Are great artists magical beings or vessels of God, or is all art really theft?

Canadian author Michael Harris has written a brave and compelling article for the Globe and Mail. Brave because he calls out and all-but-destroys some longstanding shibboleths about art and artists.

He approaches the subject by questioning whether the process followed by artists (of all kinds) is really any different from the process employed by artificial intelligence (AI). This is, of course, dangerous ground. Haven't Hollywood screenwriters and animators just spent weeks striking about incursions by AI into their own artistic fiefdom? Haven't some famous authors sued OpenAI over its false literary pretentions?

The argument is that all a computer does, and all they can do, is aggregate examples of previous art to produce faux "new" art, whether that be poetry, music, pictures, or stories. Surely, this is different from human art, which requires novelty and individuality to make creative work meaningful. Human art is an expression of the soul that machines can never achieve.

But in reality, even the most radical art merely builds on what has gone before. Art is not spontaneously conceived (whatever artists might tell you). The solitude chosen by the proverbial artist in a garret is merely a romantic notion, and at best is a means of managing the constant flood of inputs from our big crowded world. So, are great artists unique and magical in some way, or just particularly clever utilizers of freely available ideas, merely individual steps in an ongoing evolution of artistic endeavour.

As Mr. Harris puts it, "The truth is: no art emerges without enormous quantities of material borrowed or stolen from others ... That material is absorbed, re-assembled,  and finally presented as 'new' ideas that we happily receive."

This is never more apparent than when artists are taken to task over plagiarism claims. Was the music "sampled" or stolen? Is the movie a "homage" or a rip-off? Did the author "reference" a prior work or plagiarize it. Often, the distinctions are fuzzy and indistinct, but individuals may get socially cancelled and even lose their livelihoods over such fine distinctions.

It may be that generative AI may just have exposed a fundamental truth about the creative act, and Mr. Harris is just the one brave enough to call it for what it is. In his words, again: "By consuming, digesting and repurposing stacks of content, AI does exactly what humans have always done ... they are learning to do our jobs in far less time and at far less cost". And who's to say they can't do it just as well? Or better?

Maybe, in time, human artists will learn to use AI as a tool, much like the 19th century impressionists used the then emerging technology of photography as a tool. A final word from Michael Harris? "All generation is regeneration. All art is theft." Ouch!