Arts and Entertainment

A False Photo: AI Affecting More Than You Know

Artificial Intelligence has become prevalent in the school world, but it has also made its way into the art world. AI can be used to digitally alter your image or work, to add something completely new in it.

There are countless different editing tools to help you enhance your art, to make it the best that it can be. Art classes in our school train the students on the software and how to use it to enhance the quality of your image.  

But since its release, about a year ago, generative fill (or AI assistance) has sparked many questions and conversations. Because of its different uses, this new generative fill lives in a large gray area that has the art department and school systems puzzled.

“So AI is being used right now in photography specifically in that you can remove objects and remove parts of your image,” Djordjevic, photography teacher, said. “It’s actually pulling from all of the imagery that is out on the internet right now.” 

All students have access to this tool with their school issued Adobe account and the use of Photoshop. Adobe has been trying to set their generative fill to only pull from their stock photos ensuring their artists were paid for their work, but this isn't a solution to in class use. There are ways to alter your image without it becoming a whole new picture. 

There are also ways to seamlessly take media and add it onto your own photos, thus it becomes not fully yours. This can be justified in real world situations, but it gets problematic when turned in for a grade in class. 

“So it's a very tricky spot because I think that you need to be careful about how much of the image is actually yours” Djordjevic says,

In an academic (non art) setting, the use of AI is strictly prohibited. You are not allowed to generate any of your writing and pass it off as your own. In addition to those, there have been newer rules created, allowing strict exceptions, demonstrating how AI can be used as more of a tool. But this is only true if you do the work to look up each fact and give credit where it is due. 

This is similar in digital art. There are little ways that it can be allowed on a case by case basis, specifically if you are using it to touch up blemishes and remove very small bits of your image. Though using it to remove bigger, more prominent factors of your image will not be allowed in class.

As AI has been introduced, schools have been working their hardest to get ahead of its fast-growing nature. Burlington High Schools administration has been beginning to work with the art department on exactly how to handle this situation.

“That would be the teacher’s judgment,” Mr. Sheehan, BHS assistant principal, said. “For example if your using AI just to get a B+ on a project, then yeah it’s like plagiarizing”

As of now the art department has no definitive policies put in place for this phenomenon in specific cases. There are no AI trackers that you can paste an image through to check for AI to be used, and there isn't a great way to know if a student used AI to alter the image they turn in. 

The hope of the art department is that the students will be developed enough to know how to edit efficiently on their own, before they try and turn to AI to do it for them.

“We engage our students in developing the following: Observation, Skill (Technical Craftsmanship), Creativity, Design Thinking (Working through the stages of a process), and Studio Habits of Mind,” Mr. Ratkevich, Art Department Head, said. “To develop those skills, the process needs to come from the self and the product needs to be original.”  

AI has quickly grown into a huge phenomenon that every field has to come across. The art department, just like the rest of them, has to change with the time to try and curb the plagiarism that students now have easy access to.

“AI is here, and it's not going anywhere,” Mr. Sheehan, says “So now we just need to figure out where it fits within our lives”