What do you think of AI art generators like Dall-E?

[CSJones]

I think they're the biggest double-edged sword in digital art history. They could revolutionize modern art, but the open internet isn't ready for that kind of power. But I don't think it'll be long before they're released to the general public, and it will have some good sides:

Between this and increasingly realistic mocap, we might be about to enter the most exciting period for indie comics and animations ever seen. We're slowly approaching the age where five dudes can make a flawless looking multi-season anime in a living room using AI mixed with open tools like Blender and 3d Vtubing software, and I'm psyched for it.

But on the other hand, the biggest stereotype about digital art used to be that you just push a button and the computer generates it. We spent like 20 years trying to disprove that, but now it's about to be literally true. I'm hoping to use it to help with backgrounds. I'm still going to sketch out, assemble, and paint over them myself, but it'll be great for generating the tedious stuff like trees and skyscrapers. But on the other hand, loads of new artists might just generate every background whole-cloth with AI, to the point where even if you meticulously draw everything, readers will probably assume it's fake.

And combined with the absurd standards that Webtoon's set, as @smokesalty talked about in their thread, I wouldn't be surprised if webcomic art ends up so devalued you'll have to draw the Sistine Chapel ceiling freehand for readers to respect your skill. And that's depressing as hell.

It'll probably devastate the low-end art market too. I'm expecting commissions of things like people's OC's and D&D characters to become a thing of the past, aside from customers who just want to support the artist out of the goodness of their heart. ...And that's the kind of work a lot of amateur artists rely on for food. Sounds bad. We should probably have a guaranteed income or something.

Not to mention the avalanche of garbage it'll lead to like p*rn of of real people and so many deepfakes that you'll only be able to trust a handful of certified news sites. (They might promise you can't use specific faces, but photoshopping them into the image will be a snap.)

Honestly, I'd be happy if it were never released to the public, but I'm at the same time, I'm excited to see what creative potential will be unlocked when it is.

[Zugaikotsu]

We'll have to reinvent ourselves completely and study other languages, such as writing, photography, direction, etc. to stay relevant. If the art of a comic will become just a tool, the way you use this tool will be what makes the difference.

[CommissarTarkin]

Are they really that good? Most examples that I've seen are good for a laugh or unrelentingly creepy, but it's pretty far from producing actual artwork. Then again, most examples that I've seen are just people messing with it for fun, not a coordinated attempt to extract something decent.

[migxmeg]

It's super interesting!! I've talked with my husband about this (the writer for my comic as well as an engineering manager with lots of experience with machine learning - was a huge part of a previous job).

It's really impressive and we both think it has the potential to save time/increase volume and even quality but will still need a lot of intervention from actual human artists to get anything particularly good out of it, especially for sequential storytelling.

It's one thing to generate one-off images in a style but I don't see AI generating a good comic with sequences that flow anywhere close to the level of a moderately skilled comic artist for a very long time, if ever.

I'm personally hopeful that it could be a tool to augment - add lighting, convert 3d environment screenshots to stylized backgrounds, take figure sketches to convincing poses etc.

There are worrisome things about it - deepfakes are creepy - but I think people will always enjoy artists and art made by humans. Not too concerned!

[migxmeg]

Some of these look pretty convincing to me!

https://www.reddit.com/r/dalle2/

[CSJones]

They've gotten scary good in the past couple years.

Prompt: Unicorn doing karate in the style of a tapestry.

Darth Vader painted by H.R. Giger

[bronte448]

My younger brother loves the heck out of them.
As a result, they annoy the heck out of me.
I'm biased.
Sue me.

[DokiDokiTsuna]

So we had the big scare about Dall-E and friends on Twitter a couple months ago already, and I think I'd like to share a few points made by some wise people that helped shape my opinion on this:

1. The art just ain't that good
Dall-E's generated images do look nice from a distance, but as soon as you zoom in on the details, it's pretty clear that a computer just stitched some shapes and textures together without really understanding how to use them. ^^; As one VERY wise person put it, "anyone who would be satisfied with that level of work wouldn't pay full price for a commission anyway".
And personally, I think it would be great if art tools like this could draw the "plz illustrate my children's book for 10 dollars" people away from artists who are trying to make a living.

2. AI art generators don't understand continuity (yet)
An observation from another very wise person. Basically, if you ask the art generator for "bunny playing in the forest", it will give you that, but if you ask for it again, it will probably give you a completely different bunny playing in a different forest. Even in the case of licensed, recognizable characters, it wouldn't know to draw them the same way, or with the same proportions. Every request is totally separate from all the previous ones, i.e. it would be difficult to get a series of images appropriate for story illustration or character design.

Between this and #1, I think we're still a long way off from human visual artists being replaced by this technology.

