AI is coming for your job
Or is it? As digital creative artists around the world these days, yes, seems to be the answer. Another question may be – Is AI going to succeed in getting your job? That is still left to be seen; but boy, those things are gooood. They have even started winning contests and beating even the best.
Here are a few examples:
There has been an outcry across several discussion platforms about the rise of artificial intelligence in many areas of work, art, learning, etc. And no matter the application it stands that work and art will never be the same.
People are scared to lose their job positions; in the digital art domain or nn the factory floors,
laborers see the shadow of enhanced robots at their door steps. The robots promise to be faster, more enduring, docile. All the things a factory owner revels in
Our transportation system is looking at its manless future right out on the patio. Self-driving vehicles are already on the roads. They promise to drive safer: never the risk of driving drunk or breaking traffic rules because of bad mood or inattention.
In the digital art space, why would anyone hire an artist who costs quite a few bucks per hour if they can get for a penny, or free, what they want from an artificial intelligence? This prospect is already taking place. Let’s look at 2 of the leading such AI platforms
- Open AI DALL-E2
generate digital images from natural language descriptions, called “prompts”. DALL-E was revealed by OpenAI in a blog post in January 2021, and uses a version of GPT-3 modified to generate images GPT-3(Generative Pre-trained Transformer 3 (GPT-3; stylized GPT·3) is an autoregressive language model that uses deep learning to produce human-like text. Given an initial text as prompt, it will produce text that continues the prompt). In April 2022, OpenAI announced DALL-E 2, a successor designed to generate more realistic images at higher resolutions that “can combine concepts, attributes, and styles”.
Examples of images generated by DALL-E2 and the prompts used to generate them can be seen here. You can also read some more about the technology while you are there.
- Midjourney
Still according to Wikipedia, Midjourney is an independent research lab that produces a proprietary artificial intelligence program that creates images from textual descriptions, similar to OpenAI‘s DALL-E and the open-source Stable Diffusion.
Examples can be seen on their website showcase here
.
Be it Open AI’s DALL-E2, Midjourney, or the open source Stable Diffusion, just to names these – there are tons of others – there has been a sudden rise of web platforms where anyone can type a few words(Prompts) and in return obtain art that would have otherwise required a very talented artist a very important amount of time to realize. So, have we all become highly-skilled artists now since we too can use the tools that are available to us to create art? Our imagination thinks of something. Let’s say “ A cat holding a katana in its left hand and a watermelon with its tail. The cat is blue and its eyes striped” and then our tool, the computer and the software running in it, locally or remotely on a server somewhere. Is that much different from what a traditional digital artist would do? They would imagine a piece of art, then use their tool to make it happen. Their tool would be some art software. In this case, it’s some art software as well. They would use their hands. With AI, you use your hands as well to type the prompts. He will use a digital canvas and a plethora of tools without which there is no artwork. With AI, the prompt you type is the new paintbrush? So, yeah, we all could become skilled digital artists. Just the tools will be different. Or not?
Looking at this landscape therefore, there seems to be some forms of digital art that are most affected: Illustration, Concept art, 3D rendering. Some less, at this point in time at least: Animation and film. But let’s not be mistaken, they all will eventually have to contend with the power of artificial intelligence. It’s just a matter of time. The tech is advancing fast everyday.
Just like in every area of life, technology will creep in, take its place and we will have to reconfigure our lives around it.
Then there is the question of ownership. I recently read this story of a person who presented AI generated art in a contest and won. When it was later discovered that it was AI generated, there was this whole clamoring from the other contestants that he cheated. But the organizers of this contest retorted, the requirement of the contest was to use a computer to create art which is exactly what this participant did. So, who owns the artwork? You? The AI? The developer of the AI? One thing is sure, AI to the best of my knowledge cannot yet claim ownership of art, fight for author’s rights. It’s still a human thing. All the humans around this AI creation art creation table will have to sort that one out as well…until the day AI comes for its own share of the rights pie.
As much as we could not stop the automobile from replacing the horses and carriages, we are not going to stop this. What we can do though is adapt to it, use it for whatever purpose we deem appropriate and hope that it never goes full skynet on us
So, where do we go from here? Certainly not backwards. If not backwards, it’s forwards for sure; in all possible directions.
Artificial intelligence is taking a forward march into all aspects of our lives. It has left the realm of fantasy and fictional storytelling in the real world and will reshape the world in ways not one can fully grasp. In this article we just brushed on this side of things. But hey, it could be an AI that wrote this article you just read. You didn’t see the plot twist coming. Did you?
0 Comments