Artificial Intelligence and AI Art generators have inundated my internet news feeds as of late. And now that I have spent some time experimenting with these new AI art generation tools, I am beginning to understand what all the fuss is about.

So, this article will be a brief summary of what I have found, what kind of an impact I think AI art generators are going to have on both photography and other kinds of art, as well as some predictions about the immediate future.

Before we get into it, I’d like to mention that all of the images in this post were generated by artificial intelligence using the DALLE-2 generator.

First Impressions

If I’m honest, my first experiments with AI and visual art were pretty bad. I couldn’t seem to describe/create anything that looked real, interesting, compelling, artistic, etc… Within an hour, I had pretty much dismissed the entire concept. However, after seeing–yet more articles–on the topic, I decided to give it a second go. Slowly, as I dove deeper, I began to see what all the hype was about.

While these tools do struggle to create life-like imagery (in many cases, the details give it away quickly), I think that that particular aspect of the AI will improve rather quickly.

Currently, where AI art shines is with slightly more abstract concepts.

With a little practice, interesting double exposures, explosion or mashup-looking imagery, landscape pieces, as well as architectural art can be generated pretty consistently. The resolution might not be there yet, as these images are still only 1 Megapixel in size, but that will come with time.

The Moment My Mind Changed

The breakthrough moment for me, though, was during the creation of my recent YouTube video on AI art.

Typically, when I finish a video, I upload it and then begin working on the thumbnail image if I don’t already have one (which I did not in this case). In my mind, I had an elaborate photo I was going to take in my apartment, but setting up the lights and taking the photo was probably going to take me an entire evening. I decided since this was–after all–a video on AI imagery, I might as well see if I could use the AI to generate a thumbnail for the video. So, I set myself to that task.

After about 20 minutes of trial and error (instead of an entire evening), I had my thumbnail.

Mind. Blown.

Sure, it has its’ problems. It doesn’t look quite like a REAL image. However, I also could not have created anything like this in my apartment.

The landlord strictly forbids explosions.

Conclusion

I think the story above sums up the entire point perfectly. These tools are going to save people countless hours, reduce the cost of imagery, and pretty much change the entire landscape of photography and all visual arts. I don’t know when it will happen or to what extent exactly, but I think the writing is on the wall.

Some of this will be great, awesome, useful, and fun. Some of it will be sad, unethical, controversial, and will result in the loss of jobs. Naturally, as someone who loves photography dearly, I have mixed feelings about this prospect. With that said, I am also someone who takes a great interest in technology. So, at this point, I am excited about the prospect of integrating AI into my creative work over time.

We shall see.