As an artist, I can't help but see all the posts about AI art swarming the internet lately. At first, I was a bit skeptical myself about the topic and what AI truly meant to the art community. After reading about "what it is" and acknowledging what it is, I can say I found a lot of very interesting topics covering the subject.
"Good artists copy, great artists steal" - Pablo Picasso
I've always found this quote to be so true and so important as a growing artist. The meaning behind this being that mediocre artists observe but don't properly implement what they've taken into their art. "A great artist steals" means they understand what they like and and take a fragment of that thing they like and inject it into their style.
I've been watching a lot of AI artists work and show their process and how they implement this into their workflows.
I pay very close attention to the art community, and I normally don't feel this strongly about political debates in art, but I very strongly feel Artists need to embrace this technology and take the time to understand the sheer potential this has to speed up artistic workflow.
What is AI Art?
"AI" stands for "artificial intelligence".
There are now image generators with a few beings "Midjourney", "Dall E", "Art Breeder" Stable Diffusion" and "Lensa". Which each of these generators, you either hand it a picture to iterate on or type in a prompt and the generator creates an image based off the prompt given if not both.
Below Are some interesting reads on the history of both AI as a whole
and how AI artwork came to be.
Ironically, AI art does exactly what a lot of people thought digital artists where doing the whole time. That being " type something into the computer and the computer does the work for you". So unsurprisingly, there's a lot of people unimpressed by AI tech because they thought that's what digital art was the whole time.
Unsurprisingly this created a huge split in the art community. Artists that support it, artists that are against it, and artists that are indifferent to it.
People always are fearful of what is new and what they don't understand. This can be said about anything really, and not just artwork. It's honestly a chain effect. One of my personal favorite examples being the coexistence of photography in the art community.
The Rise of the Camera
Long before photography, artists where relied on to document important stories and replicate people in art. Often nobles and rich families would commission realist painters to paint families portraits. Oil Paint was the perfect medium to capture reality with incredible amount of detail. When cameras were invented in 1816 , this was unsurprisingly alarming to painters. Artists worried there would be no place for them with the invention of photography.
Funny enough, this fear also led to artists trying out new types of art during the dawn of the 20th century with deco art art nouveau artwork. Which I might also add was also shunned upon for not being detailed enough and "ugly". Other styles and interpretation of what "art" was started to surface and the definition of artwork then become incredibly subjective.
In the end, realism in art was also not dead by any stretch of the imagination. Despite photography's existence, art continued to coexist with photography, and in fact they even complimented each other is different regards. The practice of commissioning artists for family portraits never once was dead, and even evolved into other topics such as "pet portraits" in addition to "family portraits". This also led to the practice of inserting hyper realistic topics into sci fi, and other fictitious media. Character concepts for Dragons like "Smaug" in the "Hobbit" wouldn't exist if it weren't' for realistic interpretations. That can even be added on to a lot of Western styled games like "Red Dead Redemption", "The Elder Scrolls", or "Call of Duty" or even the famous "Magic the Gathering" trading card game.
Photography allowed artists to not have to rely on always being in the field for studies and allowed the study of building and other subjects from the comfort of their own homes. It even Helped in animation as photography evolved into cinematography. Rotoscoping and live action referencing became a new type of artistic practice with the rise of animation and studying life and movement.
Here's a Video going over the study of rotoscoping and reference in animation
There's No Effort to AI Art...or is There?
Artist's upon the creation of photography and honestly, even to this day, have this opinion about photography:
All you have to do is push a button and suddenly an image is created". "There's no effort in photography, this is unfair to the real artists". "How is photography art? there's no skill to do it". "The camera does all the work, how is this a profession?"
Hmm, sound familiar? A lot of artists complain about very similar issues with AI artwork with allegedly "no effort" or "oh it just magically created itself and it's good".
Similar to photography, there is thought put into the creation of AI art. Yes, both similarly can "make an image" in an instant, but that image isn't necessarily a "perfect image".
In photography, you need to know shutter speed, angles, lighting, patience, proper lens, F Stop and timing as well as most importantly, a good idea for the subject being created.
A lot of that also applies to AI art. A giant misconception to AI art being "all you do is a type a few words and you're good". When in reality, you have to practice what the proper word prompt is . Sometimes even the order for the words can change the entire image.
Below I have an example of a prompt I made in Midjourney where one said "Dragon cat" and the other was listed "cat dragon" and suddenly the entire composition is different.
As you can , the images are wildly different depending on the order if the sentence. I can also add the more draconic images used a version of my cat drawing with transparency and no white in the background, where the more catlike drawing used the same image but with a white background. The catlike pictures ended up being closer to the original image I gave it to iterate upon since it had a clearer image to work with. The Cover of this blog also used one of the iterations, but upon close inspection, the raw computerized variant had alot of oddities about the picture. This is due to a vague prompt and a low detail refence given to the computer.
The Moral of this photography story is that the subject that was originally rather controversial for fine artists ended up being a tool and was thus welcomed into the art community both in celebration of recognizing photography as an artform and aiding existing art mediums.
