Will AI Art Help or Hurt Artists?

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Dear subscribers,

Imagine creating an entire painting by typing a few sentences.

That’s exactly how Jason Allen, an entrepreneur, created AI art that won first place in a recent competition. The internet exploded after hearing this news, with some claiming that Jason joined “a marathon and drove a Lamborghini to the finish line.”

I’ve been playing with AI art myself and it’s mindblowing. Let’s dive into:

1. What can AI art create?

2. How does AI art work?

3. Will AI art help or hurt artists?

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What can AI art create?

AI tools like DALLE-2, Midjourney, and Stable Diffusion can generate detailed images from text prompts. Here’s a sample of what you can create:

1. Create images from text

You can create your city as a scene from a Studio Ghibli movie with this prompt:

still from Studio Ghibli movie 'alone in san francisco'; very detailed, focused, colorful, antoine pierre mongin, trending on artstation ; 8k

San Francisco in the style of Studio Ghibli

2. Create images from rough sketches

You can transform a rough sketch into a detailed image with this prompt:

A distant futuristic city full of tall buildings inside a huge transparent glass dome, In the middle of a barren desert full of large dunes, Sun rays, Artstation, Dark sky full of stars with a shiny sun, Massive scale, Fog, Highly detailed, Cinematic, Colorful

From a rough sketch to a digital city

3. Extend images beyond their borders

You can extend the borders of images like the original Girl with a Pearl Earring painting using a few text prompts.

Girl with a Pearl Earring expanded through AI art tools

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How does AI art work?

AI models use reverse diffusion to generate images

Here’s the “explain like I’m five” version:

1. Billions of images are scraped from the internet. These images, along with their text descriptions, are saved in a database. Here’s a data explorer for “Ghibli”.

2. The AI model uses this database to train through reverse diffusion. Diffusion adds noise to an image (from the dog to random pixels). Reverse diffusion turns noise back into an image. So if you type “Dog on the moon” the model knows how to mash “dog” and “moon” images to create a single piece of art.

corgi on the moon, very detailed, focused, colorful, trending on artstation ; 8k

To learn more, check out this thread or watch this video. To repeat the obvious:

The AI model trains by using images from other artists without their permission.

As you can imagine, this has some ethical implications.

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Will AI art help or hurt artists?

Jason Allen’s AI art “Théâtre D’opéra Spatial” took first place in a competition

Here’s the bull and bear case:

Bull case: AI will lower the barrier to entry for artists to create digital art

By letting anyone create art from simple text prompts, AI will dramatically lower the barrier to entry for new digital artists.

AI will also help existing artists become more productive. For example, the AI Photoshop plugin below lets artists quickly generate an entire landscape from their drawing and a few images:

Peter Yang @petergyang

5/ Collaborate with AI to generate an entire landscape:

Bear case: AI will hurt artists’ livelihood and plagiarism will be rampant

Existing artists don’t get any recognition or compensation from new AI images that are created based off their work:

🏳️‍🌈Chris Shehan🔪 @ChrisShehanArt

@GenelJumalon Let’s pretend AI art didn’t exist for a second. Someone sends an artist a bunch of prompts, the artist does art and sends it back to the person who write the prompts. That person then enters the art into a contest under their own name and wins. That’s unethical.

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I think AI tools will help artists long term

A family portrait from the 19th century when photography was invented

Let’s look back to the invention of photography in the 19th century (source):

1. When photography was invented, some artists used it as an aid for their paintings. Others refused to touch the tool at all.

2. Photography democratized people’s access to images. The middle class could all of a sudden take family portraits with the click of a button.

3. Traditional artists moved to impressionism and modernism to differentiate their work from photos. A new breed of artists made photography an art form by caring about composition, color, light, and much more.

I think we’ll see a similar pattern play out for AI tools:

1. Some artists will use AI to craft better art pieces. Others will shun these tools completely.

2. AI will democratize people’s access to digital art. Anyone can now create great art pieces.

3. Traditional artists will start to explore new movements that AI can’t easily replicate. A new breed of artists will emerge who use AI natively to create masterpieces.

One thing is for sure, AI is here to stay and will dramatically transform not just art but multiple industries (e.g., fashion, architecture, programming, and more).

Creators should keep an open mind and give AI tools a try to avoid getting left behind.