Framing AI Images
"Framing AI Images" DALL-E Generated 9/17/23
Overview:
Generative AI tools are well positioned to play a significant role in the future of human thought, work, and creative expression. They also present unique challenges and threats in each of these areas that, when exposed, can strike at the very nature of what it means to be human. These conditions create a need for educational exercises that require both engagement with and critical reflection on AI processes, so that students can experience the potential and limitations of generative AI both on their own terms and as part of a cohort of engaged learners tasked with identifying best use practices. The following discussion pertains to a writing activity for early undergraduates designed to spark interest in the evolving relationship between images and language, and an individual's ability to generate one with the other through technological assistance. The multimodal nature of this activity provides a visual medium for thinking about the constructed and mediated nature of AI content and authorship. There’s an immediate need for an acquisition of this sort of critical framework, as students suddenly find themselves part of the first generation of scholars with near instantaneous access to these powerful new tools. Evidence drawn from student work included below is used to advance discussion on several key topics related to the assignment. You can view a full account of student free writing here.[1]
Assignment:
Ask students to create an image using an original phrase or brief set of phrases as a text prompt, and a free generative AI platform of their choice. Encourage them to take some time to experiment with the different features and permutations of 'prompt language' before settling on an image. Once they settle on an image, have them save or screenshot and upload it to a new document. For the writing assignment, ask them: “In several sentences, describe the image. What do you notice? What is surprising or unexpected? How do the recorded results compare with what you were thinking before generating the image? What, if anything, does the image say about the AI you used to create it or what contexts or sources the AI may have drawn from? To what degree do you think the image is authentic, and why?” These questions, while flexible, are meant to help students gain a more critical understanding and appreciation of the actual source generated from their initial text prompt, in part by using visual analysis tools endorsed by the Library of Congress and in part developed to encourage theorization around issues of authorship. Encourage students to share their work and findings together! A great reflective activity is to ask students about why they think the exercise took them from a small amount of writing (the text prompt) to a much larger amount of writing in the response.
Fostering AI Literacy Through Creative Discovery:
As educators grapple with the promise and perils of AI in and beyond the classroom, one intention of this assignment is to direct students towards an AI utilization strategy in which machine generated content is used to help them build outward from their own ideas, starting with their own originating concept for the image, and one where content is not an end product but an important and problematized starting point. At UC Berkeley, undergraduate Discovery is described as "a journey of engaged creativity and self-actualization" that "foregrounds experiential learning as a doorway to educational purpose and community building." Discovery practices aim to push knowledge building beyond didactic exchanges, and in this case encourage students to foster their own relational understanding with the tools that stand to redefine the nature of thinking and writing. With this in mind, student responses to the assignment offer a range of insight into the mediating role that AI plays in content creation. Some suggest novel takes on the errors, imperfections, or discrepancies/distance between intended outcomes and actual results. Others venture into issues like the nature of expression and the powerful danger of misinformation. This variety of responses is significant if for no other reason than its demonstration of how opinions exist in diversities that AI notoriously flatten or distort, and cannot be relied upon to replicate:
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Prompt: Red tulips in an adorned vase. The atmosphere is gloomy "The reason why I chose red tulips was because they hold sentimental value to me and I was hoping that my emotions could be reflected in the painting. However, I think the AI failed to do this. When I look at the image, I don't feel some sort of connection even though red tulips themselves are something I connect to. I think the AI fails to be authentic because it doesn't carry the experiences that I have. Authenticity in art to me means a piece that carries the emotions of the artist and the things they have health with. The AI only carries a prompt but it will never be able to convey the real feelings of someone." |
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Prompt: Everything happens for a reason, life is for discovering not knowing "It is surprising that AI was able to create art that could accurately be interpreted as the key words I entered. I know that this was the purpose but I am just shocked that it didnt just show images of the key words and instead made a story. With this in mind it created something unique and original through its own interpretation."
Prompt: A Japanese craftsman making Momotaro denim jeans "As far as the authenticity of this image, I don’t think it’s authentic. It’s not an actual picture of a real craftsman making jeans but rather an imitation based on the information that the internet could provide. Even when comparing it to artwork such as paintings and drawings, where artists don’t necessarily paint a real scene and use the information they’ve collected about the subject, it doesn’t have the decision-making process that artists do." |
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Prompt: University of California Berkeley Wheeler Hall "I started out with about the most simple prompt you could compose for the algorithm to interpret, “University of California Berkeley Campus''. The results were anything but Berkeley... Submitting the prompt a second time resulted in a nearly identical image. Perhaps this was the platform's feeble attempt at depicting Wheeler Hall? Doe? The one thing these generated buildings have in common are their greco-roman columns."