Other Examples of Similar Controversies
Here are some other examples of new inventions that where at first controversial and ended up becoming tools to the respective trades:
Digital Art -> Traditional art
3D printing -> Sculpting
Google Translate -> Translators
Photoshop -> Photography
Calculators -> Mathematicians
Auto Cad -> Blue Print Artists
3D Animation -> 2D animation
We've been using AI for a while Now
If you've ever used photoshop and added funny filters to a photo, you've used AI in art. This can be said about anything automatically detecting or creating something ,including the selection tools, the clone stamp tool, or even the smart fill tools. AI is especially used in background design, and I feel a major thing scaring artists now it's ability to create characters.
Unbeknownst to many, procedurally created work has been a practice in media for a long time now. In a similar sense, these technologies needed something to create the new found pieces of work.
Videos on Procedural Mountains: Video search:
AI is Helpful, not Hurtful
The big takeaway I have from AI is that it is in fact a helpful tool. A lot of artists as they get older develop arthritis and art becomes harder to create. With AI, people can train the AI to recognize their style, and with proper word prompts, they can recreate the artist's look they are trying to achieve.
I've also seen AI used to create material assets for Substance Design and sampler. Those art programs use "samples" to create texture in 3D environments used in movies , photographs and video games.
AI can even be used to come up with new ideas. Using the Drat example earlier ,some of the generated images created drats with paws on their tails! That could be something I can use to come up with new creature design.
AI Artwork and Copyright?
I love seeing how a Lawyer goes over where AI art is at the moment . He more or less breaks down both sides of the AI argument and how since AI art is brand new, it sits in a grey area in copyright law. I personally hope more goes in the favor for this new technology, like many other technologies long before it as AI is such a game changer for artists.
Below, I have several video links that go in-depth about where AI stands currently in the copyright laws as well as more in-depth discussion as what the images are actually doing, which is creating new transformative pieces of work.
For all the artists out there that want a peace of mind on the topic, I will say I think it is good that copyright laws are currently being looked at, and websites like artstation and deviantart created new settings for artists to opt in or out of their work for machine learning. They also now have filters and tags that allow artists to see art that incudes ai art in the work or not.
The Ethics and Controversies of AI Art
there's a big controversy on the ethics of "AI art" going around right now
but it can be compared to when an artist uses reference, or even 'photomanipulation"
We're currently living in what's known as the digital age, and that means there's going to be a huge amount of technologic advancement in many regards.
just 10 years ago, most people did not have smart phones, and even those had their own controversies.
some people get scared at targeted ads because their devices are "listening". but the truth is it's a marketing strategy.
AI art has been around since the middle of the 20th century but has only recently been perfected. These are the big controversies going on right now:
AI art is stealing copyrighted artist content!
AI art is using my pictures!
Don't use art to train AI!
AI art is better than artist work! It's going to replace artists!
I may as well quite as an artist
Why is AI scraping the internet?
This video sums up and debunks a lot of these controversies against AI art covering rumors, concerns, and what AI technology is actually doing
Video Link
This is very hypocritical when you think about how artists study art. we study off each other and use references from photography and artists alike. Think about his: Do people ask permission first every time we need to draw something? No, they don't.
Now, as an artist, I can understand a lot of these concerns when you don't have context for what it is and what it is doing.
There are images floating around of AI having "traces" of artist's signatures in the work. Since humans can still input any image they want into ai prompt, it's no surprise there'd be traces of something like that as the generator is only being told to retransform the image into a new idea. In that specific regard, the blame can be placed on the human, and not the AI.
The same thing would happen if an artist decided to use the clone stamp on an existing image and maybe missed a spot. There may in fact be traces of what was once there.
I feel it's also important to understand AI machine learning is used to help identify already existing material in our world. It's similar to when you go on "google" and type in "cat". you will get a lot of images of "cats" because the search engine can identify these pictures properly regardless of keywords. The same applies to "phones" when the photo albums automatically make "pet albums" because the photos on the phone also can clump these subjects together. These things need to have a source to be programmed properly.
Aggression Feeds Aggression
This article I have here is great because it talks about how "Aggression feeds aggression" instead of fighting, let artists and developers compromise. The article has a list that I believe would have a huge impact on making all artists have peace of mind on the topic at hand.
ARTSTATION.COM
REAL ACTIONS TO STOP AI CRISIS, Cordy Daler
and finally, a videos showcasing arguments for and against AI artwork.
Here's the video For & Against AI Debate
So Will AI Replace Artists?
Absolutely not! As you've now seen from various examples, AI is incredibly helpful for artists and can greatly speed up workflow whether that means coming up with new ideas, using the work in images, or generating assets. Artists are still needed to create specific ideas and specific concepts. AI has a hard time with consistency without the aid of an artists hand, and like the photography example, I feel it will be welcome in the community in time. There are many artists that welcome it as a tool , but many that still frown upon it's usage. There is still a long way to go to properly pass the copyright law and where AI sits in the public eye, and
I feel if artists can understand what it's trying to be, there will be a compromise that appeases to both sides of the argument.
See You Soon!
Thank you everyone for reading this blog. Once again, look forward to upcoming art ideas and topics. Make sure to subscribe to stay up to date! You can also take a look at my social media updates on Instagram!
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