A.I. Art Is Destroying My Life Purpose

[Space]

Over the past few weeks and months I’ve been getting increasingly concerned and admittedly very depressed about the onset of A.I art and its impact on professional artists like myself.

In 2021 I escaped wage slavery, quit my 9-5, and became a professional freelance editorial illustrator. But only after literally years of hard work and practice. I’ve put thousands of hours into this. Endless nights of grind to get where I’m at now. Only to now recognise that in the not too distant future my work could easily be replaced by an A.I art generator.

Some of you might think, ‘surely A.I isn’t that good yet?’. I’m telling you it is. It is truly exceptional. And that’s coming from myself as an artist with a critical eye who knows what is good and isn’t. And it’s only going to improve. It’s definitely stronger in some areas vs others, but on the whole it’s exceptionally good already. In 2,3 or 5 years how good will it be? And that’s my issue. Sure, maybe it’s not taking my jobs right now, but in a few years time it very likely will be. 

And that’s the depressing part. Whats the point in continuing on in my line of work (which is already very competitive) if the majority of it will be taken up by a.i generators. Very depressing. I’m struggling to get myself out of this state. Feeling very down and have no motivation to work. My wonderful vision for my life has basically crumbled in front of my eyes. I genuinely feel purposeless which is a dangerous state for a man to be in. The only thing I’ve ever been skilled/talented at (art and drawing) is now slowly becoming useless. 

And look, I’m exposed to this stuff every day. I know what’s out there. I know what kind of art is being made by A.I. And if there’s anyone who would deny the competency of A.I art generators it would be me! It’s in my agenda to deny their capabilities and talk badly about them. But from what I’m seeing, they will be taking a significant large amount of art jobs in the coming years.

So there are obviously areas of art which A.I artists will easily take over and there are domains which it won’t. 

Stock images and photography - this will be the first to go. A.I artists are already creating stock images that literally look like photographs you see on shutter stock, but far more specific to the prompt.

Concept art - this will be heavily affected. It includes things like landscape and environment art, character design, a lot of game-related concept art (in-game objects, user interfaces, textures, characters, etc.). Even concept art for films will be affected. I've seen so many landscape artworks, buildings, machines, and cityscapes that could easily be used for film or game concept work.

Editorial illustration - This is my field of work. The Atlantic has already published articles with A.I generated artwork. Admittedly, those particular articles may have just used stock imagery rather than an editorial illustrator's work, but it shows that art directors are aware of A.I generators and are more than willing to use them. Cosmopolitan used an A.I artist to create their cover image (although in fairness this was probably just a one-off thing). And just generally I see a lot of A.I art that could easily be used in replacement of actual editorial illustrators. I know what art directors are looking for, I know this space, I know what images work in editorial contexts and what don’t. The reality is that it will become increasingly easy for art directors to input the core idea of an article into an art generator and find a suitable image within minutes and most importantly for FREE. They don’t have to pay illustrators like me to create images. I’ve already seen people inputting music lyrics into the generators to create images. This is similar in a lot of ways to editorial work, except that editorial is just text about some political or social issue for example. It’s all the same. 

I definitely see graphic designers eventually being affected. There’s no reason why an A.I. artist can’t generate incredible website designs, logos, poster designs. It can’t do it now, but in the next 5 years I predict we will see this. You’ll be able to input a bunch of specifications, all the text and imagery you want included, and then bam! the A.I generator gives you 10 different options in less than 30 seconds. A few tweaks here and there and you’re done.

Obviously there are going to be some forms of art that won’t be affected by A.I. For example, there will always be a need and market for fine artists e.g. real paintings. Any kind of art that involves creating 'physical' stuff rather than digital work is not going to be significantly affected. 

One of the best free A.I. art generators now is called Midjourney. You can use it for free here: https://midjourney.gitbook.io/docs/

Click on the discord link, sign up, and enter /imagine [your prompt] in one of the bot groups in the left-hand side menu. 

