Originally published in Portuguese on March 28, 2023.
The recent texts published here on Artificial Intelligence were illustrated by Haidée Lima and raised a very interesting point at the time of their publication: considering that the illustrations were created from photos of the author, manipulated using the Dream app as a medium, how should credit for the image be given?
To better understand this question, it is important to investigate how we perceive the role of the author. Authorship in Western civilization has been shaped by numerous factors throughout history, including cultural norms, technological advancements, and legal frameworks. In ancient Greece, for example, the concept of individual authorship was not as evident as it is today. Instead, works of literature and philosophy were often attributed to a specific school or group of thinkers rather than an individual author.
During the Renaissance, although materially the works were the result of the labor of large workshops, with many artists working in parallel, it was when the idea of the individual author began to gain strength. Works of art, literature, and music were increasingly attributed to individual creators, and their names became associated with their works. This trend continued during the Enlightenment and strengthened in the modern era, becoming even more central to Western culture.
Another way to understand the role of authorship for us is by observing societies with Judeo-Christian roots, where the role of the author as a divine creator is deeply ingrained, stemming from the belief that God is the ultimate author of the universe. According to Christian theology, He created the world and all its inhabitants and continues to govern it according to His divine plan. As such, the act of creation is seen as a reflection of the divine nature and creative power of God.
The emergence of artificial intelligence now presents a new challenge to the traditional notion of authorship. What is observed is that as AI technology advances, machines are perceived as increasingly capable of generating creative works, such as music, literature, and visual art. This raises questions about who should be considered the author of these works, as they are created through a combination of human guidance and machine learning.
In general, AI is programmed to perform specific tasks based on algorithms and rules established by the programmer or developer. In the case of visual work, the AI can be instructed to follow a series of visual and stylistic guidelines provided by the person who guided it, such as color choices, composition, and style. Thus, it can be argued that although the AI may execute the visual work with precision and skill, the authorship of the work still belongs to the person who guided it.
Another approach could be to rethink our understanding of authorship and creativity. Considering that the historical observations made above do not account for a plurality that existed (and to some extent still exists) thousands of years ago among indigenous peoples from virtually all over the world, excluding Europe. Instead of viewing authorship as an exclusively individualistic endeavor, we may need to shift to a more collaborative and collective approach, recognizing the role that technology plays in the creative process.
But what do we mean when we talk about recognizing the role of technology in the creative process? At this point, it is important to expand the concept of collaboration and collective production, understanding, under the influence of Álvaro Vieira Pinto's thought, that technology is not merely a collection of tools and machines, but rather a consequence of a social arrangement, a kind of web, a complex network of social relations that shape its development and use.
In this sense, authorship would be shared not only with an abstract entity called Artificial Intelligence, nor with Dream, the app, but also with the partners who came together to develop this application, added to each of the developers who coded it, the users who shared their experiences and made its publicity possible, among various other actors.
This simplification in the creation of a "substance" that is the adopted technology leads to a dangerous oversimplification of the problem. It hides the power structures present in this production. Those who control technology often have significant power and influence over society, and the way we are discussing it can contribute to maintaining or transforming existing social relations.
It would also be useful, for both approaches, to take a step back and discuss two concepts associated with the topic: the broad conceptual umbrellas of Creativity and Intelligence. But that will be left for a future text.
Text written in collaboration with Haidée Lima.
Comments