My First Impressions of AI Created Art (As an Artist)

AI driven art has been a popular topic recently, particularly for those of us who are, well, artists. While the overwhelming opinion is such that it is bad for the artist, and I certainly share that opinion to some extent, I wanted to try it out myself. So, I started an account and made my first piece of AI art.

For a couple of years I have been challenged by @jae5086 to make a hand-burned pyrography piece that shows a kraken destroying an armada from the perspective of a survivor fleeing on the last ship to make it out. I've never known quite how to make it because the perspective of someone viewing from a ship is very hard to capture in a detailed enough way to make it obvious to the viewer what they are actually looking at. So, I figured, why not use the AI engine to help me out.

Well, as you can see, it didn't grasp the concept of perspective well either. This is likely due to the difficulty I had in trying to convey what I wanted in text such that the machine would understand. I will definitely try a few more times, but you don't have unlimited uses of the engine without paying so I will have to take it slow and use it slowly over time to get a feel for it. There are more settings to tweak and other filters to try.

In general, I feel that no matter how cool a picture an AI engine can make, there is no substitute for a human's touch. What a cold and horrible world it would be if creative spirit of humanity could simply be computer generated. Thankfully, we are not there yet and even the AI driven art we see today, though in its infancy, still requires a real person's input.

Additionally, I think there is a place for AI art in an artists toolbelt. Just as I have been attempting to do, the engine could be used by an artists to try to make sense of an abstract idea...a sort of muse. Another idea we had was to use AI art to supplement one's writing, such as if you were to write a story but couldn't afford to hire an illustrator. The AI engine could be able, assuming you dial in your "text generation" well enough, to provide meaningful imagery to enhance your story. We are tempted to give that a shot someday, as @jae5086 wanted to be a writer when he was young and my younger sister is a freelance fiction writer.

So what do you think? Is AI art the wave of the future that will force those who yearn to make a living in the field to find employment elsewhere? Do you think it can be a tool for an artists but can't truly replace them? Leave your opinions below and let's discuss this interesting up and coming technology.

Also, check out my last post: Golden Fox