Just seeing what Midjourney can do already is very disheartening and depressing for myself and for many other artists. 

I feel like I’m back to square one again after so many years of hard work and effort.

And like I said, I’m not saying my jobs are just going to be taken away next week. This will obviously be a slow gradual process. But the point here is that in 2, 3, or 5 years will I be needed as an artist? Or at least how many jobs will there be left? I guess the silver lining here is that no matter what I’ll always love creating art and I always can create art. No matter what I'll always have that available. 

Edited August 31, 2022 by Space

[Guest Nilsi]

Yeah, its a fucked up situation, you definitely got my sympathy. The only practical consideration I can offer is embracing the technology and using it to make better art. The AI doesnt create art itself, you have to give it some kind of design constraints and thats a whole engineering/design gig in itself. You could also use some kind of hybrid process of sketching out something and then feeding it into the AI. Just some food for thought.

[LSD-Rumi]

Jesus! I saw the app you mentioned and it is so good. Some guy was using some other app but this one is 10x better. I understand now why you are feeling so depressed and threatened.

But at the sametime, no matter how AI technology develops, you cannot fully control The AI mind while you can control your brain. What I mean is, If you have a vision of certain concept of art in your mind, you cannot make AI work towards that thing while using words only and this will make AI limited in a certain way. It is not until we dicover some kind of a neurolink that AI will be able to do so. 

This is zerg queen from starcraft 2

Edited August 31, 2022 by LSD-Rumi

[Vercingetorix]

@Space that's nuts!!

[ZzzleepingBear]

I have always had a talent for drawing, and even though it's not my proffesion, I do relate to your line of thinking and worries here. I just watched some videos yesterday about Midjourney, and I get quite mixed feelings about it. On one hand, it's amazing how fast it creates art. And on the other hand, it's a efficent stealing machine basically. I can't help but to feel that the speed that it is spitting out art, there is a underlying sense of hollowness to the art since there is no meaningful backstory to why it express itself the way it does. For example. If I see some art that I know are made by a human, I'm not only seeing the art. I'm witness a certain conscious direction and expression made by that particular artist that reflects some aspect of their state of mind from a particular time of their life.

I think what alot of people might not realize with art, or take for granted. Is that what they see, is that piece of conscious expression that it represent, and that is a big part of how beauty arise. And not just a good looking image of something or other that can be separated from it's source of expression. So while A.I art may remain popular and useful to a certain degree, I suspect that people overtime may need to seek a more meaningful relation with what they interact with when it comes to art. I think A.I art will be like that of fast food resturants, highly popular for a hungry consumerbase that enoy to consume. And traditional/digital art for those who don't really need to consume it for the sake of consuming. But who wants to engage in what is fresh in the sense of human conscious expression. Just like that of food, there will probably be a growing interest in knowing the backstory and process from the artist themselves in what drives them to a certain artistic expression at the moment.

A level of new found engagement from both sides so to speak for something to remain meaningful and fresh for both parties involved. High sugar and salt in food will make it more popular and cheaper, but it is at cost of nutrition. I think the same principle will be the case for art in general, there will be a flood of beautiful pictures to consume and create. But popular art will merely be for those who are late to the party of what kind of beauty they are witnessing, and the new and fresh will be for the minority to be engaged with as their mind is present with what is felt to express now, and not what has been popular the last couple of months with the latest AI algorithms. Those are some of my thoughts on the matter.

[Space]

40 minutes ago, LSD-Rumi said:

Jesus! I saw the app you mentioned and it is so good. Some guy was using some other app but this one is 10x better. I understand now why you are feeling so depressed and threatened.

But at the sametime, no matter how AI technology develops, you cannot fully control The AI mind while you can control your brain. What I mean is, If you have a vision of certain concept of art in your mind, you cannot make AI work towards that thing while using words only and this will make AI limited in a certain way. It is not until we dicover some kind of a neurolink that AI will be able to do so. 

