The Great Art Debate: Human Ingenuity vs. AI Assistance

In this newsletter, read about:

• 🕵️‍♀️ The Great Art Debate: Human Ingenuity vs. AI Assistance

• 🗞 News and Top Reads

• 📌 AI Art Tutorial: ControlNet

• 🎨 Featured Artist: Diego Berro

• 🖼 AI-Assisted Artwork of the Week

• 🤓 How to Get Started with Generative AI?

🕵️‍♀️ The Great Art Debate: Human Ingenuity vs. AI Assistance

Two distinct approaches to art

When we envision traditional artists, our minds often conjure up a specific stereotype – a profoundly creative man or woman who fervently splatters paint onto canvas, engendering original and unparalleled imagery born solely from their imagination. Occasionally, we may also picture artists who capture the breathtaking beauty of nature through their brushstrokes or portrait painters who immortalize their subjects with life-like accuracy.

Undoubtedly, these artists do exist in abundance, and many have honed their craft to a remarkable level of proficiency through years of unwavering devotion and hard work.

Yet, there is a lesser-known sect of traditional artists who are just as skillful, talented, and inspired as their peers, but who also have an unyielding passion for integrating the latest technologies into their artistic process.

There is strong evidence that Vermeer used optical tools such as camera obscura to create his astonishingly precise and detailed paintings.

Or we can talk about the contemporary followers of Vermeer, creating incredible hyperrealistic paintings. Do you know that to create one such painting, you need to take hundreds of high-quality digital images, where beyond the general scene you also photograph each object separately to get the details you need? Hyperrealistic paintings were hardly possible before the invention of digital cameras taking high-resolution images.

Finally, many artists utilize digital tools such as Photoshop to generate reference images for their paintings by combining multiple images into a single composition or creating collages that stand alone as works of art.

Does utilizing technological advances to craft magnificent artwork make these artists less great? I think that it rather implies that they are great technical innovators in addition to being great artists.

Are technical innovators welcome in the art community?

The technologically innovative traditional artists are now exploring AI-generated images as a fresh prospect to advance their abilities and create even more exquisite masterpieces. They can employ AI to gain novel ideas and inspiration, ponder over the composition of their next painting, experiment with their concepts using AI-generated images before implementing them on canvas, and create sketches and reference images for their artwork.

Many artists and art enthusiasts might think of it as cheating, yet it all relies on one's perception of an artist's vocation. If one regards it as an ordinary craft, why not employ modern technology to create a superior product? Is it deceptive when the latest software and computers are utilized to add special effects to a movie? Obviously, it is not.

Although a specific reverence has been accorded to the profession of an artist. True artists only use their innate creativity and imagination in the art process. True talent doesn’t need reference photographs to produce a masterpiece, let alone AI assistance. They are simply gifted by God, the universe, or some other higher powers. It’s almost like artist equals genius.

But what if we allow people to express their creativity in a variety of possible ways?

Can we overcome the differences?

While some people relish in the humor of classic French comedies, others prefer the spectacle of fantasy movies with intricate special effects. In a similar vein, we can have a cohort of artists who produce breathtaking masterpieces through their own exceptional imagination and skill, as well as a new generation of artists who employ AI to generate stunning digital artworks or spark inspiration for magnificent oil paintings.

Naturally, at present, we are witnessing a great deal of skepticism from traditional artists, which is typical of any emerging technology. However, as with previous technological advancements, we will likely reach a new equilibrium in due time, where artists either fully embrace new technologies or, at the very least, adapt to them.

We can start the dialogue by addressing major concerns.

• Is AI trained on stolen art pieces? – AI generators have undergone training on billions of images, whereas input from any single artist is minuscule in comparison. The result is a generation of images inspired by this vast database, much like a new artist who creates and hones their own unique style by studying various art forms and drawing inspiration from their peers. Obviously, due to the sheer scale of its operations, AI is viewed differently within the art community.

• Is the profession of an artist at risk due to AI-generated images? – Generative AI has the potential to transform the art industry, similar to the impact of photography, digital cameras, or high-quality canvas prints. This means that artists are now faced with new competition. However, there are several ways to navigate this competition. One approach is to fully embrace this new technology and utilize it to enhance your artistic output. Nonetheless, this is not the only approach available. If the idea of incorporating AI in your creative process does not appeal to you, you can differentiate yourself from your peers by providing 100% human-made art. Despite all the recent technological advances, many people still prefer one-of-a-kind art pieces with a unique human touch.

• Do AI-generated images lack a soul? – Even though AI generates these images, they still retain a hint of the person who created them. You can speculate on the intended message behind each image and ponder what the creator was trying to convey. Generative AI enables individuals without extensive artistic abilities to express their creative concepts, making art more attainable and inclusive. Isn't this a positive development?

Let’s create together

The appropriateness of utilizing technological shortcuts in the art-making process has been a topic of heated debate within the art community for a considerable period, well before the advent of generative AI.

It is an unwinnable fight to resist technological advancements, but artists with varying perspectives have coexisted for centuries. Their approaches differ, and they create for diverse audiences, yet collectively, they enhance the beauty in our world. Let us continue on this path.

🗞 News and Top Reads

• Employers are hiring prompt engineers to write natural-language prompts for AI models.

  • “The hottest new programming language is English,” Andrej Karpathy, Tesla’s former chief of AI, who recently joined OpenAI, said in a tweet.

• The popular AI text-to-image generator Midjourney recently stopped offering free access to its service due to a rise in deepfakes created using the technology. Some of the deepfakes that led to this decision:

  • Images of Pope Francis wearing trendy streetwear that went viral

  • Fake photos of former President Donald Trump being arrested, which spread amid baseless rumors of his impending arrest

  • Images of imagined historical events like the “Great Cascadia" earthquake

• Dall-E2 Vs ShutterStock AI Image Generator— Same Prompt, Different Results

📌 AI Art Tutorial: ControlNet

With this tutorial by Sebastian Kamph, you’ll get s step-by-step guide on how to modify your Stable Diffusion images using ControlNet. Sebastian shares his workflow for changing composition or poses to get the results you are looking for.

🎨 Featured Artist: Diego Berro

After spending nearly three decades in Argentina, Diego Berro relocated to Spain in 2009 to kickstart his career as an advertising photographer and digital artist. Over the course of ten years, he successfully executed more than 200 projects and campaigns for some of the most renowned brands in the country. Recently, Diego has ventured into the realm of Midjourney, incorporating AI-assisted images into his already awe-inspiring portfolio of digital art.

🖼 AI-Assisted Artwork of the Week

🤓 How to Get Started with AI Art?

1. DALL-E: Creating Images from Text – introduction to text-to-image generation.

2. The DALL-E 2 Prompt Book – a guidebook by OpenAI that explains how to effectively right prompts to generate images across different domains (e.g., photography, illustration, art history, 3D artwork).

3. Best Midjourney Prompts – a guide that covers the basics of Midjourney prompts (e.g., which keywords to use to create abstract art, surreal art, minimalism, etc) as well as some more advanced options (e.g., keywords related to camera lenses and filters, imitating certain artists and photographers without using their names). Finally, they provide a list of 600+ creative text prompts for image generation.

4. Stable Diffusion Prompt Book – a prompt book prepared by OpenArt. The book discusses ideal prompt format, using modifiers to change the style, format, or perspective of the image, applying ”magic words” to improve image quality, adding negative prompts, and adjusting Stable Diffusion parameters.

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