Flaws and limitations of AI art

To understand the complications of AI art, it’s important to know how it works. These programs are fed images and artwork from throughout the web, scouring various websites for knowledge, sometimes even stock image sites. Because of the way that companies train and control these AIs, a few problems have arisen. First off, the images that AI generates are limited in some ways. Some of the biggest limitations that those interviewed took note of were that it can’t generate consistent characters across multiple images, for example, if you want two perspectives of the same image, there’s no guarantee that the person in your first image will be the same as the second. Additionally, most companies have restricted the creation of graphic content, it often lacks resonance and emotion, and the image it generates can be repetitive and you might find yourself unable to generate the images that you want. AI art, despite its current flaws, has overcome a great many over the few years that the big AI art generators like Midjourney, DALL-E, and Stable Diffusion have been around. AI art was once a bit of a neat gimmick that made messy pictures that were very obviously not created by a human. At the time, it was quite difficult to craft prompts that would create clear, or even just legible images. Now, these engines can easily create beautiful images and take in a lot of information from the prompt and create a very clean picture, additionally, Midjourney, Dall-E, and Stable Diffusion have now been fed vastly more knowledge which allows them to create better and better images. There are still flaws other than the ones initially listed. For example, they can still sometimes be overloaded with information and they don’t always generate the images that the user wants them to. In the end, AI art will always have problems to overcome, and with each solution will come a new one, but maybe, someday, AI art will be just like comissioning an artist for an artwork.

During the 2022 Colorado State Fair’s annual art competition, a piece called “Théâtre D’opéra Spatial” was entered, and won. The problem? It was an image generated by artificial intelligence, one of the first of its kind to win an art competition. This incident is one of many which brought to light the issue of: “How do we distinguish AI-generated images from human art?”. Yes, current AI-generated art can be messy or noisy, like the image below, but already AIs are starting to get better and better at creating clean and noiseless art that sometimes, even under close scrutiny, is difficult to tell from “real” human artwork. How long until that’s impossible?

ThéâtreD’opéraSpatial, courtesy of The New York Times

Next up, there are dozens of AI art websites and programs out there, which one is the best, as recommended by people who work with AI for a living, and what are the biggest flaws that AI currently faces and the ones they’ve already overcome? Find the answer to all of these questions next.

There are many different options when it comes to choosing an AI art generator for your images, but which one stands out the most as the best AI art generator on the market? DALL-E was one of the pioneers of AI art, and a generator called Leonardo provides lots of control over the images generated, but what everyone seems to agree on is that Midjourney is one user-friendly interface that allows for lots of image customization. What’s not to like?

As Samson Vowles, a YouTuber who specializes in AI art technology, puts it: “What makes Midjourney stand out is its ability to produce highly coherent and aesthetically pleasing results, with a level of refinement and precision that is difficult to achieve with other AI art platforms”

Samson Vowles - Delightful Design

With the release of Midjourney 5, the technology and opportunity for creating AI art is at an all-time high. Some people, like Lost Space Bunny, who wished to remain anonymous, uses AI art to directly create pieces to showcase to a wider audience. Although they have been an artist for their entire life, Lost Space Bunny now also uses AI to create art. “I discovered AI imaging about three years ago when it was primarily generating nightmarish images. However, after two years, it began to create more coherent visuals, which piqued my interest.” Initially, they say that they went through a tough period, and they “had always assumed AI would target creative jobs last, but it seemed the opposite was true.”. However, they were also fascinated by the technology and used it to pursue a dream of selling art at markets.