By Sadie Urtz
Artificial intelligence (A.I.) is becoming increasingly powerful as the years unfold. Recently, we have seen a spike in A.I generated art. Relatively, free A.I. art generators have been popping up and becoming easily available to anyone with internet access.
As seen in the image above, A.I. generated that image with the keywords “castle” and “night”. With just two key words, a unique image that did not exist before is created in a matter of seconds. While there are errors in the images, and they are often distorted, it is eerie to see how close A.I. is to human generated images.
These generators are causing many artists, and aspiring artists, to worry for their careers. If a computer can generate an illustration in a matter of seconds, and for a very low cost, we could see careers start to crumble. There are even entire episodes of shows that were written and created by A.I.
Students who are involved in the art department at SUNY Cortland have voiced their opinions on A.I affecting their careers. When asked about what scared her about new forms of A.I, senior graphic design major Virginia says,
“I fear that all the new digital artists can easily be replaced. Graphic designers work with vectorized art, which is not hard to recreate with an AI art generator”.
Virginia is not the only one afraid. Everyone from children’s book illustrators to screen writers fear for the increasing intelligence of A.I.
On a more postive note, when asked if she thought A.I. would ever completely take over, Virginia stated “There are so many kinds of artists that it will be impossible to replace all the craftsmanship behind each process and technique”.
While her opinion is valid, many niches in the art industry rely on graphic design and digitally created art. If A.I. can quickly create any image with just a few key words, what will happen to digital artists?
Recently, A.I has been used to write entire episodes of popular sitcoms and cartoons. A.I was used to recreated the beloved “Family Guy” as a live action 80’s sitcom, and the results are terrifying but impressive. A.I. is able to write entire episodes after “watching” enough hours of the show with the use of bots. What could this mean for screen writers?
Thankfully, SUNY Cortland’s art students do collectively agree that A.I. will never be able to take over every art form, because “all artists have their own techniques and ways to create art” says Adrian, a senior in the graphic design program. Human made art remains to be far more unique and polished, but definitely keep an eye on the A.I. generators.