Vienna’s Carmen, Katia Ledoux, has shared her concerns about the effects on Artificial Intelligence on opera production and reception. And what we can do about it.
Katia writes:
One of the things that disappoints me most these days when I scroll through the opera side of social media is the rampant use of artificial intelligence (AI) art, which is growing at an alarming rate.
I see my colleagues (even some top-paid A-list celebrities) using AI to create season announcements and portraits of themselves, or jumping on different AI trends.
And it’s not just individuals; sadly, I am also seeing more and more opera companies using AI-generated images and videos for their promotional materials, too.
While I don’t mind the use of AI to assist with certain tasks, I believe it is very wrong to try to replace photographers, illustrators and other visual artists entirely.
Using AI might seem like a quick and cheap way to achieve great results and get lots of engagement, but…
…I’m not sure the hidden cost is worth the engagement boost.
Creating AI images has a huge environmental impact. For example, every request needs a LOT of water to cool the servers. (I don’t have time or energy to go into much more detail, but please read up about the environmental impact of AI. It’s quite chilling.)
Another aspect that worries me about the increasingly widespread use of AI-generated images is that we are becoming so accustomed to them that it is becoming more and more difficult to spot them and therefore becomes easier and easier to spread visual misinformation. I see so many of my Facebook friends posting ridiculous AI-generated content that they (and their comment sections!) take at face value. Many people struggle to spot even the most obvious fake pictures, but by using these AI-generated contents for official business purposes, we are blurring the lines between what is fake and what is real, making it harder and harder to spot (and, at the same time, we are even helping AI to improve by feeding its learning algorithm our official photos and artwork so it can create new ones).
I myself have already been fooled multiple times by ridiculous, fully AI-generated videos because I can no longer spot fakes if they are not pointed out to me in the comment sections. This is a very scary situation that we are creating.
The last point I would like to make about the ‘hidden costs’ of generative AI, specifically to the opera industry, is that it’s really sh*tty towards other artists.
We should support each other, but instead we are making the working conditions, pay, and social status of visual artists more difficult by feeding their art to machines and pretending that the pixels assembled by algorithms are equivalent to their creative process.
We all know too well how little value the general public and many politicians see in financing art while still using us daily for entertainment purposes. We are regularly fighting against budget cuts or destruction of important creative institutions. We protest for better working conditions of musicians and singers worldwide and for more opportunity for young people to discover and join our beloved art forms.
How can we fight for all of this while throwing other artists entirely under the bus? Where is the solidarity?
AI doesn’t create; it reassembles.
AI needs artists to create art that feeds their algorithms and enables the machine to assemble new AI works, but if we, the consumers, use AI instead of human artists, these artists cannot be paid for their art. They are then voluntarily or not feeding the AI machine for free.
We as opera singers or opera companies should not stand for such a terrible spiral of doom for our fellow artists!
There are currently so many immensely overwhelming issues in this world and this is probably not even in the top 100 worse things that are currently happening, but I believe it is an issue that is easily fixable by talking about it and making people aware of the harm they are involuntarily causing.
If you’re interested in supporting artists, there are many ways to do it:
You can follow your favorite artists on your social media of choice and therefore give them a bigger platform, you can buy their works and of course, instead of using AI to create content, you can commission works of art that you can then proudly show-off on your socials! Don’t hesitate to tag your favorite artists to work with in the comments section so we can all check them out!
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