May 2, 2025
Re: Attribution in the Age of AI
Fellow list member and virtuoso illustrator Nathan Yoder replied to Attribution in the Age of AI with an insightful and generous message that I think will resonate with you (shared with permission, bold mine):
Hi Jonathan,
This question surrounding AI attribution has been an interesting one to follow and the introduction of provenance into these considerations is brilliant. I’ve been following a similar thread as it relates to my industry—illustration.
Even before the onset of AI, digital tools such as the iPad and software capabilities have been inviting illustrators to hand over more and more skill and creative responsibility to their machines. Today, nearly all illustrators (commercial artists) begin and finish their work on a computer. There’s no questioning the fact that there remains many highly skilled illustrators in the digital space although even digital illustrators acknowledge that the work produced prior to the computer was intrinsically, even objectively, superior (think, Norman Rockwell, N.C. Wyeth, etc). These pieces hang in museums while digital illustrations are quickly forgotten.
With AI now threatening illustrator’s jobs, illustrators are having to reckon with the fact that the same philosophical principle that lead them to integrate digital tools into their workflow (efficiency) is what is causing businesses to resort to AI generated images—it’s cheaper and more efficient to prompt an AI than to engage in the creative process with an illustrator. Even so, I think most people realize that we’re losing something essential in the trade off and I think the concept of provenance gets to the root of the matter.
In art provenance plays a massive role in the value of a piece. It is the story behind the work and that story increases in significance to the degree that it involves humans laboring to realize an ideal within the constraints that life has imposed upon them. The same is true in any human enterprise. The stories that we love are those that involve adversity, perseverance, and the pursuit of an ideal worth laboring/suffering for. As such, we are losing a lot of intrinsic value as we migrate more and more of our lives and work out of the physical world and into the digital space where nearly all constraint has been eliminated.
In summary, while AI tools are and will be an incredible help to society, I think we should be careful not to allow them to suck the soul out of our work. We must be willing to acknowledge the “artificial” qualifier in AI and choose the “real" at all possible. By this I mean, I think we shouldn’t simply ask, “will this improve my efficiency?” but also “will this new piece of technology strengthen or weaken my character; will it build or decrease my skillset; will it increase or decrease my ability to problem solve and think critically; will it increase or decrease the integrity of my human relationships?”
Anyhow, if you actually read this—thank you for your thought provoking message! I’ve been enjoying your newsletter.
Gratefully,
- Nathan
10 out of 10, No notes! :-)
Thanks to Nathan for sharing this.
Yours,
—J