“If you know neither the enemy nor yourself, you will succumb in every battle”—Sun Tzu's Art of War, 3.18: Attack by Stratagem.

In my education and early career, artificial intelligence has been the most contested tool across any and all contexts.

Currently, the two “fronts” fought between human-made and machine-made work are divided by the visual and the textual. But, in the next few years, the ability of these tools will become so ubiquitous that usage will no longer be a choice. Still, the notion of “stolen” or “scalped” work from artists and creators (really, anyone who has work online) is one that feels ethically black-and-white.

Take, for example, Spotify playlists. Google search results. Targeted ads.

Animation?

There has yet to be a good version of AI animation - meaning entirely visually produced using prompts and computer generation. Machine learning isn’t there yet.

As a means of testing its current abilities, I generated an animation out of a live-action dance clip, using prompts and a trained algorithm suited to interpreting said prompt. Said prompt and training method? Entirely constructed using the work of Vladimír Suchánek (who I am currently researching as an art-historian and filmmaker). The images were generated on a private server, separate from, but derivative of, the highly controversial Stable Diffusion (so don’t worry, I haven’t actively contributed to scalping on a scale beyond the scope of the project!).

And it was terrible at interpreting his work’s style. AI is a tool-and one we’ll be seeing more of. But it is not omnipotent, and I doubt it ever will be, as long as it is derivative of human interpreters.