FaiK is the result of hundreds of hours of experimentation using AI software. The more Rankin plays with it, the more hooked he becomes. The nature of AI is addiction. It's gamified technology, like social media "on crack". Midjourney, the software used to create the images in FaiK, and ChatGPT, the AI chatbot used to churn out its text, want you to become dependent on them. Well, their creators do.
Anyone who has clicked on a news page recently will probably be aware of the Make It Fair campaign, the co-ordinated effort by the UK media and creative industries to stop the government from watering down copyright laws. The effect of changing these laws would be devastating. AI companies would be allowed to use creative content without permission or payment.
For people in creative fields, the augmenting power and access of AI is petrifying. First it steals our work, then it steals our jobs. This is why Rankin has created FaiK. It is an attempt to grapple with AI, to better understand its capabilities, and help us start to see what we as a society are dealing with.
In this interview with Rankin, we ask our editor-in-chief about his initial foray into using Midjourney and ChatGPT and question creativity in the future FaiK world.
What are your thoughts on the addictive nature of AI?
I immediately started using it and thought, this is a game. It feels more like a playground than a creative resource. It responds to a basic kind of prompt and it's fun. But creativity is a muscle — you have to keep using it or it will wither away — so this gamification isn't helpful. It's a rabbit hole where, once you enter, you have to keep going, further and further.
“To understand AI you have to try it. But you also have to question it.”
What made you carry on using it to create FaiK?
I thought, I've got to get good at it, because it feels like this is going to be the new normal, without question. We're all going to be using it on some level. But I also started to think critically about what I can do with it to make it evident that it can be used by bad actors. It can be seductive but more importantly it's deceptive.
You created FAIK with a mind to educate. Educate how?
To understand AI you have to try it. But you also have to question it. It's too tempting to just accept what it gives you, but when it makes something, you've got to question where those images are coming from. Whose work has it used? Whose social and political biases has it learnt?
Do you think the ability to produce art and writing at the click of a mouse makes creative work less valuable?
Even the simplest prompt an eight-year-old could enter will produce an image, and it's willing to create almost anything. If you're a creative person, of course you can use a tool like this and it will help spark new ideas. I've come up with ideas because I've been using it. That's not how it's being sold, though. It's being sold as if it can make anyone into Picasso or Hemingway. And that's the issue. It's rehashing other people's work and tricking people into thinking they created something. That doesn't make creativity less valuable. But the better it gets, the harder it can be to casually see if something is created by a person or a machine.
Do you think that AI will be used for things like editorials in the future?
If you wanted to, you could start to use this to make brand work, advertising, marketing. Once you can start to input things like a bag or a pair of shoes, it can be "useful" — if you ignore the theft part.
Do you think AI is going to affect the future of art, then?
Yes, it's going to make the world more homogenous, not less. AI will be like the lip filler of the creative industries, because it will just make content increasingly similar. Yes, it's drawing from a massive dataset and you can make it do certain things, but it isn't trying to break creative boundaries. It wants to give you the lowest common denominator as a response. It's here to please, not innovate.
Where does creativity come into "making" AI art, then?
The skill isn't in the creation, it's in the curation. Curation is the ability to put the work together and give it a sense of continuity. I don't think you can call it a craft. But it's a skill set that people will need more in the future.
(Interview with Rankin written by HUNGER)