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Prompt: An energetic human skeleton dancing with a fish "Although AI is combining and learning from other artworks, it’s exactly the same as how humans create art. The essence of art is the collision and combination of different ideas and inventions, which is what AI is doing, although in a way some people do not accept it... Moreover, the images made by AI really surprised me, which both satisfied my expectations and also showed some creativity that is beyond my imagination." |
Recursive Development, Rhetorical Strategies, and Project Based Learning:
Opinions formed through informal discovery writing like those highlighted above can become points of departure for sophisticated critical inquiry through a 'return and revise' type strategy for idea building that would look familiar within the field of composition studies even before the AI turn, but is also instructive in demonstrating the nature of critical thinking as fundamentally novel in comparison to AI generated content. Simply put, returning to an idea with new questions and with the intention to reconsider, develop, and innovate is how experienced writers often view their process for developing meaningful writing.[2] However, requesting a text or image generator to provide elaboration or draw conclusions from any given text, let alone a text it generated, is often the most expedient way to expose the limitations of its ability to produce valuable or accurate content.[3] Importantly, embedding both peer and instructor intervention between stages of recursive development supports the values of collaborative learning, establishes a less hierarchical model for providing instructive feedback, and creating opportunities for casual and incremental assessment that promotes greater accountability by making AI plagiarism of final products more difficult and less relevant. For example, responses for this assignment, shared online and in classroom breakout groups, became the basis for further class conversations and controlled opportunities for students to rehearse and debate their ideas. Beyond this, students were provided options to continue their work through a guided investigation into different rhetorical situations devised around their initial creation and reflection.
In an optional second part to this assignment, students were asked draw from their image and response to develop one of the argumentative essays required by the course. (To help inform their perspectives, they were encouraged to draw from or respond directly to things like notes generated from class discussions, one of several popular articles on AI, and Denis Dutton’s scholarly work Authenticity in Art, abridged from the Oxford Handbook of Aesthetics.) For an optional third part of the assignment, students have been invited to take their reflections on AI art and authorship to develop their own works of creative multimodal composition. By relying on an iterative, project-based model for introducing the writing process, one that starting with low stakes writing and encourages students to determine the content and direction of their assignments, students are able to more easily to become invested in an idea and develop it in a way that readies them for the kind of discovery experiences that will hopefully define their undergraduate experience.
In an optional second part to this assignment, students were asked draw from their image and response to develop one of the argumentative essays required by the course. (To help inform their perspectives, they were encouraged to draw from or respond directly to things like notes generated from class discussions, one of several popular articles on AI, and Denis Dutton’s scholarly work Authenticity in Art, abridged from the Oxford Handbook of Aesthetics.) For an optional third part of the assignment, students have been invited to take their reflections on AI art and authorship to develop their own works of creative multimodal composition. By relying on an iterative, project-based model for introducing the writing process, one that starting with low stakes writing and encourages students to determine the content and direction of their assignments, students are able to more easily to become invested in an idea and develop it in a way that readies them for the kind of discovery experiences that will hopefully define their undergraduate experience.
Sample Argumentative Essays (click the images)
"Authenticity of AI Pop Art on the Space Race in Education"
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"Delving into Artistic Integrity: Unveiling Plagiarism's Dual Impact on Nominal and Expressive Authenticity"
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"Inauthentic AI Art and Its Dangers"
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"Framing AI images: Authentic Art or Fraud?"
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"Can AI-Generated Artwork be Authentic?"
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Example Creative Projects: Coming Soon
[1] All student content is included anonymously and with permission
[2] See Nany Sommer's article Revision Strategies of Student Writers and Experienced Adult Writers
[3] For context on the limitations of AI to replicate human thought, refer also to Noam Chomsky's March 8, 2023 New York Times Opinion article, "The False Promise of ChatGPT"
[2] See Nany Sommer's article Revision Strategies of Student Writers and Experienced Adult Writers
[3] For context on the limitations of AI to replicate human thought, refer also to Noam Chomsky's March 8, 2023 New York Times Opinion article, "The False Promise of ChatGPT"
