A (Gentle) Artist's Perspective On AI Generated Art

I know that AI generated art is an area of concern for many artists right now so I wanted to share my perspective and the perspective of some of our community members with a gentle conversation about it.

This isn't a comprehensive deep-dive into AI art, it's just a casual chat about it as an artist 🥰

Here are the articles that feature in the video:

And here are some others that I read and found useful:

----
💻 GEAR LIST
Find all the gear I'm using for digital illustration and Youtube here:

🥰 PATREON
Join my Illustration Club over on Patreon:
Browse the articles and videos available on my Patreon here:

🖌️MY BRUSH PACK! (Procreate & Photoshop)

🎨 ETSY
Find some digital illustration goodies over on my Etsy shop!
---

♥︎

♥︎

*Some of the links provided in this description are affiliate links*

A big thank you to my partner for filming and editing this video!

00:00 Intro
01:09 AI Generated Art
02:20 A Chat About The Ethics
07:16 The Potential Impact on Artists
11:44 Potential Pros & Cons
15:03 What AI Art Cannot Do
15:23 Conclusions

[MimimooIllustration]

I know this is a complex topic and I couldn't possibly cover everything, but I hope you enjoyed this gentle conversation about AI generated art. Feel free to let us know your thoughts about AI art below 🥰

[judit_gorog_art]

I have to say, I am not very happy with AI art. Before embarking on my art journey, I worked at a company teaching Data Science. It was frightening to see that many of the people who are shaping this field are incredibly young and very profit driven. I feel that they don't really know what they are doing and don't have the wisdom and life experience to think long-term. I think this approach has lead to things like AI art (and launching so many AI-based services very quickly, without really understanding the impact it will have). Art is one of the few things that - I think - make human life bearable and worth living. I think there are many areas where AI might be appropriate to do some "heavy lifting", where human intelligence might not be enough but art is not one of these. We should work on making human work and skill more appreciated and not to take even that little joy of creation that we have left.

[Asheffc]

i'm a digital artist since 2010 i will always value more stuff made by humans from 0 than a machine thing no matter the product or service, i will always value humans more.

[BookishMandy]

I love that you’re doing a traditional illustration while discussing AI art. It’s such a solid choice. I also could watch this type of video all the time. I love the colored pencil sketching - it’s makes me want to bust out my sketchbook and colored pencils.

[marenbangerterpehrson]

Something I haven't seen very many people talk about is how artists can use AI to improve and inspire their work. I've been thinking about using ChatGPT to generate drawing prompts that help me improve in areas that are difficult for me (like perspective, anatomy, etc) and having it formulate an improvement plan (breaks it down into actionable steps I can do daily for a period of time). Text based AI can be a sound board for ideas and planning. As for AI generated art, I think I might use it to gather helpful reference images for specific poses.

[zazzy]

I work in the animation industry currently, and while I am not worried about my job in particular, I am worried about what it means for artists just entering the industry. I feel like it is going to replace a lot of those jobs because a senior artist can now just work faster. In regards to that, as much as I would love to think it would make workloads easier, I think they will just be expected to produce more in a shorter time. I worked for a vfx company in the past that was developing its own machine learning to replace its workforce, they chose people to test it (I guess letting them think they're nice and special to be chosen for the task) and they gladly did it. The job it was being trained on was the first to go and outsourced to a cheaper country, and shortly after the studio shut down in my country. They weren't a good place to work for, and I am glad now that I lost my job, but at the time I was suddenly unemployed with 200+ others with similar skills. I know there are a lot of companies with varying ethics, this one was particularly bad, and with the rise in tech I think this is something that could happen more commonly. I think if it was just being trained to use public domain, it wouldn't have nearly so much impact.

[catherinej]

I also get really upset at the attitude that non-artists have that we should just get over AI and embrace it. I do agree with the potential it has in the aspect of generating reference and composition (bc sometimes its the part that takes the most time), but I cannot even begin to think of the potential benefits until it is regulated to protect artists from blatant theft. I really do believe along with you that there will always be a market for art made by humans, and those who don't care were never going to support you anyway.

