The Future of AI Art
During the course of 2022, debates began to rage about the use of AI as its own method of image creation, as numerous machine learning (ML) platforms began to open to the public—thus, allowing for them to be used by anyone and everyone. Yet it seems no one actually ever asked AI artists their opinion; so I took it upon myself to do that, exploring their working methods.
2022 will go down in history as the year open access was granted to the general public, to use AI as its own method of creating imagery, as numerous machine learning (ML) platforms such as DALL·E 2 and Stablediffusion went live. Suddenly, it was possible to create an image that might have once taken an artist, such as a traditional oil painter — depending on the scale — months or even years, to create. Perhaps you’ve seen, the random ‘AI imagery’ article out in the news? They’re often written by people who have little clue, as to what they’re even writing about. One major aspect of the discussion is: is AI art, even art? And the answer is a resounding — yes.
I began to grow tired of the surface level debates around AI art being art, or not. So I took it upon myself to write a 7.000-word essay on just that topic. The essay takes it as a given art made in collaboration with AI — in the hands of actual artists using it for that purpose, is indeed art — and it unravels and spells out the many variations of processes and ideas on the part of the people actually using these platforms to make art: today’s AI artists.
A large portion of making use of any AI platform, as any AI artist knows, is the continual reiteration and the transmutation of their own thoughts into a concrete form making use of written language — which is used over and over with the slightest variations, to achieve a desired result. Sometimes, without ever achieving that result. So they begin, again. Tell any academic, or seasoned writer for that matter, that thought in and of itself is not work, and they would laugh their head off at that thought alone. So, rather than getting their hands dirty — as with inks, charcoal, okras, and oils, among the other mediums used throughout millennia — AI artists, today, aren’t plowing, metaphorical fields; instead, they’re getting their minds dirty.
I’ve spent the past year, spending a great deal of my time in the land of AI digital art minted as NFTs (as AI artists hang out on the blockchain named Tezos, and less so on Ethereum, when it comes to art on the blockchain); I took the liberty of interviewing some of the more innovative artists — both traditional and strictly-AI-oriented — about their varying processes.
The final essay is well worth the (long, 28-minute) read, and is titled:
‘The Creation, Curation, & Connoisseurship of AI Art’, 16 December 2022.
