TL;DR — AI art: good or bad?
I see a lot of working artists worried that the advancements and growing interest in AI-generated art will leave them in the dust. Artists are already struggling, so putting up new opposition—an opposition so efficient they cannot possibly hope to compete—is making them disillusioned. A human artist might take days to months to complete a beautiful piece of art, but an AI can do it in mere seconds.
“Prompt artists”, people who specialize in writing prompts that will generate interesting AI art, sounds stupid, but it could be a real thing if AI art becomes more accepted. You could say that it’s just typing words into a computer and letting it do all the work for you. And you’d be right. It sounds analogous to when computers started being used for art in the 90s and early 2000s when people would say that “digital art is not real art”. However, those people were just being ignorant. It requires artistic skills to make good digital art the same way that it takes artistic skills to make good traditional art. Can that be said of “prompt artists”, though? The skill, I imagine, would be in conceptualizing and not performing since the performance would be entirely done by the AI. Maybe the AI could become so customizable that it would be possible for someone to “master” it.
The average person would not care, though. They would only see the final result on social media and say, “This looks good!” or “This looks bad!” and then move on with their day. Only other artists, enthusiasts, or elitists would care about how the art was made rather than just the final result. From what I can see, the only people who are interested *right now* in commercializing AI art are the people running AI art services through subscription models and NFT bros, whose opinions are so worthless I hesitated to even mention them just now. At least right now, in 2022, are artists really threatened by AI art services and NFT bros? They have their problems for sure, but is losing a job because of AI a reality right now? I don’t think so, or if it is, then it’s negligible currently. However, with advancements in AI, I can see how they could be used against working artists in order to save time and save costs. A corporation can only care about “the real human experience” so much if at all.
I’m wondering if we’re rejecting the evolution of art in fighting against it or if it really is a violation of what it means to be “art”. I can see it from both sides; however, I think it’s important to point out that one side is more utopian and the other is dystopian. If the world were perfect, then AI art and human art could coexist perfectly fine and there’d be no problems. It’d be a fine addition to the wondrous world of art. But in the real world, art is treated as a commodity that can be profiteered at the expense of the artists that make it. If there is a way to exploit artists and AI art generators, they will be exploited. If someone only acknowledges the utopian perspective, I feel they’re either ignorant or they’re trying to convince people so that they can be more easily exploited.
I’m interested in hearing what people think! Let me know if you think AI art is a good thing or bad thing.
LovelyPrincessN64
As an artist I hope it doesn't happen but at the same time it doesn't help fulfilling people's request of what they need to be draw but on the other hand it is horrifying to think that AI will replace artists however it really depends by the popularity or other reasons but only time will tell.