Creating Abstract Art in AI

    Maybe I'm the only one who finds this fascinating but listen, there's been a whole new world exposed. Computers generate art now. That's a weird statement on its own, right? Technology is supposed to do things like cover for manual labor, not producing works of art. I went into a sushi restaurant once and I'm not kidding when I say they had a hostess robot. Honestly that's downright genius if you ask me. It led us to our table and said, "your server will be right with you!" like HAL 9000. I think technology is pretty cool, but there's a big debate about it particularly in the art world. Is it morally correct for us to even use it? Now there have even been conversations about whether or not an entire movie or book, any form of media, can be produced by robots and not pesky writers, animators, directors etc., who need a living wage. Who's to say how long the industry titans have already known about it and haven't been utilizing it already?

"I'm afraid I can't do that."

    But most images in AI you'll find are quite flawed. It takes multiple inputs sometimes for it to come up with something that looks even close to as natural as the traditional way. Most of the time, it's obvious when an image is AI generated. Parts of the picture might look oddly warped or misshapen and sometimes even terrifying depending on how wrong it goes. It seems entirely random. I took it upon myself to experiment with this tool (because that's what it seems to be for?) I asked for it to express abstract concepts or feelings using Stable Diffusion 2.1, in the style of pop art. Before I did, at first I thought this would be fairly easy. If it was love then it would come out something like a painting, maybe a couple kissing in it or two swans or something generic like that. Like a Hallmark card. Something typical that you could find on Google Images, which I think is where it pulls these images from. But that isn't what happened. Here is what it came up with when I asked to create:

hate

soulmate

peace

pride

madness

    

    I know this means nothing really, although some of the color schemes and textures are visually appealing, particularly in "peace." I'm not surprised that AI does not know what to do with things like emotions; but I definitely thought it would be a lot less abstract than this. It looks like it was created from someone who suffers from, and I don't mean any disrespect by saying this at all, schizophrenia. Or a Rorschach test. Portals to another universe. The robot literally went like, "well I don't know how to translate or format that so we're just gonna go with random shapes and colors." The background almost looks like code.

    This is the question I and many other people have been asking, about the morality of using such a thing. I'm not going to lie, as someone who is currently a freelance writer I find it really handy in producing images I need for my websites, even if it does take a couple of tries first. The website I'm using is NightCafe, and if you want the picture to be better you have to use tokens for that (which some come for free, the more you use the website,) and others that you can pay for. You can also pay to enhance the image, like making the quality more clear and realistic. I had saved up a lot of tokens and I used it for this one, which I got a lot of positive reactions to:

 

    Pretty amazing stuff, right? I did get some comments that were interesting however, and that was "good work!" Work? I entered a couple of words and it made it for me. I guess the idea was mine, and I did ask for specific things. I wanted it to make an interdimensional fairy princess, with an emphasis on the color blue and a glowing effect over the photo. There are parts of it you can still catch though, if you look hard enough. Some of the objects or lines that are supposed to be solid blend in with the rest of the picture, and her jawline seems to be slightly irregular. The hair is also a bit off, as AI can tend to confuse certain shapes with others. But I think the wings are stunning and the outfit is gorgeous, and the glowing delivered. Would I have felt prouder if I had actually made it by hand? For sure, but I remember a time when digital tablets were a controversy. Some of you may not, but when things like the iPad came out people started noticing how much easier (and better for conservation frankly) making art was and they warned us against that too. Now, I know so many people who make digital art it's just inevitable that if you're an artist you run into people who are into things like graphic design and who really make a name for themselves doing it.

    I don't know. I think it's easy to tell when somethings made from AI. There are already jokes circulating that future marvel movies are going to be written by computers. I watched a movie commentator recently joke about how a line sounded "AI generated," because it was so corny. Humans are definitely able to tell, and in my opinion that does say something about an artist's credibility.

    Back in the day some animators did a thing called rotoscoping, which is basically when they film a real life scene and then animate over it. It was considered glorified tracing to a lot of people. Basically it looked like this:

    The artist uses real frames and then draws over top of it. The result is something that looks a little bit odd, not in a bad way necessarily but you can definitely tell there's a difference between that and something like the Simpsons or Adventure Time, which have more of a goofy, lighthearted style. You could say this was done to save costs by the filmmakers but you could also say it was effective in providing the fantasy world they were trying to deliver. I don't think you'd find a single person who would complain about rotoscoping anymore, and I suspect a possibility that AI generated art may reach that status someday.

because I LOVE castles 😙

    The realistic side of this is that a lot of people like writers and artists are going to be out of jobs. Currently as I'm typing this many people such as screenwriters, actors, stuntmen, traditional artists, you name it, are protesting for worker's rights, and I support them because they deserve to be paid and treated fairly. Like all things, I think AI needs to be regulated. This could turn into a monopoly very fast for people who are looking for cheap cash grabs, that NFT disaster is enough evidence of that. But this could also really help people. People who can't afford to pay someone for something like logo making, designing websites, coming up with color schemes, have this option available to them, but AI may be a tool that needs specific laws to handle it so we can preserve our society's artistic, social and economic integrity. I see a new type of artist becoming akin to managers of colors and shades and concepts, almost director-like rather than having to take more time producing things by hand. You don't always need to be necessarily authentic, depending on the context of why you're using it. Nobody is trying to waste your time convincing you that AI is genuine; that's not the point. It's a tool, and if you can learn how to manage it, you can use it a lot of different ways. I don't recommend using it as a crutch, but I also don't buy that this is entirely a bad thing. Anything that the public can use for themselves and it's free, that's nice. (Healthcare should be that, but I digress.)

    Plenty of people are going to disagree with me I already know, and that's fine. I'm open to hearing a different argument and I definitely see other people's points, particularly artists who feel ripped off in a system that already doesn't favor the creative, but we can throw it back at them by making the act of producing content easier. AI is like a megaphone; what you hear depends on who's behind the mic. 

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