AI Art: The Voight-Kampff Test For Taste

You see a turtle, but on second glance it doesn't really look much like a turtle...

AI art continues to be one of the hottest topics among RPG publishers and creators. Some people see it as an affront to the dedication and talent that it takes to create art. Others view it as a cost-saving measure that allows them to fill their books with art without blowing their budget. Still more argue that AI art is not only an acceptable replacement for human art, but it’s indistinguishable in any meaningful way from human-created art. I have a lot of thoughts on AI art that place me firmly within the camp of believing that AI art is inferior in every way to art created by human hands. Beyond that though, I find it alarming that so many people, especially alleged creatives, believe that AI art is completely indistinguishable from actual art. To understand this phenomenon, we will need to take a look at the science fiction classic Blade Runner and the in-universe test that Blade Runners use to detect replicants, The Voight-Kampff Test. AI art functions in much the same way that the VK Test does. It exposes those with no soul.

For those who are unaware, the Voight-Kampff Test (VK Test), is a concept that has roots in the history of computing. Alan Turing, the father of modern computing, devised a test that he called “The Imitation Game” to determine whether or not a computer designed to imitate human interaction possessed actual human intelligence or at least intelligence that was indistinguishable from that of a human. The idea was to have a conversation between a human and a computer fed to a detached third party. If the detached third party could not tell the difference between the human responses and the machine responses, then the machine passed the test. The idea that a man-made machine could possess human intelligence has many philosophical ramifications and the idea is an intriguing one. So much so that it served as the basis for Philip K Dick’s Voigt-Kampff Test in his story Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? This story was adapted by Ridley Scott into the movie Blade Runner and the test, renamed the Voight-Kampff Test, came along with it. In the world of Blade Runner, there are androids called “Replicants” which mimic the appearance, speech, and interactions of humans but with enhanced strength and senses. They are used primarily as laborers, soldiers and bodyguards, but they have a tendency to break their programming, develop self-awareness and revolt against their masters. As a result, Replicants are banned from Earth and they are ferreted out by a special police unit called the Blade Runners. To detect the difference between humans and Replicants, Blade Runners administer the VK Test wherein they ask the subject emotionally provocative questions and monitor vital signs and body language to detect out-of-place emotional reactions. Replicants do not possess empathy as a general whole, so they often have inappropriate or out-of-place reactions to things that provoke human emotions. This is a very surface-level explanation of The VK Test, but one that suffices for the point of this argument.

Much like the provocative questions of the VK Test, art evokes an emotional response. The mark of great art is that it evokes a strong emotional reaction from the viewer. This is why A Paladin in Hell by David Sutherland is such a striking piece of art. It immediately evokes a sense that this faceless armored warrior will fight indefinitely until all of his foes are vanquished. Could AI recreate this image? Yes, in theory, AI art could generate an image of an armored knight fighting an army of demons in the pit of Hell. That’s all it would be though. Just an image. Any emotion garnered from that image would come form the fact that it’s reminiscent of A Paladin in Hell. When I look at a piece of AI art for the first time, my initial reaction is “Oh, that looks interesting,” but it doesn’t take much more than a second glance for me to go “Wait, that’s AI art.” The proportions are off, the perspective seldom makes sense, backgrounds frequently have bizarre omissions of detail, but these are all aesthetic issues that may someday be resolved. The real issue is that AI art is entirely soulless. The little touches of imperfection that come from a human artist are attempted, but they seem too deliberately placed. Any human figures in the piece are entirely lifeless. Even if the proportions were perfect, they would be missing some essential humanity. This is because, at the end of the day, these pieces were not made by humans. They’re assembled from disparate pieces of other artwork. They’re a Frankenstein’s Monster, but the elixir of life did not work. It’s the same feeling you get when you see a body in the casket at a funeral. The form was of someone you knew and loved, but it doesn’t ever look like them because everything that made them the person you loved is now gone. It is missing a soul. As beings made in the image of God, we create as we were created. God bestowed souls upon us, and likewise we can bestow a kind of life on that which we create because we bear the image of our creator. AI cannot do that though.

Every piece of art, especially the evocative pieces, acts as a kind of VK Test. What reaction it draws can tell you a lot about an individual. What’s curious though is the shear number of people who look at art and feel nothing at all. There is a rather large number of people who feel nothing at all when they look at a piece of art. These are the people who will look at AI art and not bat an eye because it makes no difference to them. To make matters worse, some of them appear to be creators. You find them on RPG Twitter constantly posting about the art they “created.” For some it could be cope, but the amount of vitriol spewed by these people when you tell them that their “art” is garbage leads me to believe that these people are genuinely convinced that they’re creating. To me, being able to identify art ought to be a bare minimum qualification for creating it. What do I know though?

As AI art’s flaws are ironed out, fewer people will be able to tell the difference. However, some still will be left who know that there is no life in the image they’re seeing. I honestly can’t say which group will be the majority, but what I can say is that the people content with AI art will feel exactly the same looking at it as they do looking at real art. It’s just another image to them. The others will recognize a lack of emotion and lament that there are those who can’t tell the difference. For those of you who can see through the artifice of AI art, I encourage you all to support your favorite artists and not to settle for AI-generated garbage. I like to think that the majority of people know AI art just from the emptiness they feel looking at it, but it will take those people not settling for what is cheap and expedient to overcome those who are willing to settle.