Artists Are 'Concerned For The Future Of Human Creativity' After the Use Of AI-Generated Art Recently, artificial intelligence apps or AI apps have been trending on social media for letting users create digital avatars of themselves in the style of famous artists.
By Kavya Pillai
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Recently, artificial intelligence apps or AI apps have been trending on social media for letting users create digital avatars of themselves in the style of famous artists. The use of these powerful tools has changed not just people's profile pictures but according to artists and people in the fine arts space, it is changing creative labour and is leading to serious intellectual property concerns.
These AI art pieces are posted all over the internet. People are using apps like photo editor Lensa to create a "magic avatar" in infinite ways. This has become a huge success for simple accessibility, speed and creative control. The app launched its avatar feature in November and since then over 4 million people have downloaded the app.
The prospect of how these apps being easily accessible to users could get rid of human artists completely has been the concern of many artists. Artist Kelly McKernan took to Twitter to share, "I'm incredibly anxious for the future of my career, more than ever before". She added, "Further, I'm concerned for the future of human creativity."
McKernan's artwork, which are paintings and illustrations with a cosmic and surreal style were the first images used to train Stable Diffusion, the popular tool used in AI apps for art.
The artist further continued, "at first it was exciting and surreal" for her art to help the tool build creatively but once the app produced perfect imitations of her work in large numbers, she felt the threat.
She concluded, "Please don't support the unethical use of AI image generators while thousands of artists are infringed upon". "Demand better, and please keep speaking out! If artists can't defend the use of their names and artwork, what have we got left?"
Apart from the concern about the future of creative labour, artists are accusing AI of violating their intellectual property.
The AL tools like Stable Diffusion use publicly available images to study the nuances of several artists' work. Hence, the tools develop the stylistic DNA of artists and allow users to borrow elements of their work. Sometimes, AI tools borrow directly from the original art piece to create new work.
The company behind Lensa, Prisma Labs tweeted, "AI produces unique images based on the principles derived from data, but it can't ideate and imagine things on its own". In a thread, they wrote, "As cinema didn't kill theatre and accounting software hasn't eradicated the profession, AI won't replace artists but can become a great assisting tool."
They added, "We also believe that the growing accessibility of AI-powered tools would only make man-made art in its creative excellence more valued and appreciated, since any industrialization brings more value to handcrafted works".
