'AI can generate images in seconds, but human art remains irreplaceable'

Although AI can rapidly replicate artistic styles, human-created art remains irreplaceable because it conveys unique perspectives, deliberate choices, and an inherent need to imagine that technology cannot measure or replace, says Digital Minister Gobind Singh Deo.

PETALING JAYA: While artificial intelligence (AI) can effortlessly recreate portraits and conjure complex visuals in mere seconds, it cannot replace the fundamental human drive to imagine and create, according to a recent address exploring the intersection of technology and creative expression.

Digital Minister Gobind Singh Deo reflected on how tools and canvases have continually evolved throughout history, even as humanity’s core desire to imagine has remained constant.

Speaking at the opening ceremony of ‘A Solo Exhibition by Tham Siew Moi – Conversations’ at the Pro Art & Frame Gallery on Sept 13, Gobind highlighted how public focus has rapidly shifted toward AI tools.

“Recently, many of us would have seen the trend of people putting their photographs into ChatGPT and transforming them into those wonderfully dramatic 1980s-style portraits. Big hair. Studio lighting. Fashion choices some of us are probably quite happy to have left in the 1980s,” said Gobind.

“It was fun. But what made it interesting was not simply that AI could produce a photograph. It allowed us to imagine something that never happened.

“What would I have looked like in another era? What if this photograph had been taken forty years ago? For a few seconds, technology opened a doorway into another possibility. And in its own way, that tells us something about art.

Gobind added that long before AI could generate an image from a sentence, artists were already taking things that existed only in the imagination and giving them form.

He also emphasised that whilst AI has arrived, and that newer technologies will inevitably succeed it, there remains a timeless quality to physical human craft that machines cannot replicate.

“When we look at a painting, we are not simply looking at the final image,” Gobind said.

“We are looking at its originality.”

He added that every deliberate choice behind a physical work — from colour selection and spatial framing to individual, instinctive brushstrokes formed after hours of contemplation — represents a vital human process that technological convenience will never replace.

“Yes, a machine can reproduce a style. An artist gives us a point of view,” Gobind said.

“And that is why, even in an increasingly digital world, I believe human-created art will remain deeply important.”