We hear a lot about how AI is “here to stay,” and that may well be true. Goodness knows, we see that thrown at us enough. In fact, I’m not sure LinkedIn is a safe space for writers anymore. Every post you attempt to make is offering an AI suggestion, and every post you want to read explains how amazing AI is. Don’t get me wrong, I understand AI is a tool, but the death of Art we keep hearing about is, well, premature.
AI is, at best, the skeleton of anything it’s used for. It’s not fit for primetime and won’t ever be (despite what your uncle, who used it to write a very firm email to Verizon, thinks).
Conformity Is Comfort
The goal of AI is the same goal of any middle school tween you’ve ever met — to conform. Kids across the globe struggle to survive the hell of these years, and their tactic is the same: to be the same. Don’t look different – if the mean girl next to you doesn’t know that T-shirt brand, you don’t matter. Hair? The only reason mullets exist is because some high scorer on a hockey team lost a bet. Now every teen you know has arguably the ugliest haircut of all time.
Think about how it works: All language is stripped to correctness (no y’all or youse), all art formatted to exact specifications, all music perfectly cordant (as I write this, Grammarly’s AI is suggesting I use “in tune” rather than cordant).
For the tween in us, it feels really good. We are writing and sounding so professional! The lines in our drawing are exact! We can be perfect! What a relief to that little girl I was in middle school, whose clothes were second-hand and whose 80s perm went wrong. But the adult woman I am knows that perfect isn’t beautiful, and neither is it exact.
Conformity is comfort, but it’s also survival. And AI is trying to survive right now.
Why AI Won’t Kill Art – Ever
And that’s why AI will never truly be what the tech world is telling us it is. Art and beauty live in imperfection. You know this organically if not empirically. Consider a few of these “mistakes” that changed our world:
- Sting accidentally sat on his piano, and that’s how we got the first note of Roxanne. The very thing that makes the song great was an accident.
- Cindy Wilson of the B-52s missed her cue in the song “Love Shack.” Her “Tin Roof Rusted” is slightly off beat, but what other line from the song do you know?
- For those of us old enough to know what a B-side is, think about all the songs that were accidental, incidental hits (Hey, Jude, anyone? B-side with a side of F-bomb).
Honestly, music has a million of these. If your favorite artist doesn’t have a concert where they sing the wrong lyrics to a beloved tune, do you even listen to music? (Avett Brothers, Battle of Love and Hate, for anyone interested).
That was a lot of music, but it’s just as true in our words and language. Think about what happens in Rob Reiner’s “A Few Good Men.” It’s a movie about the danger of letting the wrong people in charge, but the most quoted line is from the guy we are supposed to hate. Reiner never meant that to happen, and maybe it’s less of a mistake than a misunderstanding, but it doesn’t happen when AI is writing the script.
Incidents and Accidents, Hints and Allegations
Art as communication, as protest, as beauty can’t be limited by perfection. In fact, real art leverages imperfection to create what is holy and beautiful, to write the poem that is just off rhythm enough at the right place to make us weep.
Imperfections have power. Think about the recent Vanity Fair article and the images that are taking over social media. The photographer doesn’t have to tell us how he feels about his subjects. They are off-center, harshly-lit, and overall unappealing – artistic “mistakes” done on purpose. He is using his craft to tell a story, but it’s a story that subtly couldn’t be told with the hammer of AI and its perfectly centered caricatures.
Imperfections have beauty. The most obvious example of this is Japanese Wabi-Sabi art, where the beauty IS the imperfection. Craftspeople are dedicated to the beauty of this art form. The flawed, the broken, the incomplete – this is real, and what could be more beautiful than that? Finding that beauty is tricky, but when you do, it’s breathtaking. Want an example? Look at a sunrise through broken glass.
Imperfections are authentic. If there is anything the most current generation is striving for, it’s authenticity. Maybe that’s a response to AI. I don’t know. I just know the imperfect is who we are. I have a child with vitiligo who is studying acting. She landed her first role as Frankenstein’s bride. I’d like to think it was in part because she outlined all her vitiligo lines with a black marker as if they were stitches. Her “imperfection” may have been the edge she needed.
Don’t Despair. AI Isn’t Going to Take Art
I’ve seen memes across the internet laughingly asking, Why can’t AI do the dishes and laundry and leave me to write poems and paint? And I get the joke, but the answer is that AI will never take art. And, at this stage, AI with a duster would be like Amelia Bedia sprinkling the sofa with baby powder. Who needs that?
For now, we will use it. And we do here at BCM when clients ask for it.. But we understand what it’s for. AI can help my bot talk to your bot, and maybe Mom will let us play. That’s overly simplified, and I do know it will get more sophisticated, but in doing so, it will still be perfect. And that’s why it will never be perfect. In the meantime, enjoy the happy little accidents.
Contact us if you need some writing done. We’re good at it, but not perfect.