This is zerg queen from starcraft 2

Yea Midjourney is amazing I must admit. 

10 minutes ago, ZzzleepingBear said:

I have always had a talent for drawing, and even though it's not my proffesion, I do relate to your line of thinking and worries here. I just watched some videos yesterday about Midjourney, and I get quite mixed feelings about it. On one hand, it's amazing how fast it creates art. And on the other hand, it's a efficent stealing machine basically. I can't help but to feel that the speed that it is spitting out art, there is a underlying sense of hollowness to the art since there is no meaningful backstory to why it express itself the way it does. For example. If I see some art that I know are made by a human, I'm not only seeing the art. I'm witness a certain conscious direction and expression made by that particular artist that reflects some aspect of their state of mind from a particular time of their life.

Yes its a good point. There will always be value in human made art precisely because it comes from a human. But I would not agree that there is a hollowness to AI art. I've seen work which conveys a deep emotional feeling and message. I've given Midjourney simple abstract prompts like 'gently looking into the past' and it somehow creates images that capture that perfectly. 

10 minutes ago, ZzzleepingBear said:

I think what alot of people might not realize with art, or take for granted. Is that what they see, is that piece of conscious expression that it represent, and that is a big part of how beauty arise. And not just a good looking image of something or other that can be separated from it's source of expression. So while A.I art may remain popular and useful to a certain degree, I suspect that people overtime may need to seek a more meaningful relation with what they interact with when it comes to art. I think A.I art will be like that of fast food resturants, highly popular for a hungry consumerbase that enoy to consume. And traditional/digital art for those who don't really need to consume it for the sake of consuming. But who wants to engage in what is fresh in the sense of human conscious expression. Just like that of food, there will probably be a growing interest in knowing the backstory and process from the artist themselves in what drives them to a certain artistic expression at the moment.

It really depends on the type of art. If some random person is buying a one off painting or drawing then yes obviously they would want a real artists work. But most artists are not being paid by individuals, except for fine art painters. For the most part, normal every-day consumers are not the people buying artwork or artistic services. It's companies, publishers, production houses that are paying artists. And they will always have an incentive to reduce costs and speed up production times, both of which AI art can provide.

10 minutes ago, ZzzleepingBear said:

A level of new found engagement from both sides so to speak for something to remain meaningful and fresh for both parties involved. High sugar and salt in food will make it more popular and cheaper, but it is at cost of nutrition. I think the same principle will be the case for art in general, there will be a flood of beautiful pictures to consume and create. But popular art will merely be for those who are late to the party of what kind of beauty they are witnessing, and the new and fresh will be for the minority to be engaged with as their mind is present with what is felt to express now, and not what has been popular the last couple of months with the latest AI algorithms. Those are some of my thoughts on the matter.

I appreciate your optimism!  

[Space]

A few images I recently generated:
 

[Yarco]

Focus on what the weaknesses of the AI are, that you can do which it can't.

1. Master the ability to give accurate input and generate the image you want.

As an artist you've got a leg up on most people because you can feed specific mediums, art styles like "impressionist" or whatever into the machine to get a specific image. People will still pay to get very specific images created.

The downside is that I've said in an earlier thread, I think AI will close the loop on this in the next couple of years. Once you combine a writing AI with an art AI they can create their own prompts and generate an infinite amount of beautiful art.

2. Create art based on current events

My understanding is that most of these AIs are trained on data from 2019. So they aren't aware of anything that's happened since then. So they can't make an illustration of Andrew Tate, or even coronavirus. This seems pretty limited as most of the time we just use photographs instead of art for this though.

3. Do revisions of AI art

I feel like one strength of artists is that they'll do revisions of their work if you don't like something the first time around. I don't know how easy it is to tell the AI "swap out the red scarf for a blue one" and get it exactly the same otherwise. Although I have seen one image where AI swapped out a robot arm for a human arm on a picture. Basically be a "touchup artist" that puts finishing touches on AI art where weird errors and glitches have occurred.

