AI Art: Beneficial or Detrimental?

AI Art – maybe you’ve heard of it, maybe you haven’t. Either way, the topic of artificially generated art is a relatively controversial topic right now, with many pros and cons to consider if you ever plan on using it. Hopefully this article will help you understand both the benefits and detriments of this revolutionary technology.

The main idea of AI art is to allow a regular person to open an AI Art software, type in a few words as a prompt for the desired outcome, and the AI engine does the rest – generating a completely unique image that will match your desired prompt. For example, say you wanted a drawing of a tall cherry blossom tree, perhaps with some small hills in the background and a few wispy clouds in the sky - all in the style of an impressionist oil painting from the 1970s. Just type in the prompt into a small box, wait a couple of minutes, and BOOM, a beautifully detailed painting of your exact request, effortlessly created by an AI machine.

How does it work?

Another thing that is crucial to understand is the technological process of these AI art generators. How can artificial intelligence create such images, without the artistic capacity of the human mind? Artificial intelligence is, after all, artificial. Well here comes the problem. You see, the way these generators work is by machine learning algorithms, which are computer programs that begin to generate an image based upon existing data. The more the AI uses this data, the more it remembers and implements it into future artwork. This existing data is what caused the controversy that we speak of now. See, the “existing data” that the AI learns from is the wide range of images from the digital library known as the internet, meaning that artificial intelligence takes real life drawings, photos and designs made by real people.

How is this bad?

Seeing as AI has legal access to all digital images on the internet, it happens to memorise and learn from artwork that real people have spent hours upon hours creating, and implements pieces of this artwork into its “uniquely generated” image. Not only do artists not give permission for AI to use their personal images, but they also do not get any financial compensation from them.

Words

by Sofia

Nikitina and design by Naketra Mendes. Images created by the AI, NightCafe