When the Machine Becomes Mirror: AI and Creativity
Two weeks ago, Google announced the launch of Nano Banana Pro, which was claimed to be a ‘big step in image editing that empowered casual creators to express their creativity’. The update stirred public discourse for its ability to produce hyper realistic images far surpassing past AI (image) generators. Some claimed that the technology was unsettling, and argued that “this” marked the entry into an epoch of AI domination while others praised the Nano Banana Pro as a powerful tool for creative work.
Perhaps this sentiment is evident in countries with strong (digital) creative communities, and Indonesia is one such example. The country is amongst those with the highest rates of AI adoption, reflected in its widespread use amongst the creative industry. According to Google Indonesia Communication Manager Feliciana Wienathan,Indonesian users have generated around 18 million images with Nano Banana. Such figures highlight the growing embrace, and potential normalisation of Nano Banana Pro amongst Indonesian creatives without recognising the dangers and risks that it holds.
Conversations regarding the ‘ethical’ use of AI have been met with an ambivalence, with certain companies and creative figures treating its use as mandatory. In many cases, they have deemed it “unproblematic”, a stance that obscures the invisible harms of its development and deployment. Studies have illustrated the scale of these impacts: research from MIT shows that AI generators consume significant amounts of energy and water, and study by the NEA reports that training a single AI model can produce five times the lifetime carbon emissions of an average car. Despite the very-real dangers of AI use, there remains a difficulty in realising the full violence of AI. Environmental consequences often feel intangible and choosing to curb AI use requires confronting a dissonance between individual habits and planetary harm: how does one connect a simple act of generating an image or a piece of text to the destruction of the planet? Perhaps by reframing AI generation through the lens of creative practice, we can begin to materialise an understanding – or at least a meaningful interrogation about the harms – that we participate in and foster a greater consciousness within our own creative routines.
As creatives, we can begin to recognise that the normalisation of AI stems from the belief that it is a ‘one-stop solution’. Its ‘intelligence’ is rendered an asset, and fulfils a role where the collective and individual creative lacks (in either cost, skill or time). The ‘lack’ can be exhibited in a true feeling of insecurity or it can be a lack in ‘manpower’ in a team-based setting; all in all, it is important to understand that ‘lack’ –as a feeling– is inherently systemic, which emerges from the working conditions of the industry. Creativity has been reduced to equate to the constant production of content (e.g. either in the context of expanding a portfolio or in the very-act of existing within the digital space of social media), and demand creative labour to be efficient in its nature; counteracting the very-human element within the retrospective character of the creative process. Pauses, reflections, and revisions are inherently humane steps necessary to produce a fulfilling body of work and yet they have been cut short or completely obliterated for the sake of optimisation. Here, the notion of ethics does not concern a reflection towards a creative’s true skills, but rather it should be a further interrogation into the burden that we — as creatives — must bear from the structures that we inhibit.
The extent of its effects do not solely impact the very act of creation, but continuously shape our mode of consumption, or rather our ability to become an audience. The economy of AI doesn’t necessarily begin-and-end with AI generators, but it has embedded itself within the algorithms. The continuous exposure to curated content has imposed a routine consumption of curated content that solely answers to our interests and opinions. We naturally prefer creative work to cater to our gaze – to the extent that it has damaged our capacity to hold patience for differences or errors. Our expectations towards content or media are fractured, as we unknowingly demand ‘perfection’ in its presentation: either it must answer to our aesthetic demands or accommodate our personal (i.e. political, religious, etc.) beliefs. Nuance has been taken out of the equation of consumption-creation, and the audience/consumer fails to see the context that was brought upon from the creative work or content in their line of sight. Through these interactions, we have naturally become selfish spectators, weaponising our gaze as the ultimate determinant of character in a creative work. Naturally, this relation has brought upon a pressure towards the creative, as they must uphold the (fictive) standard of public perfection; they themselves are not given enough grace or space granted to be making (public) mistakes and thus, they return to the use of AI to ensure that their work is correct or digestible enough. There is a very clear dynamic of harm perpetuated through the very cycle of consumption-creation, which has left both the audience and the creator to become naturally unfulfilled. Perhaps it is these very conditions that have driven the economy of AI, and its marketisation of efficiency that has slowly erased our internal capacities to accept and receive human effort, failure and labour.
With the launch of Nano Banana Pro, many technologists have warned that we are stepping into an era where AI now mirrors, and at times surpasses, the fidelity of our own cameras. The following ‘advancement’ in its capacities can bring forth an immediate preference towards a creative output that is deemed more efficient for the creator, and ‘polished’ for the consumer. And so, we return to the question of: where do we go from here?
This question becomes even more pressing in light of AI’s rapid evolution, which continues to blur the boundary between human craft and machinic precision. Now, we are faced with the reality combined with the constant expansion of AI generators, and perhaps the only immediate response can be offered through the embrace of a quieter, more deliberate practice: to pay attention and to recognise and honour the pauses, errors, and hesitations that make creative labour human. Perhaps by granting ourselves and one another the grace to make imperfect work, we can loosen the grip of optimisation and reclaim the creative possibilities that emerge only through effort, failure, and labour. In that small refusal (and in that renewed attention), we may find a way forward and to move past the subtle ways AI has shaped and altered our gaze.