4. Make hentai and porn art requests

Another limitation is that I don't think AI has been trained on porn, or even naked people. Although someone is bound to eventually make an AI based exclusively on porn. Doing weird fetish art is already a highly lucrative field even for relatively inexperienced and unskilled artists. You've got college kids on Twitter making a full-time living from it.

5. Brand your art as "ethically-sourced, authentic human-created art" or something similar.

People are still willing to pay $11 for a loaf of artisanal handmade bread at a farmer's market, even though you could probably buy something better at a grocery store for $3. There will always be at least a market for human-made stuff.
In a couple of decades you can be like that guy at the historical reenactment place who's sewing shoes by hand, and people will be astounded to see someone actually creating a painting by hand.

 

I'd say focus on taking advantage of #1 and #3 while they're still options, knowing that you'll eventually need to transition to #5. Don't worry, by that point everybody else will be out of a job due to AI and automation as well. 

[Seth]

If a computer can do everything you do then are you being creative? 

[The Mystical Man]

I've used Midjourney, and it's just a fun toy. It will never replace the human artist. Midjourney is at best a source of inspiration. A director will always need a human concept artist to realize his specific vision. AI can't replace human talent like Aaron Limonick. 

Look at the amazing work that concept artists do at companies like Naughty Dog: https://magazine.artstation.com/2020/06/naughty-dog-the-last-of-us-part-ii-art-blast/

Do you think ND is just going to fire their incredible talent and use AI one day? I highly doubt it.

[Guest Nilsi]

10 minutes ago, The Mystical Man said:

I've used Midjourney, and it's just a fun toy. It will never replace the human artist. Midjourney is at best a source of inspiration. A director will always need a human concept artist to realize his specific vision. AI can't replace human talent like Aaron Limonick. 

Look at the amazing work that concept artists do at companies like Naughty Dog: https://magazine.artstation.com/2020/06/naughty-dog-the-last-of-us-part-ii-art-blast/

Do you think ND is just going to fire their incredible talent and use AI one day? I highly doubt it.

I can just tell my AI to create an artwork of x in the style of Aaron Limonick. It really is that bad, and there really will be no need for any human artists in the forseeable future. Everyone will just create whatever art they want to consume on the fly, and with brain-machine interfaces, it is even feasible to have AI create art based on your current neurochemical state or whatever, that pushes all the right buttons for you - in real time. As far as making art just for arts sake - great! but dont expect to get paid for that.

Edited August 31, 2022 by Nilsi

[The Mystical Man]

On 8/31/2022 at 5:52 PM, Nilsi said:

I can just tell my AI to create an artwork of x in the style of Aaron Limonick. It really is that bad, and there really will be no need for any human artists in the forseeable future. Everyone will just create whatever art they want to enjoy right now, and with brain-machine interfaces, it is even feasible to have AI create art based on your current neurochemical state or whatever, that pushes all the right buttons for you - in real time. As far as making art just for arts sake - great! but dont expect to get paid for that.

I don't see how AI can work within the realities of a production. When you're producing a specific title like The Last of Us Part II, you need a director with a vision. The director needs to communicate his vision to his art director who has concept artists that work under him. You need human minds that can understand the specific needs of a production. If a director can go directly to an AI and get exactly what he needs, then concepts artists will indeed become obsolete, but AI is not that good yet, and I doubt it ever will be, for you cannot replace human touch, taste, vision, and understanding.

Edited September 1, 2022 by The Mystical Man

[Guest Nilsi]

7 minutes ago, The Mystical Man said:

I don't see how AI can work within the realities of a production. When you're producing a specific title like The Last of Us Part II, you need a director with a vision. The director needs to communicate his vision to his art director who has concept artists that work under him. You need human minds that can understand the specific needs of a production. If a director can go directly to an AI and get exactly what he needs, then concepts artists will indeed become obsolete, but AI is not that good yet. And I doubt it ever will be. How can you replace the human touch? 

