AI Art: What's the Big Deal?

There’s a new trend that’s caused some major waves in the art community in the last few months. I’ve been discussing it at some length with my husband, Jon, for a number of reasons. First, he’s one of my best friends and I love talking to him about stuff. Second, he’s intelligent and witty, and I value his opinion on things. Third, he’s not a creative, and therefore has a different point of view on creative issues and it’s interesting to hear it. And fourth, we get tired of talking about how naughty our 3-year-old is, so AI art has been a refreshing topic.

What exactly is AI art? It’s digital images created with a keyword generator. A person types in a string of words, phrases, artist names, art styles, art movements, maybe a medium (like oil or fabric), etc. The AI then creates an image with those characteristics. I have seen quite a bit of AI art on my social media feeds, and I’ll admit some of it is pretty cool looking!

On the one hand, AI art is new technology and artists are not necessarily known for embracing new technology. A great example of this is photography, which took years to earn its place as a valid art medium, and still struggles to this day because “anyone can push a button.” I know when Instagram came out (yes, I’m that old) I refused to join at first because the editing that took me hours to do (and years to learn) was suddenly available for anyone to do in mere seconds. And then smartphones came out with a panoramic photo function, which took seconds to create amazing panoramas – an end result that took me five years of studying and practicing prior to 20+ actual editing hours to create in Photoshop. Technology, grumble, grumble.

Copying art that already exists is not a new practice. How many artists have drawn and painted the Mona Lisa? Countless. Who, as an artist, hasn’t been inspired by a distinct style in the past? Some fantastic examples are the illustration styles of the Simpsons, Disney, or Dr. Seuss. We are all familiar with how those distinct styles look, and after practicing a person could imitate those styles in their original artwork.

I’ve done it before! This is my original character, DC, Dr. Seuss style.

But AI generators aren’t studying a style and imitating it to create new art that is similar to the original style, it takes the artwork of an artist and creates a beautifully rendered composite image of preexisting artwork. There are even instances where the original artist’s signature is still visible in a chunk of the AI art.

If you are posting your art (or really, anything) online, it’s out there for anyone on the planet to see, save, print, use as their profile picture, etc. Most people are unaware that when they do that, it may be illegal (copyright laws are not always common sense.) Some people are aware it is illegal and they don’t care. What I’m saying is that there is always a risk. Is it right? No, but that’s just the nature of the beast.

Now that we have covered the nuts and bolts of AI art, what’s the big deal? Why is there such an uproar? (And yes, there absolutely is an uproar.)

There’s money involved, of course! The developers of the AI generators are getting paid for the use of their programs. And if the creator of the AI art (the one who input the phrases into the generator) sells prints of the AI art, they would be getting paid too.

You know who isn’t getting paid? The artists who actually created the artwork that is being collaged together. It’s hard enough to make a living wage as an artist – want to know why? I wrote a post last year that explains why original artwork is so expensive.

As I mentioned before, I spent years of my life learning how to use editing software, and it took me hours to edit my art in the specific ways I envisioned. Is it fair that a new technology came along and made it so anyone could do it in a matter of seconds? Is it even fair to say it isn’t fair? Life isn’t fair, kids. And while I believe anyone can be an artist if they want to, stealing the artwork of other artists isn’t the way to do it.

There are artists who don’t want their artwork “scraped” (aka, downloaded from the internet and used without consent in the creation of AI art.) I’m sure there are other artists who don’t mind it. I always say, it takes all kinds of people to make the world go ‘round. But for those artists who don’t want their artwork used, there should be a way to opt-out. And it shouldn’t be the responsibility of those artists to fight to protect themselves – it should fall on the shoulders of the creators of the AI generators to respect the artists’ wishes.
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In the end, this is new technology, and I look forward to seeing how it all unfolds over the next few years. If you’re interested, here’s an article about a children’s book that was both written and illustrated with AI generators.