Edit: another thing, can we stop comparing using references/literal features in art programs to AI art?? I saw an instagram reel the other day that was an artist showing how to do some simple lighting with multiply+glow dodge. The first comment was "wow how is this no different than what AI does??"🤨

[sereenaassih]

Thanks for sharing such a balanced discussion and pointing out the things AI-generated art can't do. It certainly can't replicate the mental health and wellbeing benefits we receive by engaging in art creation. So regardless of AI we need to maintain our personal art practices.

[Gj.Sherwood]

Very balanced review. I think your right, it will land somewhere in the middle. in Austin Kleon's book "show your work" (highly recommend) he gives an example of two identical pictures, and once you learn one is an original master and one is a very good forgery, how much it changes your perspective of the pictures value. So yes, AI can replace some work, but there will always be an increased value associated to something hand made.

[prader]

As someone who has played around with Midjourney and Blue Willow (not even close to setting up an "art studio" though) I think your commentary on the ethics involved is spot on. I don't know a whole lot about the process that went in back "behind the curtain" so to speak, but It goes without question that the creators of whatever artistic works were used in the datasets that ai is working from should have been asked.

As someone without an ounce of artistic ability though, I can honestly say that I don't think real artists are at risk of being replaced. Even with the ethical questions aside. The difference seems to be- you as an artist can create exactly what I want if it's within your skillset. Midjourney... you have no real idea what you're going to get. You can sort of narrow it down somewhat... ish... if you're really good at prompting (which I admittedly am not) but the output, while sometimes stunning, is very much like a roll of the dice and I have yet to see it produce exactly what was in my mind. If I had to narrow the difference down- the AI, no matter what prompts I use, is going to do whatever it "wants" to do. A real artist that I would commission for a work is going to produce what *I* want, to the best of his/her ability.

[authorkyliemacdougall]

Thank you for your perspective! As someone who wants to learn and grow into an artist, AI art had me feeling like "what's the point?" But I feel a little relief after watching your video, in combination with things my boyfriend has said about focusing on the experience of making art and the joy it brings.

[KarliB_]

I just watched a video of AI being used as a side hustle to create patterns and found it really concerning… then I watched yours (had it saved for a while) and your videos are always so comforting! I don‘t post a lot of comments on YouTube but I appreciate your efforts to support the artist community and think you should know ☺️

[Lunangel]

I really appreciate your perspective always! As someone else said, I too am someone who has just started getting back into art and illustration and have been awfully worried about AI taking over. But I feel more at ease now after listening to you. Thank you so much 🙏😊🩷

[olwynnsay]

As an author and illustrator, I have a very vivid imagination and definite ideas of how I want characters and scenes to look. No amount of prompts can ever replicate that.

[ireneschoonwinkel]

Hi Mimi, I just wanted to thank you for your thoughts and for making this video. Even though your video doesn't solve the problem obviously - it does make me feel a little less anxiety. Thank you so much for the time you put into making this video and for encouraging us to continue to pursue our art carriers. Hope you are keeping well. 🐇

[plumblossomed]

Thanks for this. It's refreshing to see such a balanced take. I always appreciate your perspectives.

[headaweeks]

Good job on this video. 😊 it’s refreshing to hear a calm version of the ai conflict. 👏

[CreativeSteve]

As an artist myself, I never really was worried about it really. I always thought of them as a helpful tool if used in the right way by good people. That we can use them as a brand new tool for concept phases of our art. where we give them our idea of what we want to create and it can come up with a few simple ideas of what the world we want to create can look like. Where we can take ideas from A.I and put it into our own piece of work that our brain imagines it as. But I do agree there are evil people out there who uses A.I for evil to make a quick buck. But Ive been using A.I to help me out with my world building project I've had for years. I'm in my final semester in college right now. So I have been using chat gpt to give descriptions of my world I would love to build for a project I have mind when I'm finished and on a break. I'm working slowly with the ideas I feed it and it really has really neat original ideas of what ya describe your world you want to create. But I see the artists who are getting mad though at it for the wrong doings.

[deborahmeyers]

It cannot takeaway the reality of original handmade art directly from the artist or prints from our original artwork thank you for sharing your thoughts I loved this gentle approach 💜

[prexytheartist]

I've watched so many videos about this but you made a cool shift about this topic with your great points such as being "transformative" and a logo for "made by humans". Thank you for this Mimi, you have discussed your points well and logically.