Its even worse - you can cut the middleman and produce all this shit as the consumer, just through pure will or dreaming or whatever you wanna call it. This is where mysticism and technology will intersect.

Edited August 31, 2022 by Nilsi

[The Mystical Man]

3 minutes ago, Nilsi said:

Its even worse - you can cut the middleman and produce all this shit as the consumer, just through pure will or dreaming or whatever you wanna call it. This is where mysticism and technology will intersect.

Creative companies like Naughty Dog and Pixar need exponentially more human minds, more money, and more time to produce their amazing movies and games. I don't see how consumers could create satisfying experiences with AI. What AI lacks is consciousness, and consciousness is the true source of creativity and genius. Therefore: the brilliance of the human mind cannot be replaced.

[Guest Nilsi]

11 minutes ago, The Mystical Man said:

What AI lacks is consciousness, and consciousness is the true source of creativity and genius. Therefore: the brilliance of the human mind cannot be replaced.

Thats what you supply, hence the symbiotic relationship between men and machine. AI probably wont come up with a great movie itself, but if it operates on your hardware, its not that hard to imagine that it could.

[Space]

1 hour ago, Seth said:

If a computer can do everything you do then are you being creative? 

A computer can still play chess better than any human. Yet we still consider many of the best players creative and ingenious with their thoughts. What a computer can do doesn't detract from a human's creativity. And 'being creative' is entirely relative and subjective. 

56 minutes ago, The Mystical Man said:

I've used Midjourney, and it's just a fun toy. It will never replace the human artist. Midjourney is at best a source of inspiration. A director will always need a human concept artist to realize his specific vision. AI can't replace human talent like Aaron Limonick. 

Look at the amazing work that concept artists do at companies like Naughty Dog: https://magazine.artstation.com/2020/06/naughty-dog-the-last-of-us-part-ii-art-blast/

Do you think ND is just going to fire their incredible talent and use AI one day? I highly doubt it.

I strongly disagree. In a few years time AI artists will be just as good as any concept artist. Of course there will be exceptions. The absolute best concept artists like Aaron Limonick will be challenging to compete with. But even looking at this work now, I could easily see an AI artist replicating some of that. As I said in my original post, I'm not concerned about the AI artists taking jobs now, this week, even this year. It's in the coming years that it will start to take jobs. So my point is why should I continue committing to this path if that's almost certainly going to happen.

46 minutes ago, Nilsi said:

I can just tell my AI to create an artwork of x in the style of Aaron Limonick. It really is that bad, and there really will be no need for any human artists in the forseeable future. Everyone will just create whatever art they want to consume on the fly, and with brain-machine interfaces, it is even feasible to have AI create art based on your current neurochemical state or whatever, that pushes all the right buttons for you - in real time. As far as making art just for arts sake - great! but dont expect to get paid for that.

There will always be a need for some artists. At least for a long time. And as I mentioned in my original post, painters and fine artists, etc will always have jobs. And there will be artists needed to accompany AI art in certain ways.

The brain machine interface thing is a long way off. I'm not interested in that. What i'm talking about is actual artists jobs being taken within the next 2-5 years. Including myself. I'm not speculating here. 

39 minutes ago, The Mystical Man said:

I don't see how AI can work within the realities of a production. When you're producing a specific title like The Last of Us Part II, you need a director with a vision. The director needs to communicate his vision to his art director who has concept artists that work under him. You need human minds that can understand the specific needs of a production. If a director can go directly to an AI and get exactly what he needs, then concepts artists will indeed become obsolete, but AI is not that good yet. And I doubt it ever will be. How can you replace the human touch? 

I just think you're underestimating the capabilities of AI. I'm not saying that all concept artists will be thrown out. But its likely that 70% of them will be. They'll just end up having a small team of artists who work with AI image generators.

