Thought — 1 Min Read
AI Art Once More
by Case Greenfield, December 6, 2022
Thought – 1 Min Read
AI Art Once More
by Case Greenfield
December 6, 2022
I tend to change my mind a bit on AI-generated art. Tools like DALL-E 2 may be a helpful supporting tool for artists in generating variants on an artwork. Not brilliantly creative, but helpful nevertheless.
Earlier – in my story AI Art? Quantum Art! – I was quite critical on AI-generated artworks. Now that I have worked with DALL-E 2, I am changing my view on “AI Art” a bit. I used DALL-E 2 to generate variants on my Study for Poppies. And it worked quite well.
Still, I find that a machine, or an algorithm, for that matter, generating art feels stone cold. It feels dead. I have zero emotional connection with it. I would never decorate my wall with it. I miss the story of the artist, the human being who created the artwork. The person who could be my friend. The person who created an artwork that helps me shape myself, my self image. Warm grounding. The cozy rabbit hole.
But in generating variants of my original artwork that I can used for series as part of an art project , DALL-E 2 worked very well. I will keep using it for that purpose, I think. Not always, but on days that I am out of imagination and creativity.
And by the way …
the same applies for the non-visual arts, such as literature and song writing. New algorithms, eg. ChatGPT by OpenAI, can very well be used by (song) writers to generate (song)text(s). And I know there are other types of artistic AI-generators, eg. music generating algorithms.
Here’s an example I did with ChatGPT:
My input was:
“Please write a song about an artist, poppies and turquoise blue.”
ChatGPT output:
Verse 1:
The artist sat and painted all day
Her canvas a sea of turquoise blue
With brush in hand, she brought to life
A field of poppies, bright and true
Chorus:
Poppies and turquoise, a beautiful sight
The colors so vibrant, they take flight
The artist’s talent is plain to see
In this masterpiece, of poppies and turquoise blue
Verse 2:
The brushstrokes dance across the page
Creating depth and texture too
The poppies sway in a gentle breeze
A symphony of red and blue
Chorus:
Poppies and turquoise, a beautiful sight
The colors so vibrant, they take flight
The artist’s talent is plain to see
In this masterpiece, of poppies and turquoise blue
Bridge:
The artist’s soul shines through her art
As she captures the beauty of life
In this canvas, she shares her heart
A masterpiece of poppies and turquoise blue
Chorus:
Poppies and turquoise, a beautiful sight
The colors so vibrant, they take flight
The artist’s talent is plain to see
In this masterpiece, of poppies and turquoise blue
And generating this text literally took a few seconds.
Oooopsie …
Okay, it’s not a brilliant text, maybe, but it can be very useful to a human writer for inspiration.
And by the way, or … one more thing … ha ha.
I still think my notion of Quantum Art is a fundamental way forward for art. I talked about it in two earlier stories, recently Dunning Kruger We Are, and earlier AI Art? Quantum Art! Despite the creative abilities of AI, I still feel it is not more – and not less – than combining and recombining existing ideas on a higher complexity level than we can do with our brains. Quantum physics is fundamentally different, a breakthrough. And, although the ideas of quantum physics were first developed about 100 years ago, I have the feeling that only now we are going to see real life – and philosophical – consequences of those ideas.
