A.I. Art Generators and What it Means for Artists

 

There's been a new trend all over social media lately, A.I. generated art. If you're not familiar with it, basically there are several new apps available that allow you to create artwork by typing out what you want to see, selecting the style and medium you want to see it in, and having the internet do the rest. Several programs have become available over the last year or so, and the results of people's imaginations have been...well, interesting. I have been playing around with one called Starryai for inspiration for creatures and characters for my writing. Although it's fun, I have seen a lot of concern from the artistic community. Artist are afraid that this new technology will essentially put them out of a job. But can computer generated artwork really cause the collapse of the human element?

There are a couple of problems with this.

For one, you have to know exactly what to write and what styles to choose in order to get a decent image. The picture in this article is an example of one I did. The prompt I used was "writing with a demon." It heralded a bunch of oddball, twisted monstrosities that didn't make a lot of sense visually. The picture I chose here was the best one out of all of them. Though it looks kind of neat, it was not what I was expecting when I chose that prompt. It takes a lot of trial and error to get what you're looking for, and if you don't want to pay for credits, you're not going to be able to do too much.

Secondly, you have the legal aspect of it. Copyrighting such an image is kind of tricky. A human didn't actually create anything, the computer did. Copyright laws were created to protect people and their work. If one creates an image on an app like Starryai and wishes to use it commercially, there is nothing that will stop someone else from also using that art, as it is not protected. You can also run into issues where you are accused of using someone else's art. A.I. technology is still based on images and creations from all over the web, and there is no guarantee the art you generated is totally original. In fact, it's pretty much a guarantee that someone out there has used similar prompts and come up with similar images. 

So no, I don't think A.I. art generators are anywhere near advanced enough to replace flesh and blood artists. I think of them as more of a tool for inspiration, something you can fiddle with to get an idea in your head about what you want the piece to look like before you present it to an actual artist. A.I. generated art may look great, but there are far too many gray areas involved to rely on it.