If you are using Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest or any social media at all, you’ve certainly already come across AI Generated art, perhaps without even knowing it!
In less than a year, AI generated images have made their way into our feeds, and it can be hard to tell them from real paintings. But what exactly is AI generated art?
AI Generated Art vs Digital Art
AI generated art is art that is entirely created by artificial intelligence. All you need to do is type a text prompt for example “Seaside landscape with a lighthouse” into the tool, choose a format and a style and AI will instantly generate the image for you. That differs widely from Digital Art that has been around for decades and is art created on a computer or tablet using drawing programs. In digital art, the program provides virtual tools such as brushes, pencils etc… for the artist to use. The main advantage being that you can reverse any action and work in layers. The drawing and painting skills are still essentials in that process and the artist input is just as significant as it would be in a physical painting with some digital paintings taking many hours to create.
Basically, we could say that while digital art is created by artists, AI Generated art isn’t.
The problem with AI generated Art
As we’ve just seen, AI enables people who have absolutely no painting or drawing skills to create decent art in seconds. All that is required is to know how to write and to have an idea. Pretty simple, right? Who hasn’t ever dreamt of creating an image just as they see it in their minds, well that’s pretty much what AI generated Art does. So why are many people criticizing it?
The first problem is copyright or ethics. In the same way that Alexa and OK Google find the answers to your questions on the internet, AI doesn’t exactly generate the images from thin air. It is trained with databanks of images, to learn elements that enables it to create in a certain style. Unfortunately, the dataset used for this training is often obtained illegally by the AI companies by stealing images already created on the internet. While it doesn’t just “compiles” those existing images to create a new one based on your request, the way the databank is obtained, without permission, is still questionable. AI simply couldn’t work if it didn’t have access to an abundance of existing images, and it uses the work of real artists to create fake ones.
Another problem is that by making art creation accessible to anyone, it makes less valuable the work of real artists who spent years developing their skills and style and struggle to make a living. While their work is being somehow stolen to feed the AI, the need to pay those artists shrinks significantly since publishers, print shops and brands can now simply create their own imagery with the only cost being the AI generating tool.
That means countless visual artists around the world who devoted their lives to making beautiful, meaningful art are at risk of loosing sales and contract opportunities. Yes, some artists might start using AI generation as a starting point to more elaborate digital art but we are way beyond an image editing software when more than 90% of the work is done by the machine before you even have to take out your - virtual - brush.
In conclusion, on top of it being somehow unethical, and a threat to real artists (digital or traditional) around the globe, it is likely that AI will eventually create more and more unoriginal and similar looking content.
How to spot AI generated Art
Fortunately, AI generated art is not yet perfect which gives us ways to detect it. Even the most expensive AI generating tools, are still not good enough to create accurately certain details such as hands (AI tends to create too many / too few fingers or more than 2 hands), the pupil of the eye seem to be too complex for AI, and finally the proportions between 2 nearby elements often seem off (Unnaturally large animal side by side with a person etc..). Pay attention the next time you see what looks like digital art on the internet, are the hands hidden or strange? Are animals and people on a slightly different scale? Then it’s probably AI made!
At the pace the digital world is changing, it’s hard to tell what’s next but I know I would personally hate to see real art disappear and be replaced by cheap “remakes” of great paintings.
What about you? Are you pro or against AI Generated art? Let me know your thoughts!
Aurélie S.
P.S. You can support a real-life artist and buy non-AI art from my shop here.
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