The Impact of AI on the Art Community
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AI's Impact on the Art Community
It's hard to see stunning images, generated by AI in mere seconds, not wonder if this threatens human jobs in art and graphic design. Text to image programs like Midjourney, DALL-E and Stable Diffusion have taken our breath away. You could hang any of these stylized images on a wall and it will probably look just fantastic as an artist's painting - most people would never know. It can generate intricate and professional looking web interfaces just as quickly. The big difference is that it can take an artists or graphic designer days to produce an original work, but with AI it takes mere seconds. Despite this, I personally don't think artists should panic just yet.
Here are some factors you maybe haven't considered yet:
(1) Art buyers value the original piece, not copies
The Mona Lisa is valued at 860 million US dollars. For decades, most of us have had the ability to order or computer print a decent replica of the Mona Lisa for almost nothing, but this copy is also worth noting. Even if you pay a talented artist to perfectly replicate the Mona Lisa with textured brush strokes for relatively little, it will still be worth almost nothing. It isn't the original. That's what rich people pay for. Glass is almost indistinguishable from a diamond to the naked eye, and perfect diamonds can be manufactured for a fraction of the price but society has programmed us to want diamonds from the earth.
Society has always told us what is valuable. It's now early 2023, and I'm sure the art community will make sure we know that anything generated by AI might be beautiful, but not valuable. If nobody has poured sweat or tears into something then it's not a real diamond - even if indistinguishable from the real thing.
When you produce digital artwork, it's just binary file of 1's and 0's so it's hard to claim that any copy of that file is the original. At best you could print it and say "limited release", but if people realize it was generated in seconds and can be replicated with code then I can't imagine its value ever becoming high contrasted against the respect we have for artists like Leonardo da Vinci and the canvas they have physically touched and poured their hearts into.
(2) Artist usually take decades to build reputation
There are many artists producing incredible art, but it's their name - their "brand" if you will - combined with their impact over time on the art community that makes them respected and successful. This commitment of mastering and promoting their work usually takes decades. Van Gogh is one a few artists who died penniless, but his art only because insanely valuable after he died. Perhaps you consider Van Gogh's style rubbish - something a child could replicate, but each of his paintings is worth millions. If a new starting artist imitates Van Gogh or Picasso's style perfectly their paintings will still value very low because their name isn't worth anything yet. Beauty is subjective, and a small set of people decide what is visionary, and it's often a very small set of artists who can claim they shaped and influenced art. Almost all painters, even abstract painters, have a high base level of skill and mastery, but raw talent alone doesn't guarantee success.
(3) People value time and narrative, over imitators
Sometime we look at a piece of art that captures us. And in the future, more and more of us will be captured by AI generated images. But we won't want to pay top dollar for that. Right now we're going through a phase of being impressed at what AI can do, but knowing a painting was AI generated in seconds makes us value it less. It wouldn't seem worth a $1000 price tag. If someone pointed at the same work of art and told us that it took them weeks, and that the painting represents their anguish in a breakup or a lifetime of struggle to find themselves, then we would look at the $1000 price tag and feel like it was a bargain.
Cover bands can perfectly replicate a song, but they will never pack out a stadium like the original performer. They would have a hard time convincing us that they have the same attachment to the song as the person who wrote it. A great imitation of a song is still a imitation.
(4) AI art has flaws - especially with photo realism
Text to images AI is still is pretty bad at convincing photorealism. They may improve this pretty quickly, but there will always probably be subtle ways for expects to spot a "fake". It does incredible at cartoon styles and 3d renders, but in photo-like images the eyes are often wrong (if you look close) and it often adds extra fingers for humans. Good tip for spotting a machine generated images. So suddenly now we have real artist that might take output from AI and fix up these common flaws.
(5) Art space will expand
When new mediums of art come along, they don't necessarily take away from existing forms. The space expands and there will probably still be room for all kinds. Think about when new mediums of music arrived. Music itself has evolved, but when technology and synthesizers arrived the existence of musical instruments didn't disappear. Music technology has created new genres, and even fused genres where old-fashion instruments are made electronic and/or merged with electronic dance music. The same will likely happen to art. Artists will change their approach and we might see unexpected instances where AI is used to fill in a background, but a painting is overlaid. AI can easily generate detailed fractal patterns which would take forever to paint and so you I'm sure this already exists. The art space will expand, and the thing that may slowly shifts is the allocation of space.
(6) Reducing the barrier of entry
Probably the biggest impact of AI is that it may reduce the barrier of entry. Photography equipment used to be very expensive, but over time it's become accessible to anyone with a smartphone or a couple of hundred dollars for a decent DSLR camera. You might now argue that anyone who uses AI to generate an image then merely touches it up is not a real artist, but time will decide that. Freehand painting is impressive, but if you have an 80 year old grandparent worried they don't have any skill.... and tracing or stitching AI artworks makes them happy, are they not artists?
Definitely it can make a beautiful original digital picture more accessible, and for website designers the barrier of entry definitely just got lowered.
Looking Ahead - An Era of Hybrid Approaches and Accessibility
Suddenly there is an interesting role for humans to play in fixing and curating AI art. AI text to image will become a populatly tool, and combining the best of a machine and human might be the real next evolution in digital art. For website designers and sculptures, artists might get inspiration and even prototype ideas with programs like Midjourney but ultimately they tweak and build it themselves with AI as the base overlay.
Making money from art has always been difficult. It takes time and skill and even some business savvy to get your name and work out there. Time will tell if AI art threatens jobs of cartoonists and painters. My tentative prediction is that people will still value real brush strokes on a canvas. In theory a robot can do this, but then it would take time. People with money pride themselves on being able to afford and support talented artists, and I can't imagine that changing too quickly.
If anything what's fun is that people who can't afford stock photos on their website or someone to illustrate their children's book can suddenly do it themselves with a few words into AI. Expect to see more beautiful artwork on amature websites from people who couldn't afford and artists or expensive stock photos. If you want to publish a book or albumn, the cover image you use could well be generated by AI. So maybe you could argue it closes the gap. If anything I imagine artists who work on computer might feel more motivated to get into painting on interesting surfaces or sculpting to move away from digital just a little.
Successful artists will be the ones who embrace AI as a tool to enhance their own mastery versus feeling threatened.
Those are just my thoughts.
See Also
- Midjourney - Text to image AI.
- DALL-E - Another good one of the same.
| Acknowledgements: Sandy from Facebook dating for the amazing phone conversations and giving her brilliant insights into AI art - most of which I naturally now claim as my own insights to bulk up this article! You're a smart cookie Sandy. For a human. ;) |
