GoKawiilWhen my baby brother, a 3D modelling and animation student, talks to me about his projects and studies, the pride I usually feel is becoming increasingly tainted by a growing sense of dread. As a creative professional and former design student myself, I understand all too well how fierce the competition for postgraduate jobs will be, but his future is being threatened by something that barely even existed during my own time in higher education: generative AI.
College students are feeling that fear as well. Earlier this year, in a small protest at CalArts, posters that requested the help of AI artists for a thesis were reportedly altered with anti-AI messages and anti-AI flyers were placed around campus. A film student at the University of Alaska Fairbanks destroyed another student’s allegedly AI-generated display piece by physically eating it out of protest.
Right now, almost any creative task you can think of can be assisted or even entirely completed using generative AI tools. The technology has rapidly become more capable in just a few years. Text-to-image models like Midjourney and Google’s Nano Banana can spit out images in a wide variety of styles based on short descriptions. Music generators like Suno and Udio are allowing users to infiltrate streaming platforms with AI songs that sound kind of like popular human artists. AI video models like Veo 3, Bytedance’s Seedance, and OpenAI’s Sora (before it was killed off last week) are spooking actors, animators, and VFX artists alike. It’s difficult to predict which creative processes will get in the AI crosshairs next.
The message to creators is clear from all sides: embrace AI, or risk getting left behind. And sometimes that message is coming from the very art schools that exist to nurture creative skills. The Massachusetts College of Art and Design (MassArt), California Institute of the Arts (CalArts), London’s Royal College of Art (RCA), and many other creative-focused higher education institutions now encourage students across a range of disciplines to explore the current generative AI landscape.
“At CalArts, we aim to incorporate critical engagement with generative AI into our courses and programming to ensure our students can play an active role in shaping future technologies instead of simply reacting to them,” CalArts communications lead Robin Wander told The Verge.
That doesn’t mean AI tool guides are replacing existing curricula, or that students are necessarily expected to use the technology in their own work. They are expected to know how they can use AI, however. That includes its technical limitations, and often, the ethical and legal implications behind it. Many institutions have implemented AI usage policies for students and faculty in the last few years, which largely push the same message: it’s better to learn and understand these emerging technologies than risk being replaced by them out of complacency.
And while these institutions are grappling with the ethics of AI, they’re also recognizing the threat of the technology’s spread and dominance over creative industries.
“We recognize the complicated landscape of AI tools, many of which mine and share/sell user data, are trained on biased datasets, and have significant impacts on the environment,” reads one such statement published by the Pratt Institute. “At the same time, we also recognize that fluency with AI tools is a growing competency sought by employers and an area of professional development across many industries.”
The approach at CalArts is much the same. The school aims to provide the latest tools to its students alongside opportunities “to work directly” with the organizations like Adobe and Google developing them, according to Wander, while also encouraging “critical discourse on the cultural, creative, ethical, and environmental implications of using AI.”
The goal for art educators is to ensure creative professionals remain essential to their respective industries by helping them to either master AI tools or continually evolve to surpass them. For Ry Fryar, assistant professor of art at York College of Pennsylvania, attaining that goal means teaching students how AI tools can be used to complement their existing creative processes instead of eroding them. In many cases this comes in the form of ideation — using AI tools to visualize concepts and designs in the planning stages, but not for the final results.
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