UC Merced Magazine | Volume XX, Issue VI

So why not use AI to whip up ve (or 50) perfectly cropped visuals for a snappy YouTube thumbnail or eye-catching Instagram post? e days or weeks needed to create art more traditionally is time preferably used to collect clicks, attract virality and make some money. “As people learn the rules of the social media game and play for the algorithm, they learn they have to produce art much faster than the human mind can manage,” said artist and UC Merced student Elisa Kanervisto. “Many may view that speed as something bene cial, but we lose sight of what makes art so amazing,” said Kanervisto, a writing studies major whose brightly colored work comes in two and three dimensions. “Art showcases the ability to expand ideas we create. It communicates what an artist is feeling, what they want to say or simply what they like. “I view art as an extension of the artist. AI-generated art feels more like an extension of the computer.” Art vs. Law Art’s connection to its creator is at the heart of arguments and legal clashes. AI companies claim fair use as they harvest the internet for images to train their models. Human artists say this tramples on exclusivity and the ability to control their work. And there’s the question of whether AI art itself can be protected. Two key examples from the courts: • In August 2024, a U.S. district judge in California ruled that AI art generator Stable Di usion may have been “built to a signi cant extent on copyrighted works.” e decision by Judge William Orrick kept alive legal challenges by artists claiming copyright infringement and trademark violation by companies that harvest the internet for images to train AIs. • In August 2023, a U.S. district judge in Washington, D.C., ruled against a man who owned a generative AI system. Judge Beryl Howell rejected inventor Stephen aler’s assertion that art created by the system deserved a copyright, transferable to him. e judge determined the art couldn’t be copyrighted because it lacked human authorship. On the ip side, AI o ers advantages in commercial art. Creators and designers can throw around and tweak highly detailed ideas. AI is moving quickly into video and music, expanding avenues of experimentation and further blurring the de nition of creativity. Arti cial intelligence also has brought us groundbreaking artists like Re k Anadol, who uses huge datasets to mount large-scale, dynamic visualizations, and Anna Ridler, whose AI creations touch the intersection of tech, nature and humanity. e technology also can sustain connections to art that might otherwise be lost to circumstance. Garnica said her uncle, a lifelong artist, is now disabled and chronically ill. When she visited him recently, he was excited to tell her how he was using AI to feed his need to create. “I can totally see why he would want to do that,” she said.

Above and below, two untitled creations by UC Merced student and multimedia artist Elisa Kanervisto (pictured)

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