When I first heard about AI imaging technologies, I was terrified. I mean, it’s precisely what customers would want: rapid, inexpensive, and high-quality work. Any of us freelancing would be defeated by AI.
In the past few years, systems have come out that use artificial intelligence to make vivid images based on simple text or images. In a couple of seconds, tools like DALL-E and Midjourney may generate anything from ludicrous hypotheticals and porn to realistic faces of fictional people and self-portraits. It even created award-winning artwork, infuriating artists and causing one Twitter user to declare that we’re seeing the death of creativity unfold before our eyes.
According to AI supporters and worried creatives, these imaging systems have the potential to replace graphic designers, illustrators, and other professionals in the creative business. According to Barcelona, the algorithms can generate work more swiftly and cheaply than a human designer could, with presumably equivalent quality. However, this conclusion may be simplistic since it ignores the intangible but crucial function of human creativity in the creation of art.
These technologies function by “tapping into the internet’s subconscious” and illustrating whatever instructions are supplied into them using enormous databases of text and pictures. The outcomes are often odd, but hauntingly exact and realistic. However, there are some disadvantages.
AI-generated graphics have been chastised for spreading sexist and racial stereotypes. For example, using prompts such as “CEO” may result in more photos of white-passing males, but using “personal assistant” may result in more images of women. OpenAI, the research lab that created DALL-E, stated in the project’s GitHub documentation that “models like DALL-E 2 could be used to generate a wide range of deceptive and otherwise harmful content” and that the system “inherits various biases from its training data, and its outputs sometimes reinforce societal stereotypes.”
Artificial intelligence systems may potentially be used to create or promote false news. In September, for example, a tweet including photographs of homes allegedly flooded by a typhoon was apparently shared thousands of times, only for the individual who sent it to explain that the photos were phony and manufactured using AI.
Because the algorithms harvest original art from the internet without attribution or pay to the creators, copyright issues presently surround AI-generated art. This implies that AI-generated graphics will struggle to replace things like internet adverts, since design and advertising companies, as well as governing organizations, are unlikely to risk being sued for generating unoriginal work for their customers.
I believe it’s a terrific tool for internal brainstorming or just sharing images with friends. But it can never be published or claimed as your piece of art since, after all, is it really yours?