Creating in the age of AI.

This is a bit of a different and more personal post than what I usually write on here, but I thought I couldn’t go much longer without addressing the elephant in the room – AI-generated art. Recently, watching AI-generated Studio Ghibli-style pictures circulate the Internet has added to a sense of hopelessness and anger around creating art. Although I haven’t watched many Ghibli films, I have read about Director Hayao Miyazaki’s views on AI and life in general and witnessed the incomparably comforting quality of his animations that speak to the beauty in the slowness of human existence. Thus, watching AI instantly, emotionlessly generating his art felt like an insult – an insult to him and all artists everywhere. And it added to a looming feeling of futility that I cannot fully banish every time I sit down to write, to sing, to create in general. 

The instantaneousness of AI-generated art and the fact that anyone can make it and replicate existing art styles, writing styles and work creates a deeply hopeless feeling. Every time I have a new idea, I can’t help but wonder, what’s the point? AI can take my hard work and replace me anyway. Anyone could type my blog name into ChatGPT and ask it to analyse a song the way I do, or input my YouTube cover videos and ask it to generate my singing, (just the way they can type an artist’s name into ChatGPT and ask it to make a painting the way they do) and it would do so in 30 seconds – much faster than the 3 weeks I take to write a post or the 2 weeks I take to practice, record, mix and film a cover. So what’s my value in the grand scheme of things? In pursuing ease, comfort and convenience through social media and AI, people are losing the ability to wait, to savour and to pay attention to things that take time. I’ve never chased being ‘viral’ on this blog, and the rush in my viewership since I was privileged enough to be recognised by wave to earth for my writing has long tapered off. And yet, recently, I’ve noticed every post of mine almost flop, with barely two to three views for months. And yes, okay, why chase numbers? The two to three views could be loyal readers. But of course, me feeling slightly discouraged by this has been compounded by watching people frivolously use AI to create art that steals from others – and has made me wonder if there’s no longer a place for anything I have to say anymore, if my art has no value, and if my writing is just too long and tedious for people to read because of the amount of time and effort I spend creating it. 

In feeling this, I suppose I contradict the very name of this blog, Adagio Apassionato. Adagio Apassionato is a performance direction that would be listed on a piece of sheet music, instructing the musician how to play the piece. In this case, the words indicate that the musician should play slowly (adagio) and passionately (apassionato). I chose those words to describe my writing style and pace – since I did this as a hobby alongside college (at the time) and now a full-time job, I would put out writing slowly. Additionally, my process itself embodies slowness – the time I take to listen to new songs or to re-listen to songs I’ve already heard, to make notes, to find a connecting thread between songs. It takes weeks to write one post, besides the many weeks I have to skip writing because life gets in the way. And yet, I began to question this slowness and effort. Was I doing something which required such effort only for it to be so easily replaceable, and in the grand scheme of things, completely pointless? But I missed the second part of this blog’s name – passionately. Through the slowness, the tediousness and the effort, what isn’t lost is the fact that I’m passionate about music. I listen to it to immerse myself in it, to find meaning in it, to analyse it and ultimately to share my personal thoughts on it with the world here. And in a way, the slowness of my writing is what actually allows me to ensure that my passion clearly shows in every post I write on here. This blog is neither just slow nor just passionate – it’s both, interconnectedly, interdependently. And most importantly, it’s me, and it’s my voice, regardless of who is watching. 

I think slowness, contributing to passion, is something that is crucial to creating any kind of art. By slowness, I don’t mean the actual amount of time spent, but the effort, thought and intention that is put into creating any piece of media. Effort, thought, and intent are what give it meaning, are what tell you how the artist felt creating it and how you, as the receiver, will feel consuming it. AI art lacks all of this. It’s instantaneous, sudden and exists with little to no effort, thought and intent – only the so-called ‘technique’ and ‘skill’ that mirrors perfection. But in chasing perfection and skill, AI art loses the essence of art – feeling and emotion. People argue that not everyone has the skills to make art, and AI helps such people. I think nobody needs to have ‘technically perfect’ skills to make art. Making art is an inherently human trait, so whether you are trained or proficient doesn’t matter. What matters is that you felt something and wanted to create – and the output of that feeling is always going to be valuable, no matter how ‘unskilled’ it might look. It’s sad that we have started to value technical perfection and the ability to monetise creation over the fact that art should be fun and create connections. So now, people who feel the desire to create don’t even consider starting out because they are so ashamed of being critiqued for lacking practice and experience, and accessing art and consuming it has also become a privilege. So for some, their only way of engaging with the deeply human and authentic experience of art is through AI, which is technically ‘free’ and gives them the ease of getting a ‘perfect ’- looking art piece. But here’s the thing – everyone starts out making ‘bad’ art, but no one starts out making meaningless, emotionless art. As you continue to express yourself and pour yourself into art, no matter what your skill level, your creations will develop technique on their own – and what’s more important is that they will always be unique. And there’s another thing that AI art lacks – the uniqueness of a personal touch. You could argue that no one ever truly has ‘original ideas’ and everything comes from some sort of inspiration. But when I say ‘unique,’ I mean the touch of personality that transforms inspiration into an idea, the touch that says something about the artist and their humanity – the touch that creates a deeper sense of connection with anyone when shared and allows art to truly form community while being accessible to all. AI has none of that because it’s not human – it just slaps together other people’s art without asking, without synthesising, without understanding, without connecting. 

Under the guise of ease, convenience and ‘accessibility,’ AI is taking the intent, the emotion, the effort and the uniqueness out of art in exchange for brief spurts of dopamine that come from a colourful image generated for you in 30 seconds. True joy and true dopamine are more difficult to get but are also more fulfilling. Putting in the effort to come up with something you are truly proud of gives you far more gratification than typing some text into a bot and receiving a vaguely accurate depiction of what you asked for. It’s not easy, and it takes time. But if you want art that actually means something, you have to be willing to take that time and put in that effort. You have to persevere. This will always be true. The creators of AI want you to think you are replaceable, irrelevant and pointless, and all you should do is things that are easy and require no thought. Because if you aren’t thinking, feeling and channeling, how could you ever critique them, critique the systems – how could you ever resist? If you didn’t feel special, if you didn’t feel worthy, you wouldn’t believe you have a unique perspective, you wouldn’t believe that you have anything to add. They’ll sell you convenience and ease at the cost of your agency and your ability to think for yourself.

So, let yourself feel. Express yourself even when it feels hard, even when you aren’t sure how. Savour the time it takes to draw, to paint, to play an instrument, to write. Even if you can’t master it, find joy in the experience of trying it, of trying to learn something new. Learn that the experience is in you making the art rather than the art needing to be made a certain way. Do it with your friends – connect with them by creating things together, through sharing the experience of letting loose through creation. Resist the urge to make everything fall instantly and easily into your lap, and instead discover the joy of the labour, the joy of the slowness, the joy of the connection and not just of some perfect, polished result. Get your hands dirty with paint from a messy artwork, with ink from a paper of haphazard words. Get them cut from guitar strings you couldn’t play. And laugh because at least, at least, you resisted the urge to make creating easy and you let yourself just create without expectation. Resist. Resist the convenience. Resist the ease. Resist the need for quick perfection, and let yourself make messy, shitty, slow art. 

P.S. And as always, you’ll find me here, making my slow but passionate art that I am proud to infuse myself and my thoughts into. Lots of love <3