This excellent interview with me by Ugo Loumé just came out in the Paris literary publication, Actualitté (archived). Super excited about this coverage, as it is the first to actually look at the *art* in what I’m doing, and not merely at the surface issues. Huge thanks to Ugo for being so attentive and accurate in his coverage.
The French print version of The Quatria Conspiracy is now available from Typophilia for global shipping. You can read my notes on the French edition here.
Tim B.
Here’s a translation via ChatGPT:
***
Tim Boucher, the Author of 120 Books Written with AI
In just two years, Canadian artist Tim Boucher has authored over 100 books. To achieve this, he relied on the help of a most obedient writer, one that follows every command, never sleeps, and can write faster than the speed of sound: artificial intelligence. As the first of these books was published on August 7 by the publishing house Typophilia, ActuaLitté had the opportunity to speak with him and his publisher.
“Using AI doesn’t make me an artist, but being an artist is what makes me use AI,” writes Tim Boucher in a blog post that could just as well be a manifesto for AI art. Tim was an artist before the advent of AI: he created and continues to create works that come solely from his human mind. As an artist, Tim asserts that he remains one even when he uses artificial intelligence tools to produce images or texts.
In his blog, he adds: “It seems to me that AI is the new painting, the new artistic drive… I’m not just talking about painting with a brush, but painting with ideas, words, images, and videos at the same time, songs, voices, characters. Worlds. Each like a brushstroke on the hypercanvas, whose form can only be appreciated from the multidimensional perspective of the latent space of human imagination.”
In addition to generating a multitude of images using artificial intelligences, Tim Boucher has written over 120 science fiction books in the past two years, using these same tools: “ChatGPT, Mistral, Midjourney, Stable Diffusion… whatever is commercially available,” he notes. Written in English, Tim’s native language, and already available in ebook format, they will soon be published in print for the first time by the French publishing house Typophilia.
Reimagining Artistic Time and Space
As he explains in his blog, artificial intelligence has allowed him to approach the artistic creation process in a new way. First, through their speed of execution, which perfectly suits Tim’s working style: “I’m someone who works quickly,” he shares.
In a more traditional and human creative process, it is necessary to go through various quite laborious stages— in the original sense of the term: having the idea, making a first draft, modifying it, doing the drawing, adding colors, bringing in details, depth, etc. “I like this process, but sometimes it’s too slow, because ideas are rushing in and I’d like to catch them on the fly.”
AI allows him to skip this long work and focus directly on capturing those ideas. “I’ve always wanted to write or make comics, but it takes so much time that I ended up giving up every time. When these tools arrived, I was faced with an explosion of creativity; I could put in my emotions, the memories of my dreams, the ideas I had. I could sit down, capture all that instantly, and make something out of it.”
In addition to rethinking our relationship with the time of artistic creation, Tim Boucher explains how artificial intelligence tools are disrupting the relationship between a work of art and space, particularly by advancing the concept of the hypercanvas—a notion of a canvas extending infinitely: “In the past, an artist’s creation was limited to a specific material frame, but now, it’s possible to add a multitude of different works. This raises the question: where does the work of art reside? Instead of having one canvas for one piece, I can have a new image, a new text, a new video for every interaction I have with the tool.”
AI, a Clumsy Co-Author
Tim’s work also, according to his publisher Emmanuel Pierre Jean Doridot, dispels the myth of the writer as the sole producer of his book, and of a work that emerges from his mind as if from the thigh of Jupiter. “Being in the field of orthotypography, I know the role of organic intelligences in the work of holding a text. No text is the direct work of a single author.”
“Sometimes the quality is good, even very good, and close to human production; sometimes it’s very strange and bad,” he admits. So Tim often has to retouch the result proposed by the tool to make it wilder, more crazy, more frightening, more dramatic…—We have not yet been able to obtain the works to judge the result.
Moreover, some of these books are almost exclusively human-made, he tells us, while others involve minimal intervention. In between, there is a whole spectrum of levels of human/tool interaction. “I thought there was a demonstration of the potential for collaboration between organic and artificial intelligences,” Emmanuel confides, highlighting what led him to publish Tim’s books, which he considers a “pioneer” in his field.
All while remaining open to the curiosities the tool offers, because the inherent clumsiness of the machine is not necessarily a bad thing and can be sought after for its own sake. For example, Tim Boucher explains how, at a certain point in his research, the French generative AI Mistral starts to go crazy: its artificial mind breaks down, and the machine begins to loop the same terms over and over.
According to him, “this moment is super interesting in itself, even if it’s not great from a literary point of view. We have a tool trying to imitate the human mind and failing, and that error is fascinating to observe.”
When they moved on to the work of retouching, translating, and correcting the texts, Tim and the Typophilia team made sure that the small inaccuracies produced by the AI were not erased, to allow the reader to experience what they call the “taste of AI.” “The text regurgitated by the machine still has a certain flavor. With the translators, proofreaders, and artificial tools we use for translation, we try to preserve it,” Emmanuel explains.
An Art Without Consciousness?
