Is A.I. Art Harmful?
The topic of A.I. Art has recently been debated on the art side of the internet. Artificial Intelligence art has been a topic of discussion, but recently new ways of using it have come to light.
Well, what even is A.I. Art? A.I. Art, or Artificial Intelligence Art, is any artwork created with the assistance of artificial intelligence, whether autonomously or collaboration between A.I. and humans (Surrealism Today). Whether its a painting or a composed song, if an A.I. is involved in any way the work is considered A.I. Art. While this type of work isn’t seen very commonly in everyday media, it still seems to make an appearance occasionally. A couple months ago a picture of artwork an A.I. had created surfaced, following the prompt “The Last Selfie on Earth”. The picture is quite gruesome, showing an almost half-dead person in the center of the picture, with the view angled as if we were seeing what a camera saw. This image blew up online and really started to make people curious about the inner workings of it.
How is A.I Art possible? An explanation is simpler than you think, but more complicated under the surface. Most typical A.I. artists are constructed in the same way, a spot in the program for human input, such as a prompt, a library of pictures it searches through based on that prompt. For example, one of the most complicated OpenAI programs, DALL-E 2, is in fact created in this exact way. There is a spot for a prompt to be imputed which then images are mushed together to create a completely unique one.
For example, this image was created in DALL-E 2 with the prompt “a large whale in the center of the picture positioned in the sky swimming, clouds surrounding subject styled by Studio Ghibli, digital art, by Studio Ghibli, hand-drawn, blue tones, light and happy, clear light blue sky with darker blue towards the horizon”. With more words, the DALL-E was able to look for images and create something unique.
How can this be harmful? Well, A.I. artists learn from pictures and are able to create new images with the information it has. Currently there have been A.I. artists used for malicious intent. With easy access to A.I., people online have used the same techniques to teach A.I. artists but with a twist- the images used for teaching Artificial Intelligence are a specific artist’s work. Let me give an example, a famous artist who has created works for Dungeons and Dragons named Greg Rutkowski found images of art in his exact style. But, he didn’t create it, an A.I. did. (Business Insider). Artists like Rutkowski are starting to find themselves stuck. People generating images in others’ styles have gone as far as selling prints of the images they generated. Like I had mentioned before, images through A.I. are completely unique, and are being sold as original pieces of work.
There is definitely a harmful side to programs such as DALL-E 2, and while a small part of A.I. generated art is used in malicious ways ((like the case with Greg Rutkowski), it still can have a huge impact. But, as long as it's used correctly, I believe it can be something beautiful and useful.
Works Cited
Beatrice Nolan, “Artists say AI image generators are copying their style to make thousands of new images – and it’s completely out of their control”, Business Insider, 2022
https://www.businessinsider.com/ai-image-generators-artists-copying-style-thousands-images-2022-10
“MAKE STUNNING & STRANGE ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE (AI) ART [BEGINNERS GUIDE]”, Surrealism Today, 2022
https://surrealismtoday.com/beginners-guide-artificial-intelligence-art/#h-what-is-ai-art
Hi Alyssa! I thought this was a really interesting blog, especially because AI art is a common topic recently. I like how you used the whale example to showcase how the software can be used. Your example of Greg Rutkowski did a great job showing how the computer-generated art could be harmful to real artists. While it's not stealing the exact art of a person, it's stealing their unique style. Great job! - Violet
ReplyDeleteCool blog! This is something I've been hearing a lot about lately so it's cool to see a researched and thought about point of view on it. I think you did a good job showing how A.I art can be used for good and bad, and that it can be used in a non-ethical way. Good job!!
ReplyDeleteI never thought about A.I art this way, and you wrote a very interesting piece on it. I think your argument could be further supported by providing ways that malicious A.I. art usage can be prevented, but overall I really liked the points you made and it was a very interesting point of view on A.I. art.
ReplyDeleteI had no idea AI was being used in this way! This is a really interesting post. I like how you mentioned how exactly AI art works because I've been wondering about the details for a bit, and you also showed two interesting AI generated art pieces. Nice job!
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