TIPS #0: How deep is the illustration?

July 11, 2025 - illustration

Let's face it:There are those who, to write this article that you have just started reading, would have easily questioned ChatGPTFirst, an outline: "Hey Chatty, write me an outline for an in-depth blog post illustrating the implications of AI's impact on the world of art and illustration." And then, "Now develop the first five points proposed and add a more emotional conclusion, in a friendly tone, with a clear and effective call to action."

We, who are writing this post about two years after the previous one, abstain. It will be atotally analog stream of consciousness, but enriched by the splendid images of our authors. Here's one: this is "How deep is the sea” by Isabella Conti, with its magical starry waters.

Speaking of water: we often forget to drink and stay hydrated throughout the day, butour not so virtual daily consumption of H2O is well over a litercontent in the water bottle on your desk. A dozen searches, questions, and prompts launched daily on any app or artificial intelligence software costs much more in terms of energy and water consumption.

And it's obvious that those of us, always drawn to any form of drawing, would be curious to see how an anonymous photograph of work or family is transformed into a Studio Ghibli-style portrait. And yetWe avoid using generative AI for many reasons, not least its environmental impact.

And no,we are not reactionarieswho fear any technological breakthrough that destabilizes the status quo. Artificial intelligence, capable of accelerating medical research, is great, as is its use in streamlining the bureaucracy of a country that, for the most part, is closer to faxes than to SPID. ButLet's leave illustration to those who make it their profession.

In 1997 Samuele Bersani sang"you are just a copy of a thousand summaries"It was a beautiful song, Giudizi universali. A song written by Bersani himself with a co-author, a song performed by a band, recorded in a studio with a producer, mixed by an engineer, and probably mastered by yet another person.

Now we can all create a copy of a thousand summaries., with a stable connection and a modicum of clarity. Just write a few lines, feed a few sensible keywords to a tool that crunches data inside a scorching server in a remote Arizona factory, and voilà: a "song" has been created.

But that's not a song that comes from an idea, an emotion, a guitar riff or a few piano notes, no matter how derivative or imperfect. It's just, in fact, a copy of a thousand, ten thousand, millions of summaries.It has no soul and will not be played live by anyoneIt exists, of course. It exists to be sent as a voice message on WhatsApp to make a friend smile, it exists to be consumed and trashed in a few minutes.
At best (or perhaps worst) it exists to be uploaded to Spotify with the intent of earning a few euros by defying the algorithm, but its life will always be short.

The same goes for images, for photography, for illustration, for art.Art, ultimately, should be the aesthetic expression of interiority, an activity that results in a product that will never be perfectly replicable, as it is the fruit of the human soul in its singularity. Who owns that copy of a thousand artificially generated summaries? No one. It has no history, except that of the person who typed a command string on its keyboard.

We like illustration because it tells storiesStories barely sketched out yet to be written, like the sea drawn by Isabella Conti, or snapshots that convey a clear, limpid emotion, impossible to ignore.

And then, there are the stories of all the illustration authors: their ideas, their style, the paths they have chosen to follow, the inspirations that daily suggest deviations and lead to something new, true, imperfect and beautiful.

Here, in addition to reiterating our position on AI, for us it is essential to underline the importance of the people who do the illustration, of their stories, relationships, ideas. This is whyTips(s), a format to get to know illustration artists better. 10 not-too-boring questions for each of them, once a month. You can read us starting next week!