TAnxiety and mistrust surrounding artificial intelligence among artists and creators remains real and consequential, and the language used by leading art critics is often apocalyptic: “AI will destroy art, AI is evil, it’s the devil.” Like many emerging technologies, AI has been driven by companies at the forefront of its development. Rapidly being adopted by the public and continuing to evolve, machine learning is inextricably intertwined with fear, revulsion, and foreboding. At the same time, its power and potential are expanding exponentially and becoming embedded in almost every aspect of human activity.
The upcoming RBO/SHIFT Festival at the Royal Opera House aims to interrogate all aspects of this rapidly evolving landscape and enable artists, performers, creators and audiences to think deeply and broadly about where we are today and where we will be tomorrow. Machine learning represents a dramatic change in both society and the arts, and we need storytellers, artists, teachers, and thinkers in this field to help shape the direction of that change and navigate this uncharted territory.
Opera is a particularly good place to explore technology. It integrates multiple art forms such as music, visual art, architecture, poetry, dance, theater, and film, making it both niche and extremely broad. Opera has always been involved with technology. Since its inception around 1600, opera producers have incorporated modern inventions such as fireworks, automatons, flying machines, and trapdoors. Then came electric lighting, movies, digital media, and advanced sound. At the same time, the Opera preserves historical crafts such as landscape painting, embroidery, dyeing, preserving ancient musical instruments and rediscovering forgotten repertoire. It is an art form that looks backward and forward at the same time.
The most frequently asked question regarding AI is whether it will replace humans, with particular concerns surrounding ownership, consent, and use of performers’ likenesses. These concerns are legitimate and deserve serious attention. However, it remains surprisingly difficult to identify which artistic roles in opera could be replaced by AI. That doesn’t mean change won’t happen, but the reality is more complex than the rhetoric.
As I have spent the past year discussing AI with manufacturers, programmers, researchers, composers, and performers, I am not sure whether this technology has the potential to disrupt the arts. The most well-written aspect of machine learning, the generative AI that generates images, words, and music, is in many ways the least interesting. For decades, there have been operas produced with and by AI by researchers and musicians, but these have had little impact on the creation of new works more broadly.
While the prospect of machines producing a “new” Molière play, or even a “new” Mozart opera, is making headlines, creative applications of AI have already gone beyond imitation. For me, the more interesting questions concern collaboration, interaction, and entirely new forms of artistic practice. Interaction with machines can expand our understanding of our own capabilities. Photography changed the way painters saw the world. Conlon Nancarrow’s pianola works influenced composers such as György Ligeti and Gerard Grisée. New technologies do not simply replace existing art forms. They often change the conditions under which artists think and create.
Many of the most useful applications of AI may turn out to be practical rather than artistic. Machine learning systems are used for workforce planning, scheduling, reservation management, and operational data analysis. During opera production itself, AI can be used to analyze scene loading and improve safety applications. Such applications rarely make headlines, but they may ultimately have a more long-term impact than AI-generated images.
AI can also be a useful tool for reducing waste. Opera makers spend much of their lives imagining things that don’t yet exist, and this process inevitably involves some degree of creative experimentation. AI-enhanced pre-visualization can eliminate much of this process for both set construction and costume creation. While AI tools are already allowing costume drawings to be placed on a three-dimensional body, allowing designers to consider all angles, innovations in VR-powered set visualization are becoming increasingly sophisticated.
Ethical issues remain significant. Does it matter if a singer’s voice, a writer’s words, an artist’s work is plagiarized and misused? It is. Laws, controls, and protections are essential when direct benefits result from direct appropriation. At the same time, creativity itself has always depended on culture, knowledge, and access to the works of the past.
The ethical, environmental and social implications of machine learning raise issues that all organizations must address, just as the implications for representation, access and international touring are central to opera and ballet companies.
Although AI seems to have appeared out of nowhere, it is actually part of a continuous expansion of technology that has been unfolding for centuries. It is also a space where a variety of artistic and imaginative voices are essential. RBO/SHIFT asks two questions: what can AI do for creatives? and what can creatives do for the world in the age of AI? As our interactions with machines become ever more prevalent, AI may lead us to further appreciate, protect, and preserve art, rather than destroy it. In an opera house, the stratospheric singing, virtuosic instrumentation, stunning scenery, incredible costumes, daring theatrical invention, and vibrant collaborative energy of a live audience are unchallenged by AI.
We can see forward and backward at the same time.
RBO/SHIFT will be performed at the Royal Ballet Opera’s Linbury Theater in London from June 4th to 7th.