3. Machines have replaced artists before
Like, just because a machine can stitch clothing together in minutes doesn't mean I can no longer appreciate a hand-sewn dress. Just because plastic vases and dishes are manufactured by the millions every day doesn't mean pottery as an art form is redundant and useless.

However, I will admit that visual art is different from those professions in that, since the entertainment industry became a thing, the average person has completely taken it for granted. If you want a nice suit, you still go to a tailor, even in this day and age. And "artisan-crafted" items are still a big deal, especially for tourism.
But whether you're rich or poor, if you want to see pretty pictures, you just...go to the movies. Or turn on the TV. Or open an app on your phone. The average person doesn't think about the value in the visual art they consume; the idea of looking to a specific team or person for quality content is mostly reserved for "nerds".

And even among nerds (which I've never understood btw) the absolute cluelessness of non-artists as to how much work goes into art speaks volumes to this. In many people's eyes, visual art already makes itself.

Which is why I'm actually a little optimistic about this new development. ^^ For the first time, the general public is going to be FORCED to understand the difference between art that's made by human hands and art that's made by "pushing buttons". Anyone who would immediately abandon the idea of hiring people to make art in favor of AI generation (especially now) is going to find out very quickly why we're still needed and why our skills are important.

[EverydayWonderlander]

They're amazing as a time-saving tool, but the main problem with them is as follows: it always needs to start with outside sources. Even if what the AI is fed comprises solely of "convincing" artwork created by another AI, it's still the same thing. Where did it get the images ? Who owns them ? What about the specific artists' styles it can emulate right now ? Did the programmers ever consider those questions ?

It would be great if things like Dall-E weren't often made for the explicit reason of muscling human artists out of the market. DALL-E is good at picking enough pieces out of a style or trend to stitch together something Correct Enough, but still can't take direction the same way a person can. Feels incredibly corporate to me. I'm not concerned about it doing a human's job, but I am concerned about how it would mesh with the current landscape in art.

That being said, I wouldn't mind throwing a city description into it for visualization & quick iteration; like a color palette generator, but for interiors or landscapes.

[Kelheor]

Besides continuity and not being great at details we still have something AI can't generate so far - a style. Sure you can ask it to make "anime style this" and "Giger style that", but you don't know what kind of "anime" style the AI will use and as you noticed, Giger's style is still Giger's style, not something AI created.

I see why artists might feel threatened, but you don't just follow your favorite creators because they draw in "anime style". You follow them for what kind of story they create and what colors they use for it, you follow them because you can't exactly predict what will they create next, you follow them for stupid humor of their pairing sketches and for how they choose poses and those tiny hatches theat make their work unique.

If just looking at randomly generated stuff for a long time is entertaining enough for potential subscribers to choose over you, well maybe they are just not your audience.
Really, lately it feels like every artist I know is creating a comic, so throwing AI in this bunch doesn't feel like much of a difference Normal people will play with it and leave it like everything else, and if some artists will use it to their advantage, well that's no so different than other artists using Blender and photobashing when you are just sitting on a more "traditional" media.

[hakei]

I think AI art generators will be revolutionary. I do already use the AI-generator Wombo Dream to generate new inspirations and designs. I'm not utilizing it to its fullest potential, but it's a start.

But on the other hand, the biggest stereotype about digital art used to be that you just push a button and the computer generates it.

I see this as kind of like the invention of cameras. Photograph cameras didn't wipe out artists from existence afterall, and all you do to take a photo is push a button. People will find a way to use AI-generated art to supplement their own creative process, birthing new art styles and art movements and new art skills.

Plus, there is a visually artistic difference of a professional photographer using an iPhone camera vs me, a lay person, using the iPhone camera.

But on the other hand, loads of new artists will just generate every background whole-cloth with AI, to the point where even if you meticulously draw everything, readers will probably assume it's fake.

Even with digital illustrations, a lot of artists already using photobashing to quickly create their landscape's castles and mountains and whatnot, not drawing every single stroke. The finished products look amazing and your average viewers won't care aside from "that looks super cool, nice."

As for comics, I imagine readers' standards will change too. Even me as a reader today, I to be honest don't care much about 100% hand-drawn/hand-painted backgrounds in comics. I want things to look nice enough, the dialogue legible, the story to be interesting, for the comic to update regularly/be completed on time. I don't care if the artist drew everything from scratch, traditionally, using their own tears to mix colors. I think artists sometimes don't realize that just because something takes longer to do, doesn't mean it's more valuable or special especially if easier automations and shortcuts exist.

