What we feel as creators and users of this new technology is hard to explain and hard to put into words. We do know one thing for certain: it is not going away anytime soon. Welcome to the world of AI-generated art if you came across images that were incomprehensible and unearthly, and you were perplexed by the sheer, intricate beauty wrapped in something with a sense of dread while scrolling.
First interactions with AI-generated art have often occurred through social media platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok, and have elicited emotions ranging from flamboyant delight to utter repulsion.
The debate is loud and can be found on almost every social media site or message board where AI-generated art is the topic of discussion. Keyboard vigilantes have hopped on board to make their voices heard, and they are not doing it silently.
It’s fantastic. I despise it.
The good news is that artificial intelligence-generated art is here to stay.
The bad news is that artificial intelligence-generated art is here to stay.
AI-generated art is not an enigma if you comprehend the principle. It is made via machine learning apps such as Midjourney, Nightcafe, OpenAI’s DALL-E, and Stable Diffusion. In 1959, Arthur Samuel, an IBM worker who was a pioneer in computer games and artificial intelligence, came up with the term “machine learning.” People often think of machine learning as something new, but it has been around for almost 60 years.
Furthermore, although AI-generated art is now in the spotlight, it has been around for a long time. The first AI-generated portrait, “Portrait of Edmond de Belamy,” made by Obvious, a Paris-based team, sold for $432,500 at Christie’s New York in 2018, 43 times its initial estimate. Obvious made their art with a set of algorithms called GAN, which stands for “generative adversarial network.”
Machine learning is used to produce AI-generated art, particularly a string of words entered as a prompt into the AI-art producing program. After entering the question, the creator presses “enter,” which sends the string of words into the program to be synthesized into something that never was.
The text prompt phrases work like magic, and the result is AI-generated art. Some people call it art, while others don’t, but we’ll get into that later. Every time the creator puts in a string of words, even if they are the same words, they will get a surprising and new result. It’s both surprising and thrilling.
It is also addictive because, like gambling, it may cause dopamine surges in certain individuals. So this is something to keep in mind and be mindful of.
Because each word put into the AI-generating application’s prompt box influences the result, altering one word in a string of words will change the outcome automatically. An example prompt is shown below, along with the finished artwork created in response to that prompt, which was input via Midjourney.
However, it is always thrilling to see what new technology comes out with next. Like any technology or breakthrough, people’s perceptions and experiences will shape their sentiments and attitudes concerning AI-generated.