Author: Helena Brady, Granada High School
📍Livermore, CA

This article’s author is worried about AI’s implications on the future of creativity for the art industry. Throughout the essay, Jessica raises several important concerns, including the copyright implications of AI-generated art, the potential for AI to stifle creativity, and the dangers of corporate control over artistic production. A few of the most significant rhetorical choices used were imagery, rhetorical questions, and deductive reasoning, which instills fear and uncertainty about AI in people. 

One of the most important rhetorical strategies Rizzo uses is imagery to make the audience envision possible events in the future about the danger of AI that will lead to uncertainty and fear. Throughout her essay to help the reader visualize the capabilities of DALL-E and to understand its potential impact on the art world he focuses on imprinting vivid pictures in a person’s mind. He begins the article by describing a series of images generated by DALL-E, including a “portrait photo of a parrot sipping a fruity drink through a straw in Margaritaville” and a “room full of giant sloths all waving towards the viewer painted in a style like Andy Warhol.” These images are both playful and “unreal” so they are used to immediately capture the reader’s attention. This statement also uses humor to grab the attention of the audience and make the argument more convincing since people can relate to and feel some emotion in it. Rizzo then uses these images to illustrate his point that AI image generators are capable of creating art that is both original and visually appealing. She is trying to educate people about the capabilities of AI in art by creating vivid images in the audience’s heads related to the advancement of artificial intelligence. the author writes: “WALL-E is a trash compacting robot who spends his days sifting through the detritus of a failed civilization.” This statement by Rizzo is used to dehumanize the AI art creations to degrade their value as not “real” art. 

Jessica Rizzo uses rhetorical questions throughout the article to challenge the reader’s assumptions about AI image generators to further instill fear and uncertainty about AI in the creation of art. For example, the author asks: “Right now, artists using traditional mediums hold copyright over their work by default. If the future of art is one in which artists only ‘own’ their work on any given day because some mercurial tech executive didn’t wake up that morning and change their mind, our culture is in trouble.” This rhetorical question forces the reader to consider the potential implications of AI image generators for copyright law and the ownership of intellectual property.”If DALL-E and technologies like it are widely adopted, the ramifications for artistic production itself could be far-reaching. Artists who come to rely on DALL-E will be left with nothing if OpenAI decides to reassert its rights.” This rhetorical question is meant to emphasize the power that the corporation has to control the production and sale of art-based designs. She shows the irony in how art is supposed to be “original” to one person based on their unique talent, not a non-human creation. People generally do not like corporations inserting control over their lives and resources because they feel that it is invasive and Rizzo uses that ideology to further convince people against AI for art. 

In addition to other creative rhetorical devices that Rizzo incorporated, she also uses deductive reasoning to support her argument. She begins by stating her premise: “AI image generators are capable of creating art that is both original and visually appealing.”  She then concludes from this premise: “If AI image generators become widely used, artists will come to rely on them too heavily.”   she draws a second conclusion from the first conclusion that it will lead to a decline in the quality of art. Rizzo’s use of deductive reasoning is effective because it is clear and logical. She begins by stating her premises clearly, and then she concludes from those premises that are logical. Rizzo uses deductive reasoning to make people understand the potential consequences of AI being used for art with unclear copyright laws and how it will lead to a change in art for the worse. In the paragraphs, before this, she joked about how people could use AI to mimic Renaissance art ( instructing the AI to insert a smiling corgi into a Renaissance tableau of their choosing). This shows how AI will cause people to lose creativity and have their perception of entertainment be controlled by a robot. 

Additionally, she uses emotional appeals to evoke the reader’s sympathy for artists who may be negatively impacted by these technologies. Her rhetorical choices are effective in persuading the reader that AI image generators could harm the future of art. 

Jessica Rizzo’s use of rhetorical devices is effective in persuading the reader that AI image generators could hurt the future of art. Her use of rhetorical questions, imagery, and deductive reasoning makes the reader consider the potential implications of these technologies for copyright law, intellectual property ownership, and traditional forms of artistic expression. Through her article, she meant to instill the fear and uncertainty of the future of art due to the impact of artificial intelligence.