Generative Models and Creativitiy

Welcome RAPID by Red Marble. This edition we are looking at how AI is impacting the creative world and challenging our perspectives of art.

Many of the most innovative artists—the ones who’ve made the biggest impact on the history of art—were viewed as radicals in their day, often vilified and criticised for taking a new perspective. 

Yet AI is another (big) step in the serious, and often controversial, relationship between art and technology. Think the transition from analogue to digital expression, the birth of photography or any “new media” art forms. 

Language and its context are important.  Generative models are creating a stir, in art, film and content creation. The reaction to an AI created portrait winning first prize in an art fair was one of horror. 

“We’re watching the death of artistry unfold before our eyes,” a Twitter user going by OmniMorpho said in a reply that gained over 2,000 likes.

However, we argue, using technology to create art is not new so why all the noise?

How you do it will matter.

While some artists feel technology diminishes the human and creative aspect of art, others, myself included, see this as complementary. 

As change occurs we will end up somewhere new and unexpected, and this in turn will create opportunities at a societal and economic level. For example, the next step for Open AI’s DALL-E 2 is likely to be animation.

If you don’t dismiss AI artwork, you start taking a closer look at the metaverse and what these new generative models are underpinning.

It’s not just about creating pictures. It’s about the impact of art, and then of education and change. 

So what’s next?

To fill the Metaverse, we need 3D assets in quantity and diversity, and is where generative AI will step in to boost 3D artists’ productivity and fill the empty universe. 

Another example is the recently launched open source Stable Diffusion, a text-to-image model that claims to have used 10,000 beta testers to create 1.7 million images a day. It has been open about its flaws and appealed to users to help it improve. 

“As these models were trained on image-text pairs from a broad internet scrape, the model may reproduce some societal biases and produce unsafe content, so open mitigation strategies as well as an open discussion about those biases can bring everyone to this conversation.”

Like Canva has disrupted graphic design, and photography gave people without painting skills a pathway to become artists, AI is giving those with high technological skills and creative vision a different kind of paintbrush. 

The next generation sees value in art that looks different to what we’d “traditionally” expect.  

So are we to stop that? 

Here are the articles that captured our attention this edition:

• 11 boundary pushing art controversies of the past 400 years. 
• Why AI animation could disrupt the entire animation industry
• An AI-Generated Artwork Won First Place at a State Fair Fine Arts Competition, and Artists Are Pissed
• 15 disruptive companies making their mark in the metaverse
• Generative AI models for the metaverse
• New text-to-image Stable Diffusion launches

Keeping you posted on all the interesting AI News ! Happy reading :-)

Cheryl