Is AI ART the end of Art?

Is AI ART the end of art?

In recent times, Artificial art a.k.a AI art has become really popular. You might not have heard of AI art or you might have tried it yourself, but you must have heard of Midjourney or Stable Diffusion or Dall e-2. You might have seen those artworks floating around the whole internet that look really cool and amazing and makes you think that the person who created those pieces of art was really talented. But then you find that those artworks were created by Artificial Intelligence, your mind gets blown away.

How can AI create such beautiful artworks?

Well, that's to be expected. For someone who isn't a AI nerd or tech geek, it will definitely come as a surprise. But for those who keeps track of these developments even a little bit they wouldn't be surprised. Because AI art has come a long way and grown really quickly in just a matter of few months. It's unreal.
 
AI ART is truly amazing. From landscapes to portraits, from vintage style to futuristic style, there is almost nothing it can't create. And countless people are using AI to generate art every second. Mid Journey's discord server has almost 14 million people... It's the largest server on the platform. Yes, many of those members aren't real. Still, that's the proof of AI art's popularity. If you can pay few bucks and make your fantasies become real, people wouldn't think twice.

Not only that, there are people who are ready to spend hundreds of dollars on GPU just so they can run AI art models at their own home and get full control of what they can create. But even if you don't have money and if you are broke, there are many apps on play store and app store that let you generate AI art for free, thought you have to watch few ads after generating a single artwork.

At first glance, it seems exciting that AI can create mesmerizing and awesome artworks. But it's only after you take a deeper dive that you find the problems with it and realize that it's not as simple as it sounds.
 
So, in this article we are going to discuss the problems with AI ART and potential harmful effects of it. Is it going to be end of actual Art? Is it going to end of creativity and much worse, is it going to be end of humans. It might sound far fetched but it's not.

• Is AI ART actually art?

  Before we talk about whether AI will be end of art or not, we need to discuss if AI art can actually be considered art. There are two sides to this. Most average people love the fact that they can create whatever they want without having to pay almost nothing. So, they argue that AI art is also art. However, most artists and many sane people believe that it's not art. If we look at the definition of 'art', they are right. Because generating art with AI doesn't involve creativity and skill. You only have to write a 'prompt' and that's it. Now, some might say that it takes skill to create a good prompt and hence get a good result. That might be true for some art generators but you still don't have to write essays to get good results. Generally you just have to explain your subject and style and you are done. There is little to no creativity involved.
  

• Who owns the AI art?

  Next big question or problem is who actually owns the AI generated art? Now, there aren't clear laws regarding this yet. But we can still talk about this. Actually there are three possible outcomes. Since Artificial Intelligence was used to generate the art, then it own the copyright. Second one is that the company who made that model or generator will be the owner. Or in the last case, no one will own the right to artworks created using AI and they will become public property. 

  But whoever owns the copyright, it doesn't change the fact that all these AI models used to create AI art are trained on artworks of artists and without their consent. Now, some art generators have allowed artists to opt out of the dataset used to train these image to text models. So, another possibility is that those artists will own the rights. But if an AI artwork uses styles of multiple artists, then what? Will artists divide the ownership between them?    

  There is still no clear answer or law regarding this. But one thing is clear, those people who say that they 'created' AI art and that they own the rights to that artwork and call themselves artists are lying.

• How will it effect artists?

  What impact will AI have on artists? It's already clear. Many people have entered art competitions and have won using artworks generated using AI. Like, in August 2022, a guy won a first prize of 300$ in digital art competition in Colorado. In 2018, an artwork Edmond de Belamy was sold for $432,000. 

  There are lot of books that have been published that were created using AI. Many people believe that AI will severely affect artists. Because people will no longer need to pay artists to get their done. They can give a command to AI and get it done for free. In fact, it's beginning to happen. Not only individuals and small organizations, large organizations are using AI instead of hiring actual artworks.

  Many artists have told that it has become more difficult to search for work because people can just replicate their style using AI.
  

So, it's clear that AI is already having an impact on society. While it's not harmful to most people, artists are suffering and they are going to suffer, unfortunately. Worse part is that no one cares. AI is going to develop at an even faster rate. But most people don't care since they are benefiting from using AI. They can generate art using AI, sell those pieces of art and call themselves artists while real artists will struggle to even find work.

 They will have to adapt to it and learn how to use it. That's the only way.