Use Lumière's law before you are replaced as an artist

We haven't seen the end of AI art at all.

The Lumière brothers, inventors of the Cinématographe

Your mind is fairly conservative. You struggle to do away with what you’re used to and move on to the new. You hold on to old ideas until a serious threat arises.

As artists, our job is to go against that. We are the so-called “creative class”, those who are brave enough to venture outside of the cultural safeguards.

And yet when it comes to AI, many of us have shown our closeness of mind by calling it “the fast food of art”, or saying it is unethical and will soon be taken down.

According to Lumière’s Law, none of this is true.

In 1895, a quiet revolution happened through the lens of Auguste and Louis Lumière. Their “Cinématographe” gave birth to the moving picture, transforming shadows and light into stories that moved, breathed, and lived.

But the Lumières, rooted in photography, could not envision the boundless potential of cinema. They thought of their new invention as nothing more than “moving photographs”. As such, they declared it an invention without a future.

We all know what became of cinema. And this lack of foresight by the Lumière Brothers is not merely a historical curiosity. The specter of AI, much like the shadow of cinema's infancy, looms large. Lumière's Law whispers across the ages: Judging tomorrow's possibilities by today's understandings is the path to obsolescence.

AI is just getting started. Soon will it give rise to many amazing and disruptive use cases, BY ARTISTS. We’ve already seen this beginning with OpenAI’s SORA.

So what is the lesson here ?

Can you guess it ?

Here it is : AI is one of the next big things in art. Active artistic minds everywhere are already thinking of a thousand ways to use these strange, cold, dead compressors of visual information.

You don’t have to use AI in your art. Personally I never will. But you must stand ready to face the onslaught of discouraging use-cases that will back us into a corner as traditional artists.

And what happens when you back people into a corner ?

This, dear creators, is our grand adventure.

How do you feel ? Share your thoughts, your fears, your hopes in the comments below.