The Robots Are Arting Better Than You!
Some Thoughts on AI Art & Portrait Drawing
I found this video from Cosmic Spectrum very interesting with her thoughts on the downsides of the A.I. art programs that are cropping up. I tend to believe the apps are a fad that won’t at outlast people’s need to hone their own creative abilities.
For me, art is for the artist’s soul as much as it is for the consumer and A.I. cannot replace that. However, Cosmic Spectrum points out larger issues than simply whether A.I. art will run living, breathing artists out of business.
One issue naysayers have is with these programs mining copyrighted creativity from the internet to create images and styles. In other words, undercutting real artists’ wages by manipulating materials real artists created—often without permission. While A.I. may be a fast-track to jump starting an image that an artist may alter with their own abilities, A.I. on its own at best tends to generate unpolished abstract art or fun comedy bits. At its worst, it creates soulless nightmare fuel. But the systems are only getting better, and soon we likely won’t see much difference between what an artist makes and what a computer makes.
However, Cosmic Spectrum also makes the point that the trend shines a light on a larger problem: competing to feed the social media machine independent artists find themselves slaves to these days.
Assuming the only way to stay relevant is to produce content quickly enough to stay ahead of the social algorithms, the real threat A.I .art (similar to “repost” accounts) are driving us towards is an internet where original creative work is driven out of the content streams completely by fast-moving, computer generated deformations of existing work. So real, hard working artists lose their ability to reach their audience because their pace doesn’t achieve the potential revenue goals of computer generated content.
It’s a bleak view, but one worth considering as creatives and society as a whole learn to navigate the ever growing social media monster we have created.
BONUS: For a deeper dive, here is a long, self-indulgent article that takes some time to dig into the potential legal parameters of A.I. art, but it sounds more like an advertisement for Mid-journey.
On a lighter note: do you like drawing portraits? I enjoyed watching this guy’s routine for inspiration. He does everything with simple pencil and paper, too, so no digital equipment required. Every artist has their own style, so seeing how different people approach things like finding inspiration, warm ups, and their own ways of shading, for example, can sometimes be good way to jumpstart your brain and get you thinking about trying new things with your own drawings!
Sterling Martin is an artist and designer living in Chicago, IL. His background includes drawing, writing, theatre, teaching, improv & sketch comedy, and whatever else he can get his hands on to be creative. You can find him on the internet at:
Instagram: @sterfest.art
Website: sterlingmartin.design
Twitter: Maybe someday
Tik-tok: That’s the one you make videos, right?
Linkedin: I’m pretty sure I have one of those
Facebook: Ugh, do I have to?