By John A. Tures, Professor of Political Science, LaGrange College

In my last column, I describe several contests where human artists competed with artificial intelligence art, and “lost.” The real lesson is how humans can take on A.I., when human audiences unwittingly pick the non-human artists as their favorite. It involves providing a little backstory, and perhaps borrowing a little from their A.I. rivals, but not making the machine do all the work.

In an article by Elise Kjørstad about one of those art contests, Lecturer and Artist Alinta Krauth contends that humans crave a backstory for art. They want to know what’s going on in the artist’s head, and what motivated or inspired the work. Art that doesn’t provide that sort of context may well be replaced or picked by a person seeking something more familiar.

“People want art to have a backstory – which can be more difficult to achieve if the public believes that a work is entirely machine-made,” Krauth (who sometimes uses A.I.) notes in Kjørstad’s article. She points out that being creative and making art that is well-liked can certainly overlap, but they are not the same. And if one reveals more of the creative process, it has a better chance of connecting with the audience than A.I., which is less likely to have, or produce, such a backstory.

When I was a graduate student, a group of us on a class trip went to the Guggenheim in New York because we heard it was a great art museum. When we got there, we were disappointed to find it was a lot of modern art, and we just didn’t get it or understand it. But one of the students announced “I have a minor in modern art.” For the rest of the afternoon, Catherine explained what the artist was trying to do, why a square was red, or why the milk bottles were nailed to a board in a row. We appreciated the art with context much better than when we had zero to little background.

Blogger Max Read, who writes about the A.I. vs. human art contest, adds “Like any LLM output, A.I.-generated images are designed to please, not to provoke. I’ve argued before that these images are, by their nature, almost unavoidably kitsch–comforting, straightforward, accessible, flattering. And people love kitsch!” That kind of replicated art is safe, familiar, and doesn’t challenge the status quo. Doing something new or different isn’t easily recognizable, pushes back on convention or contentment, and may face initial rejection because it’s pushing the boundaries.

But a major part of human creativity is designed to do something different, that’s never been done before. It’s why we’re always changing. At a Tanzanian coffee plantation, the owner brought in a group of baristas who offered to make a latte art for us from one of hundreds of images of previously made coffees with milk designs. After everyone had chosen theirs, I said “I’d love to see you create a new one.”

The poor girl froze, profusely sweating. Everyone at the coffee plantation seemed to stare at her. I felt bad and almost walked back my unintentional faux pas. Then you could see the lightbulb go off above her head. She made an original image. Everyone gathered around her and cheered her like she had scored a winning goal. The plantation owner personally complimented the barista, took the picture of her artwork, then took one of all three to hang on the wall. Instead of making someone else’s image, the barista showed the best of what a human could do in that moment.

And perhaps one big thing to change is incorporating some new material and ideas, that can ironically be pushed by A.I. programs. But that does not mean simply making the machine do all of the work and then taking all of the credit.

Though I celebrate and encourage human work, I wondered if I couldn’t do the same, to have A.I. teach me a new trick. When I write a story, some audience members tell me they want the characters and what they are wearing to be described in detail. I’m more into writing stories, strong hooks, and plot twists at the end than character looks and clothing. So I got an A.I. program to describe what a character from a particular movie looked like and was wearing, and did the same for his female antagonist, a character from a T.V. show. A.I. freed me up to focus on what I liked, pinch-hitting in areas that critics want a little more detail, that I feel ill-equipped to provide.

In an article by Phys.org, and one by Elijah Clark in Forbes, humans are being pushed for creativity by experimenting with A.I., rather than churning out the same styles they always have. Clark writes “As I explore this new digital frontier of AI-generated art, my views continue to evolve. The future remains uncertain, but AI will likely play an increasingly prominent role in art and creativity. As an artist and educator, I consider AI a tool that can expand possibilities for human expression. My journey from skepticism to a cautious acceptance of AI art mirrors society’s grappling with these technologies. AI creative capabilities are rapidly advancing in music, writing, visual arts, marketing and beyond. Adaptation will be required, but need not exclude human imagination and purpose.”

When I first read this, I thought of him as a pro-A.I. anti-human expression pundit, not giving people enough credit for their creativity. Having experimented with using artificial intelligence to overcome a personal weakness, I can see that Krauth and Clark are on to something.

John A. Tures is a professor of political science at LaGrange College in LaGrange, Georgia. His views are his own. He can be reached at jtures@lagrange.edu. His “X” account is JohnTures2.