Generative AI: the Silent Death of the Human Spirit

It was the best of times—the world proclaims as Humanity lurches headfirst into what is to be known as the dawning of the "Age of AI". Following the release of ChatGPT in 2022, the usage of Generative Artificial Intelligence has surged to an unprecedented zenith. With the average individual now able to produce a university-level essay within seconds, generative AI has never been so relevant, normalised, and remarkably convenient. Yet, few manage to acknowledge severe ethical violations underlying the very database that enabled such models to function, and moreover, the consequent danger behind the influx of AI generated media, manifesting itself in the stifling of individuality, of original thinking, and the extinguishing of human expression.

It doesn't take a data specialist to grasp the over-saturation of AI-generated media—a quick google search with keywords simple as "girl" or "painting" suffice to reveal a plethora of AI-generated images in its wake. However, this may very well be the tip of the iceberg: Data collected by AI technicians of the Everypixel Journal found that from 2022 to 2023, more than 15 billion images were created using text-to-image algorithms, such as the likes of DALL-E, Midjourney, and most notable of all—Stable Diffusion, which represents approximately 80% of all AI images created as of 2024. To contextualise, within the short span of a year, AI generated images had managed to surpass the same number of photographs taken in over a century, exceeding one-third of the number of images ever uploaded to Instagram and growing to double the current world population. 

Such rampancy is no doubt concerning, as it signifies our entry to an era where low-quality AI-generated media, or “slop”, dominates digital spaces, an era where search algorithms push away significant, credible information in favor of content farms and SEO Optimised webpages, an era where the Dead Internet Theory becomes more reality than conspiracy. Moreover, it begs the question—what is it that allows for such mass production of AI generated content? 

The answer lies in a simple phrase—data laundering. Most know that generative AI models hinge on a database, a mass selection of desired material, which the AI then “reworks” based on a given prompt into an amalgamation of sorts, deemed a final product. However, few consider that the vast majority of such databases consist primarily–if not entirely—of copyrighted materials. Take Stable Diffusion for example, as stated in its official site, it employs LAION, a nonprofit database common amongst image generative AI such as DALL-E and Midjourney. Containing data for over 400 million images, LAION compiles all of its media content from “scraping” the web on a monthly basis, that is, to reap digitally masses of information without obtaining consent, giving credit, or even fulfilling the basic consensus of notifying the original creator. 

These types of AI assets evade legal responsibility through a process known as “data laundering”, in which corporations sought to monetise AI models trained on copyrighted data collected by universities and nonprofits, exploiting the legal loophole of “fair use”, or as AI researcher Devansh was to articulate:”In traditional fair use, attribution is given to the original creator. Not attributing something has been given another, less flattering name—plagiarism”.

In 2023, the Hugo, World Fantasy, and British Fantasy Award-winning Clarkesworld Magazine shut down its submission after reporting a 38% increase in Ai-generated entries. In the same year, the New York Times sued Open AI, the developing company of ChatGPT, for using millions of copyrighted articles to train their chatbots. On the visual front, demand for human illustrators on crucial commission platforms, such as Fiverr and Upwork, has dropped by up to 30% as reported by the Wall Street Journal, with artists engaging in mass protests and boycotts against giant corporations such as Meta, Adobe, and DeviantArt, which had all supplied their in-site AI with user generated content. Even the music industry, a creative field most strictly protected by copyright laws and intellectual property rights, is currently projected to lose an approximate of $64 billion in revenue according to the largest, most recent global AI economic report. 

As with any account of plagiarism, by nature, AI data laundering exploits the very group which enables it—unsuspecting creators with hours of passionate, painstaking work ripped from their hands. While generative AI is praised for its efficiency, perceived as a force for progress, a force for the radical revolutionization of human lives, one must grasp that “progress” built upon crushing the rights of others, is not progress at all. By introducing an algorithm rooted in theft, one with the ability to pump out content by the hundreds, suffocating human livelihood by the thousands—we have, perhaps, created the very antithesis of progress. 

As it turns out, generative AI is not only detrimental to aspiring creators, whose project remain forever buried to the world as their passion cease to be able to sustain their future, to AI developers, whose ethical concerns regarding the industry are sidelined time and time again in favor of profit—-but most importantly, to us, the very users AI is meant to serve.

In an age permeated by capitalism and excessive consumption, an age that seeks to turn every word into a commodity, every note a transaction, an age where children are warned away from the perilous fields of creativity, all in hopes that they won’t become a “starving artist” in the years to come, we find ourselves slowly losing sight of our individuality amidst an onslaught of endless tasks, functioning like well oiled machines. Squeezed dry of energy, We ask Artificial Intelligence to create lyrics, to write poetry as our soul rots within us, refusing to account for the consequences of such actions. By indulging in the convenience generative AI provides without original input, we deny ourselves the very right to self-expression, that is to say, we deny ourselves of being human.

“I think, therefore I am”, proposed the Rationalist Philosopher Descartes as he gazed beyond the decadence of the Baroque, and into a new age of Enlightenment. True to the methodic doubt of Descartes, we too, must question what constitutes original thinking. Although “thinking” connotes mainly to logic and rationality, few acknowledge its concealed, but equally important shadow side—Creativity. 

While many today may choose to scoff at the word itself, the act of creation is one carved into our nature. Dating to as far back as Stone Age, we have created far before we’ve come to know anything else, with one of the oldest traces of our very existence cemented in the Sulawesi Caves over forty-five millenniums ago, in bright, vermilion handprints.  

Creativity’s current flows through the river of history—from the "catharsis" of Greek tragedies, paving the way to the earliest forms of psychotherapy, to Persian poets like Omar Khayyam, whose exploration of infinity and existence laid the foundation for algebra, and then again to the Science novels of Jules Verne and Mary Shelley, both of which propelled modern development of biomechanics and space exploration. Creativity glides off the tip of Charles Darwin’s pen, his quick sketches of Galapagos finches becoming a cornerstone of modern biology, and it resonates in the notes of Beethoven, whose rhythmic melodies shaped the invention of the telegraph. Across the globe, Korean celadon pottery led to developments in nanotechnology, Andean quipus mirrored binary coding, and Mayan architecture saw the rise of satellite positioning. 

To put it simply: creativity has always been the culmination of human knowledge and experiences, as only by intertwining the Arts and Sciences can we fully grasp the tapestry of human nuance. It is not, however, a middleman to be cut out of the equation. When we strip away the role of the creator—replacing imagination with automation—what is left of us? We make, therefore we are. To stand against creativity is to stand against human evolution.

After all, what are artists and engineers if not sculptors of the future, bound by the same spark of innovation? And yet, with generative AI threatening to strip away the necessity of original thought, we are at a crossroads: do we allow algorithmic afterthoughts to dictate our evolution, or do we fight for a future where human originality prospers? If we let the pursuit of convenience override the pursuit of meaning, we risk erasing the very essence of what makes us human. The choice, then, is ours to make.