Using AI to make pictures is a hot topic today, and mostly I hear negative voices with a tone of fright underneath.
People ask, where will this end? Will it be possible to fack every picture? Will it lead us to the point that we can’t know when a press photo is right or made using AI? And what about art and artists? Is this the end of the photographers, illustrators, and artists we know today and want to have them as they are?
I’m one of those who are “hooked” those days on picture-making AI, and I’m using the Mid journey Bot hosted on Discord.com. But my digital art-making goes all the way back to 1995 when PhotoShop 2 was a revolution, but no more revolution than that you had to wait all night for a simple picture to render.
So I’m not new in this field, and the arguments and fears around AI picture-making sound old to me. Like an echo of what people argued and feard about when PhotoShop came out.
Then using PS was looked down on, “it’s a fake you’re doing; it’s just a program, not creative work like we, the “artists” are making." But since then, nobody today thinks that using PS is a “fake,” it’s just another tool, like a pencil or a brush.
It was the same when artists started using video and photographs in contemporary art. At first, it was “not art,” but it changed quickly (thanks to that it didn’t take as long as PS), and today every second artist use photographs and video in their work.
Today I’m learning to use MJ in a “creative” way because I see that only a few other users do it, but most of the users are not making “art” and not trying to create art, just having a lot of fun, and it is fun, believe me. A new tool/toy from my point of view. Artists just have to learn to use it creatively, not talk it down, saying, “it’s not art; it’s a fake.”
But AI is nothing but a new “brush,” face it, and learn to use it; it’s not going away, so go whit the flow and just be the best or good enough; nothing else counts as everything else that we create, be it art or for fun.
I use the Hashtags #AI and #MidJurneypanton. Been seeing other folks using “Mid Jurney paint on” and find it a good description. Usually, those who take AI picture-making seriously go through PS before publishing the final result, and nothing I create in Mid Jurney I use as Mid Journey makes it; I always modify the pictures or use them as a source for new concepts.
I have been making digital art for about 30 years. I look at everything as a “source” that I manipulate and distort in many ways, so the end result is usually totally different from any of the sources.
I’m fascinated about MJ; no tool I’ve used has ever been able to give me such great sources to make my pictures. I can’t tell a camera to take so and so photos; I will have to find the sources, take millions of images, and maybe no one is useable. Well, I have to admit it’s been the same with MJ; I have been maybe two days working and not able to let MJ understand what I want, but hey, it’s a new tool/brush, so of course, I will not get what I’m looking for instantly.
But on the other hand, MJ often surprises me by coming up whit pictures I wasn’t looking for or asking for, and I get sources for totally different pictures. It’s just like using photographs you find on your walk along the seashore, things and motives you were not looking for, and getting some “extra” on your lookout for the source you started looking for. It’s one of the magic of AI that people don’t seem to understand; it’s a surprise tool cos, in a way, it’s “dum,” not in a negative way, at least not in my case, cause I love surprises that give me ideas for new works.
So I’m not ashamed to tell people that I used AI in making some of my pictures; there is no need to; it will change, just like the attitude to PhotoShop 30 years ago.
Today no one asks if you used PS to make or alter a picture; folks just look at the final result. Is it good or bad? Do I like it or not? That’s the only thing that matters, not what kind of brush or a program or AI you used.