In this issue, Panorama’s Director, Matthew Webb, speaks with noted illustrator Allen Shaw about AI and his new collaborative Short Film AI CAN.
Matthew Webb: Allen could we start with a brief background on your work in illustration, the themes you explore, and your story in art to date?
Allen Shaw: I am an Indian artist, illustrator, storyteller, and animator based out of Berlin, Germany. I studied communication design with a specialisation in Animation film-making. I travel and I sketch my experiences in my sketchbooks—this I have been doing for over 29 years. So I have over 300 sketchbooks with travelogues from 25 different countries. I am fascinated by people, culture, landscapes, and architecture. But the quest has always been to look for stories. I love bicycles, riding bicycles and drawing bicycles.
Matthew: What technological changes have you seen through your career, from sources of inspiration, to ways of making, to people you connect and work with, deliver finished work, to engaging with audiences? Where has technology helped or hindered the creative process?
Allen: Well, I was born in 1973. Although television came to India in the 70s, my town only got its relay centre in 1984, so until then it was the good old radio. Then, in 1996 internet arrived in a big way and things changed drastically. I’m very old-school as far as drawing is concerned; I work with my hands mostly. One thing has been really clear in my mind: “Technology is a means to an end but not an end by itself.” I do not shy away from technology in my life, but it is a very helpful tool for me. Technology has helped me with my work in countless ways. For example, I can send my work to another corner of the world within seconds, I can get information when I am doing research on a film or an illustration in seconds. I can communicate with my clients on a daily basis—wherever they are—because of technology.
Matthew: The rise of AI, especially in the arts, initially caught many by surprise. How has AI already affected illustration and the expectations around illustrative work? Are there questions people ask about the future of illustration?
Allen: People ask: “Hey what’s your take on AI? Doesn’t it bother you? What does the future of ART look like? Aren’t you scared? Don’t you think what you do will become redundant? Don’t you feel like using AI?” I go to a specific bar or cafe in Berlin to sketch twice a week, in a ritual of sorts. Last year a man walked up to me and said: “who does this nowadays, what’s the point when one can get a sketch like this with a mere click with AI?” My answer was “that you wouldn’t be talking to me if everything was made by AI—we are having this conversation, because I am here and I will not trade it with anything else.”
All artists have been affected by the sudden arrival of AI, and I would be lying if I said it doesn’t affect me. But, I think my survival as an artist must be to go in the opposite direction, where I slow things down. I feel that AI has given people the possibility to give visuals to their thoughts, which was an exclusive thing before. The illustrator/artist was a special person, but now there is total democracy. To still stand out, much like when people are elected in a democracy, I think you get voted in or voted out based on what is special about you. The special thing about me is that I work with my hands. I enjoy the process of sketching/illustrating. Why on earth will I speed up something when it gives me pleasure?
Matthew: How can one begin to explore these questions? Why do people presume AI can do the job of artists? I’m particularly struck by the collaborative nature of your short film. Surely creativity should be more important in the age of AI rather than less.
Allen: Yes that’s my point—one can work along with AI, like a partnership, a collaboration. As a means to an end. I can draw the entire film on an ipad (which, by the way, is already high-end technology). When I was thinking about the script for this film, it suddenly struck me that it could be like a protest song, a RAP song maybe, so I wrote the lyrics next to the storyboard and then I thought “let’s experiment with AI for the singing and the music”. I was happy with what I heard, so here we have a sweet little collaboration, and frankly, I do not mind it because it does not take anything away from what I do. So, if someone wants to give a visual to his or her thoughts and uses AI, it’s absolutely fair. I do not want to compete with AI. There will always be people who would like the stuff that I do, and my work will keep evolving because of technology, but I will never change the core, which is the fact that I draw with my hands. I tried to answer all these questions through this short film AI CAN. In this, I’ve used the letters A & I to create all the visuals for the film as a play on the characters and term so that I can literally say I used AI to make the film.
Matthew: How can AI be a tool for creativity to support creators rather than producing repetitive slop?
Allen: AI is a fantastic tool. For example, a couple of weeks ago, when I had a letter from the German tax system, I simply asked AI how to respond, and in minutes it gave me a set of instructions, which worked. I will not use AI for ideas to create something because it will take away the essence of my being. If you used AI for ideas, then shaped those into an illustration, a film or a work of art, then I would have nothing to do. Why should I take that privilege away from me?
For example, the background used for the film is the stained baking paper after my failed attempt to bake a cake. I simply took it to the studio, scanned it and used it for the film. That’s what I mean by “the joy of coming up with an idea”. Now one can go to AI and ask it to give certain shapes on the baking paper, but AI is not a person who was baking a cake and saw the burnt baking paper and said, Eureka! I will use this as a background for a film. Give me two letters and I will give you a film!
So some of the answers lie in the way we approach life. The interesting AI bit is that after writing the song, we used AI to generate the song for the film.
Matthew: Copyright has been a helpful tool for artists and makers to date, giving the creator ownership. Work made by AI can only currently be copyrighted if a person has sufficiently added to it to make something more than the output of the AI alone. What legal framework would you like to see apply to the creation of AI work and the source material large language models depend upon?
Allen: Yes, people taking my work and feeding it into AI is something that worries me, but we will see. I am sure there will be discussions and laws will become better defined and tailored with time. As for me, I do not worry too much about it. I am more interested in the pleasure I get from the process that I follow. The joy of putting your pencil on paper, the sound of the pencil or the paintbrush hitting the surface of a textured paper, buying a new box of watercolours, that little fear before one puts the first line on the paper. The wonderful sleep one gets after finishing an artwork where “TIME” has been invested, from the first thought to a finished artwork—that satisfaction is what I am chasing. I am not chasing time.
Matthew: How would you describe human creativity, ingenuity that cannot be replaced?
Allen: Human creativity can be studied, then converted into information which can be fed to AI, but someone has to fail baking a cake and turn that around into something which was never in a schema or model of things, it came from nowhere. I would like to quote the singer-songwriter Leonard Cohen here. When he was asked where good songs came from, he answered, “I wish I knew, I would like to go to those places more often!”
Matthew: What response have you had to the film so far?
Allen: All designers and artists have been sending me messages since I put the film out there. I’m not too worried about the response, because it is an important film from my perspective, because I felt like saying something, and I managed to say it in a medium and language I am comfortable with. People will watch, listen, talk and have conversations. It’s my conversation starter. I’m keen to explore this further and would love to hear from readers what they think of A I.