Reading all this, one might think that Tim Boucher is just another gadget enthusiast, raised on Silicon Valley propaganda with blinders firmly in place. But that doesn’t seem to be the case. After working for several years in trust and safety and digital content moderation, he lives without a smartphone or social media. This former life at the heart of the machine “took a toll on Tim’s nerves; he knows well the problem of our dependence on social networks and technologies,” his publisher tells us.
His artistic research is thus a continuation of the reflections that have always crossed his mind concerning our relationship with new technologies, with the same goal of making it as healthy as possible. “After working five years in this environment, I saw the limits of these technologies and what a good life with them could be.”
“What the big companies developing AIs are offering us may not be what best aligns with our values, and as an artist, I can’t participate in this discussion without being inside the program, understanding its ins and outs. Thanks to my practical experience, I have learned a lot about what is bad, what is good, what can be improved, and how to improve it.”
Even though he uses AI to work and create daily, Tim seems even more aware of the issues these new tools pose and how they are managed, as well as the solutions available to us. This is, moreover, the central theme of most of the stories he writes with them, a way of turning the weapons against themselves. Working with, collaborating, while putting his collaborator in the spotlight.
Knowing, Understanding, Participating
In his books, blogs, and various interviews he gives, the Canadian author and artist highlights what he sees as the most pressing dangers in the world of AI. From the machines’ lack of invention: “One of my fears in our use of AI is the loss of diversity. I find it really flat, and I don’t want that in my work, nor in the world I live in. So one of the solutions is to have several AI providers and also to preserve the autonomy of creativity that doesn’t come from a computer.”
To the excessive power that private companies managing these tools will soon have: “It is necessary to be able to have a public conversation about the rules of machine use. It’s quite bad if we leave discretionary power to platforms over what can/can’t be said or done. I find that more dangerous than the usual existential threats we hear about in the media. We will interact more and more with non-human entities that have no empathy, that don’t have the same understanding of the context in which they operate, and we will have to follow some of their decisions without being able to question them.”
Especially since the wave is expected to be massive and has already begun to break: “We already have problems with overconsumption of content and media; we are in a kind of anxiety because of it, constantly having to check our notifications and networks. There is a great chance that AI will exacerbate this problem because it can be used to personalize everything: ‘Here are your songs for the day, here are the books you should read, the friends you should meet…’ It’s a huge risk because there is no control over the companies operating in this field.”
“They can thus manipulate our behaviors, make us buy this or that product, make us feel a certain way. We have evidence that Facebook tries to detect the emotional states of its users and modify them. It’s completely crazy, dystopian. Is this the future we want? And if not, how do we change it? Because it’s going to happen very quickly,” he concludes.
Feeding the Beast We Want to Fight?
What Tim Boucher seems to be offering us is a journey into this new hyperreality that is opening up to us through artificial intelligence tools. A foray into an environment where the boundaries between fiction and truth are blurred, where the most pressing dangers coexist with extraordinary advances in all human activities.
AI is a cocktail of all human capabilities; it can prove to be as explosive as virtuous, depending on what we choose to put into it. “Artificial intelligence is collective intelligence; it’s a mix of all our productions, so if we feed it with garbage, the result will be garbage. But if we feed the system with high-quality, beautiful, and meaningful information, AI will reflect all that.”
Tim Boucher thus calls on each of us to seize these tools, to master them, and to better participate in the revolution that awaits us, rather than merely reacting with a knee-jerk rejection of the phenomenon. “It is important to have a dialogue with these technologies to better understand how they work, what we can do with them, and what we want to do with them. Also, find a way to discover solutions that are not necessarily tied to capitalisms, with AIs that would give us other results than those we get from a company that does this because it charges $20 a month for its use.”
Not everyone will necessarily be convinced by the Canadian author’s approach, who himself acknowledges the paradox it encompasses: “I am both against the system and, at the same time, part of the problem. I accept that judgment.”
Others might also raise the issues of copyright and authors’ rights, which are currently at the heart of reflections on this type of content: some even go so far as to call AI art theft. In the United States, in particular, lawsuits are piling up against companies developing generative AI tools. For his part, Tim says he is very attentive to these issues and is seeking ways to respect the French spirit of copyright law in the publication of his works in France.
Where Has the Truth Gone?
AI art is brand new and has no shortage of detractors. Many concerns surround this innovation in the way content is created. Among the issues pointed out are deep fakes and the ease with which they can be shared today, the conspiracy theories that arise from them, and the danger this poses to democracy and our relationship with the truth.
In response to these questions, Tim Boucher, who claims never to hide the false nature of the images and stories he creates with AI, also sees his work as a way to make visible the power and risks of this new technology. “It has its own limits, but like any creative process. That’s not a reason to shy away from this novelty, but rather to shed light on what is problematic, name it, and seek solutions.”
In North America, his work is already making waves. Between criticisms, debunking, buzz-seeking, and sincere interest in his works, Tim’s deepfakes have managed to attract attention, from Reuters to CNN, to the YouTube channel of an American influencer specializing in these issues. Recently, in an interview accessible to English speakers—automatically generated subtitles are available for others—Tim discussed with him the various criticisms aimed at AI-generated art.