In all fairness who knows what will happen. I could definitely be wrong. I hope I am. I hope AI artists just hit a ceiling at some point. Maybe there's a limit to what AI artists will be able to do. I just know we're a long way off that limit.

Edited August 31, 2022 by Space

[ZzzleepingBear]

7 hours ago, Space said:

Yes its a good point. There will always be value in human made art precisely because it comes from a human. But I would not agree that there is a hollowness to AI art. I've seen work which conveys a deep emotional feeling and message. I've given Midjourney simple abstract prompts like 'gently looking into the past' and it somehow creates images that capture that perfectly.

True true, it sure has the ability to create images with an emotional message under the right cirumstances. 

7 hours ago, Space said:

It really depends on the type of art. If some random person is buying a one off painting or drawing then yes obviously they would want a real artists work. But most artists are not being paid by individuals, except for fine art painters. For the most part, normal every-day consumers are not the people buying artwork or artistic services. It's companies, publishers, production houses that are paying artists. And they will always have an incentive to reduce costs and speed up production times, both of which AI art can provide.

I would like to suggest the exact oppositet to this. That you will be more likely to sell AI generated art to individual buyers that lack artistic understanding but appriciate what is presented if it suits their taste. But not as easy to sell to more established companies and big publishers that review thousands of images and styles.

7 hours ago, Space said:

I appreciate your optimism!

Yeah I think it can be more in favour for artists to get inspiration from this AI if anything.

7 hours ago, Space said:

A few images I recently generated:
 

Those are some great images! 

And here is the great challange with AI generated art as I see it. If I was a potential client of yours, and asked if you could add some very specific details and angels and expression of any added characters to any of those images, then that would become quite a impossible task to get done unless you put in some serious work yourself and added what I ask for in the same style. My point being, is that the randomness of this AI art are fun to mess around with, but a hard beast to tame. And therein lies the challange to compete with proffesionals even if you render any image in matter of seconds, it might take hours of searches until you come up with something that come closer to what is both good and accurate to a clients specific wants. And you stil might need to clean up alot of thing in the rendered image manually, and need specific skills to addapt to the style of the rendered art to do so.

But I think there is a strong starting point, from where you might be able to sell random AI rendered images until the market get's saturated just as with stockphotos in general.

[Space]

2 hours ago, ZzzleepingBear said:

And here is the great challange with AI generated art as I see it. If I was a potential client of yours, and asked if you could add some very specific details and angels and expression of any added characters to any of those images, then that would become quite a impossible task to get done unless you put in some serious work yourself and added what I ask for in the same style. My point being, is that the randomness of this AI art are fun to mess around with, but a hard beast to tame. And therein lies the challange to compete with proffesionals even if you render any image in matter of seconds, it might take hours of searches until you come up with something that come closer to what is both good and accurate to a clients specific wants. And you stil might need to clean up alot of thing in the rendered image manually, and need specific skills to addapt to the style of the rendered art to do so.

Yes this is an important point. AI artists are good at generating artwork but they lack the ability to add subtle and nuanced details which are often an important part of the composition. Maybe its just the eyes of a face looking just slightly in the wrong direction or like you said a small extra details in the background.

However, in a lot of circumstances, I would say that these subtle nuances are not really that important for the client. Unless the detail make or breaks the image, a client will be happy with the result. Most professional clients are not looking for extremely specific images. Mostly what happens is a client will give the artist a fairly simple brief and its up to the artist to come up with the composition, details and make all the decisions. 

But in the not too distant future, if an editorial client has 50 artwork options to choose from based on the title of their new article, they're not going to care about some small detail in image number 18. They'll just choose a different piece.

Edited August 31, 2022 by Space

[AtheisticNonduality]

A.I. "art" is pretty bad, even from the advanced programs. So make your work exceptional.

[thisintegrated]

lmao, you'll definitely wanna avoid looking in my journal then.

AI has already completely surpassed all human ability.  There is no hope for you in trying to be better and cheaper than AI.  All you can do is manage the AI, if that's even an option.