All around last year, Lensa-generated photographs of internet users started popular on social media. Lensa, a membership service, creates graphic portraits known as “Magic Avatar” pictures from photographs supplied by its users. Celebrities worldwide chipped in to illustrate how they looked so wonderful in their avatars in a “Lensa universe”. However, a few days later, hundreds of female netizens throughout the globe began reporting problems with their avatars. They emphasized how their avatar photographs showed their waists grabbed and sexy positions. Lensa created hypersexualized, semi-pornographic images even after these ladies submitted different photographs. As AI has a firm footing in the world of art, do we have systems in place to determine what is acceptable and wrong in this domain in the first place?
AI art refers to any type of art created with artificial intelligence. In the first phase, it employs algorithms that learn a particular aesthetic based on verbal cues and then sift through massive quantities of data in the form of accessible photos. The program then tries to make new pictures that match what it has learned about what looks good. In this case, the artist plays the role of a curator by entering the right prompts to make a product that looks good. On other digital platforms, like Adobe Photoshop, artists use brush strokes. But with programs like Dall-E and Midjourney, all they need to do is type. Think about how a piece of art like “Starry Night” would be made in the digital age. While Van Gogh would have needed days of work to conceptualize and achieve the precise strokes and paint, in the AI art period, it is merely a question of “appropriate textual cues.”
Because AI-generated artworks are derived from a database of previously created artworks, there is the possibility of copyright violation. AI-generated artworks have the potential to profit from open artworks in order to develop new AI art that may eventually be copyrighted. Furthermore, AI artworks may increase the vulnerability of modern artists in an already pre-existing context of underpaid artists. Will it turn art into a mass-produced commodity with little commercial value?
Art is one of the few activities that adds significance to one’s life. It remains to be seen if AI-generated art will alienate the public from the art experience. Artificial intelligence-generated art dehumanizes artworks. Making an artwork is maybe the most enjoyable component of creating it. It is also questionable if AI art will be able to portray the most nuanced of human emotions. How much humour is considered “humorous” for AI? Can AI articulate loss and anguish in the deep ways that our poets have described? Can artificial intelligence capture Mona Lisa’s enigmatic grin, which gives the impression that she is veiled in mystery?
Some artists think that AI art could make the art world more open to everyone by getting rid of gatekeepers. They think AI will pave the way for new creative forms and limitless possibilities. When AI is combined with technologies like 3D printing, it can create an infinite number of different things that might be called “sculptures” and “art installations” in the future. According to history, there has always been a tumultuous connection between art and technology. Fine art, on the other hand, has endured for decades despite the challenges posed by digital art. What remains to be shown is whether AI art can develop beyond its biases.