commissions for both! Check out her work on Instagram.
Retiring after 30 years in healthcare, she went full-time in her 70's and soon had work in galleries and private collections in the US and abroad. She's raised money for Ukraine through portraits of Zelensky and got herself a sit-down with one of Iceland's most celebrated actors through her portraiture of him. And she's drawn me twice!
As a tech and sci-fi lover and full-time, accomplished visual artist, I wanted to talk to Ellen about her thoughts on AI-assisted art. (See my previous posts on the subject if you haven’t:
“I love tech,” Ellen said. “I love sci-fi. I love the potential of our visions.”
Yet and still, Ellen told me she initially had a knee-jerk negative reaction to AI art. But my interview request “made me do some homework and re-evaluate my priors.”
After doing some reading about DALL-E and GPTchat, she wondered, “What is it about DALL-E that is causing people to get their panties in a twist?”
“It means that people who can barely draw a stick figure suddenly have the capability to develop poetic imagery,” Ellen said. Obviously the results run the gamut from yuck to great.
Ellen empathizes with artists who are concerned about their livelihoods. The art market is in flux, she said. Many smaller galleries are shuttering and the structure of the art market is changing similarly to how the internet has impacted the book publishing and music industries. Essentially, we’re seeing power law, winner-take-all economics on steroids. “Artists are saying, ‘Give me a break. It’s tough enough as it is without people putting thousands of new images into the marketplace.’”
But she got to thinking about the history of visual art. “The biggest thing to happen to visual art was photography.” Suddenly 2D visual artists weren’t required to document monarchs, machinery, create images for advertisements, etc.
As I pointed out in my automation post, many illustrators lost work. But one thing you can’t say is that low-cost photography made visual art less creative and interesting on the whole. The fact is that the visual artists who stayed in the game invented impressionism, surrealism, etc. after being freed from having to faithfully render real life. “Today the breadth of visual art is extraordinary,” Ellen said.
She pointed to the fact that technology has long aided visual art. For example, many artists use Adobe Photoshop to cobble together an image they use as a template for their painting and/or drawing.
Not only that, but technology enabling more people to make art isn’t a bad thing for humanity or art. For every artist who suffers for the increase in competition, Ellen points to an essay she recently came across from a woman whose handicap had prevented her from being able to make art until DALL-E.
In essence, AI art is likely to operate like most forms of automation. Most of the illustrators who could not or would not change the way they worked certainly suffered. But those who adapted ended up better off. And visual art as a whole certainly does not seem to have suffered. It’s noble to worry about those left behind by automation. But certainly the move is to hold leaders accountable for creating and maintaining a functional social safety net rather than trying to smash the tools of automation. First, because useful tools usually find themselves adopted despite their enemies’ best efforts. And second because automation has a long track record of making most people better off, with cheaper goods and services and more interesting jobs.
“As a human who is not anti-tech, I’ve changed my view of DALL-E as a result of knowing I had to talk to you,” Ellen said. “I think I’m going to chill out about it.”
What does give Ellen pause is the question of “what we’re creating as a species.” Tools that influence how easy it is to produce different kinds of media have unquestionably influenced what kinds of media people want to see. Are we going to evolve to want to see more DALL-E-esque art? “The Lensa avatar phenomenon seems to indicate we want to see that kind of thing.”
This could be good or bad. “Read a western novel from the early 20th century. The way the average person spoke was extraordinary.” She sees Twitter and internet-speak as having diminished our capacity for nuance.
Relatedly, Ellen also predicts that AI art will have a big impact on how visual art is monetized and distributed. “It’s very interesting with NFTs and all of that activity. I have a feeling there’s going to be the development of new delivery systems for all this too. Why not?” Will humans want to see the static imagery currently in museums? Or will we be strapping on our VR goggles or getting our implants in and walking around VR museums?
I expect AI to impact visual art similarly to the way photography did. My concern is that it may eventually impact visual art the way the internet impacted publishing and music. Automating work that used to require many hours from creatives frees creatives to do more interesting work. Technology that ends monopolies on distribution, slashing the impacted industries’ profits, forces most creatives to do the most profitable work.
I asked Ellen what she thought about the copyright and IP implications of AI-assisted art.
“Some of my best work is inspired by screengrabs,” Ellen said. “It gets muddy. If you have a work that you’re thrilled with and someone manipulates it, as an artist I don’t know if I feel sullied or honored. If someone felt so strongly about something I did that they used it as a foundation for something they did, for me it’s a gray area.”
I feel similarly when I get email notifications about people scraping my OnlyFans. On the one hand, what the fuck? Why are you stealing from me? On the other hand, I’m flattered by the demand. And as an unofficial, unauthorized free sample of my page, it’s also a form of free advertising.
Ultimately, we both agree there doesn’t seem to be an important distinction between a human viewing a lot of existing images and creating something new out of the amalgamation and a machine doing the same thing.
I wanted to know whether Ellen intends to jump on the AI bandwagon. “I’m as old-school as it gets,” Ellen said with a laugh. “I love pushing oil paint around canvas.”
Send Ellen a commission, buy a Zelensky, and remember that your best days are still ahead. There's always more to learn.
I love this! Like the book stores who capitalized on the internet boom, artists better get onboard lol
I have a running list of T-shirt ideas I want to print and wear. As a personal case study, I’m using DALL•E for the illustrations. I geek out about it. We’ll see what happens.
Great post!