The Terrifying & Unethical World of AI Artwork (AI vs Artist)
Entertainment
Introduction
This image you see before you wasn’t drawn by a human being; it was drawn by Androids, or more technically, Artificial Intelligence (AI). This remarkable feat might just change the online world as we know it forever. Beyond computer code, music, and essays, these AI systems rapidly generate artwork upon command in mere seconds.
However, this convenience has stirred debate and concern. Many ask whether AI-generated art will replace real-life artists. It’s a serious question, and we decided to challenge these AI image generators in an old-school Dragon Ball drawing competition.
The Challenge Begins
We decided to face these AI image generators head-on with our team of human artists. Our goal was to see whether human creativity still holds a candle to machine-generated art. Our first challenge was a "Super Saiyan Blue Gohan" generated by the AI.
What is AI Art?
Simply put, AI art is created by machine learning algorithms fed with tens of thousands of images from the internet. The AI learns from these images to generate its own based on specific prompts. The results vary significantly in terms of quality and accuracy. More often than not, the produced artwork looks good at first glance, but a closer look reveals numerous flaws.
The different AI tools we experimented with, including DALL-E 2, Stable Diffusion, and Midjourney, fell short of expectations until we found Niji Journey, a specialized AI trained on anime images.
Issues with AI Art
AI art's major flaw is that it only looks good at a glance. Detailed inspection shows inconsistencies and errors. For example, AI-generated hands often look distorted, perhaps because artists whose work the AI learned from also struggle with drawing hands.
Our human artist took on the Gohan challenge, correcting the AI’s mistakes and injecting their own creativity into the piece. The result was a more robust and accurate rendition of Gohan in Masahiro Shimanuki’s style.
Exemplifying the Differences
Next, our artist AJ corrected a stylized Videl holding a burger, an image generated by Novel AI. Novel AI had a tendency to produce slightly inappropriate art unless explicitly told not to. Rather than just fixing errors, AJ adapted the entire artwork to fit the Dragon Ball style and commented on how AI art lacks creativity and specificity.
This process illustrated that AI cannot innovate based on input images. It can only output what has been fed into it, unlike human artists who continuously evolve and create new trends.
Ethical Concerns
A significant ethical concern is the data used to train these AIs. They often scrape the internet for images without consent or compensation. AI-generated art is essentially based on stolen work, raising questions about how fair and ethical this practice is.
A Glimmer of Hope
Some might argue that AI art can serve as inspiration, but human artists draw inspiration from each other's unique styles and lived experiences, which AI lacks. This makes AI art inherently less valuable as a muse.
Fun, Not Functional
Despite these challenges, AI art has a place. It's an incredibly fun tool for generating quick, silly ideas. Whether you're curious about how Shrek playing basketball on the moon would look or simply want to see Gohan riding a motorcycle, AI art can deliver.
Conclusion
Creativity is inherently human. While AI can mimic art, it cannot replicate the depth, nuance, and personal touch of human-created art. We'll conclude with various pieces of art, both from our competition and new, emphasizing that AI art should remain a fun novelty rather than a replacement for genuine human creativity.
Keywords
- AI Artwork
- Artificial Intelligence
- Dragon Ball Drawing Competition
- Ethical Concerns
- Creativity vs Automation
- Human Artists vs AI
- Art Generators
- Data Scraping
- Novel AI
- Niji Journey
FAQ
What is AI Artwork?
AI Artwork is created by algorithms that are trained on tens of thousands of images from the internet. It generates images based on specific prompts.
How does AI learn to create art?
AI learns by being fed a large dataset of images from which it builds an internal model of that visual data, creating new images based on a given prompt.
What are the primary flaws of AI-generated art?
The primary flaws are inconsistencies in finer details, such as distorted hands and misleading anatomy, making it evident that the image was machine-generated.
Is AI Art ethical?
The ethicality of AI art is questionable, as it often relies on images scraped from the internet without the original artists' consent or compensation.
Can AI replace human artists?
Currently, AI lacks the creativity, accuracy, and depth of human-created art. It is more of a fun tool than a genuine replacement for human artistry.
What can AI Art be used for?
AI art can be used for quickly generating fun and silly ideas, visualizing concepts that may not need a high level of detail and precision.
Feel free to use our detailed analysis to better understand the complex yet fascinating world of AI-generated art.