It'll probably devastate the low-end art market too. I'm expecting commissions of things like people's OC's and D&D characters to become a thing of the past,

Haha the commissioning art market probably faced some challenges already with today's 10 year olds doing full renders on their family's iPad thanks to the rise of cheap digital art programs and free tutorials, and then charging $5 as their commission prices. Not to mention there is also the current issue of people/companies trying to use artists in "cheaper" countries like Indonesia and Phillipines but not paying them their full worth in USD.

Anyway, I imagine people who want to pay artists will find a way to pay the artists. Those who don't want to pay (such as those who want to pay $5 max for 5-minutes of animation) will use the AI-generators and save the human artists the trouble of having to talk to such cheapos.

Not to mention the avalanche of garbage it'll lead to like p*rn of of real people and so many deepfakes that you'll only be able to trust a handful of certified news sites.

Deepfakes are a whole another can of issues, I think. Political targeting, misinformation, harassment, etc. Not sure how or when that could be regulated and managed, since we're even having trouble with Facebook and Twitter at the moment.

[irresponsiblepics]

I'm an old stick in the mud. After seeing what's coming round the corner...I fucking hate it. I hate where this could be heading.
Was talking to my wife about this. About how some people are born to create and that there is a huge part of psychological happiness tied to creating.
This has the potential to do a lot of damage. Imagine a world where nobody needs to create anymore and just get a digital device to create for you.
But its so fun and kewl and revolutionary.

[irresponsiblepics]

Haha the commissioning art market probably faced some challenges already with today's 10 year olds doing full renders on their family's iPad thanks to the rise of cheap digital art programs and free tutorials, and then charging $5 as their commission prices. Not to mention there is also the current issue of people/companies trying to use artists in "cheaper" countries like Indonesia and Phillipines but not paying them their full worth in USD.

Anyway, I imagine people who want to pay artists will find a way to pay the artists. Those who don't want to pay (such as those who want to pay $5 max for 5-minutes of animation) will use the AI-generators and save the human artists the trouble of having to talk to such cheapos.

I don't think anyone will be paying any artists no matter what tier when this becomes mainstream and efficient enough.
Starts praying for a massive solar flare XD

[Kelheor]

Maybe there's a potential for damage, but the appearance of something that creates things for you doesn't take away your ability to create.
To be fair, when people are getting a commission piece from an artist, they are somewhat using the artist as a device to make something for them, because they can't do it themselves. Sure it's not quite the same for AI and it may become a problem for artists at some point, but it doesn't take away your creative freedom.

(I must say, just like many other people I hate how a lot of people treat art taking it for granted. This problem becoming more pronounced recently too. How it is now about quantity over quality. But, we are still in our rights to make what we want.)

[CSJones]

I don't think anyone will be paying any artists no matter what tier when this becomes mainstream and efficient enough.

Yeah. There are too many responses to get to all of them, and although some like @DokiDokiTsuna present great counterpoints, I think many of them are looking at it from a standpoint of where the tech is today—not where it'll be in 10 years. Who knows what kind of godlike VR worldbuilding powers AI could have by then: Perfectly imitating someone's art style could be nothing.

[Legendofgenii]

Do they just grab images off Google?

[CSJones]

I think the current ones do, yeah. Or uploaded images.

[NickRowler]

I have seen some Dall-E 2 images that do look nice but overall I feel like people have mostly just used it for memes.

I do think it could be a useful tool for some people. I was thinking how I am not very good at making backgrounds and having a program that generates random ones which would be public domain could be helpful. CGI artist do use algorithms to help generate 3D backgrounds and other assets like hair. Trees in 3D spaces are randomly generated.

I could also see AI images helping artist get ideas. Like I would not be surprised if down the line, there is an art challenge where people are redrawing or adding onto AI images

[TedGravesArt]

They don't make me nervous at all. AI generators are fascinating though.

There are certain things that robots have a hard time doing that humans do effortlessly, that we don't even think about. Grabbing something without looking at it is something we do all the time, but is extremely hard for a droid. Similarly, imagining things is something we do passively, even when we're unconscious, but that requires a huge amount of effort for a robot to attempt to replicate. When you draw or paint, you probably don't even realize the depth of comprehension required to do that job, because it just comes so naturally to you.
Dalle and similar AI image generators are impressive and promising, but the fact remains that they are built for a single purpose, which inherently limits their creativity, and they pull from a database (albeit a very large database) of existing images for training models. These bots repurpose the composition, color, and style choices from humans, they don't invent their own. While what they produce may seem fairly competent, they're only copying the pixel patterns of something they've seen before. They have no concept of anatomy, or exactly what a hand is, or emotion. They can't deliver a subtle performance through art, or extrapolate a scene in 3d from previous real life experience, then redraw it from another angle. That's not the goal of the programmers. But these are the kinds of skills that are required of artists to do our job.
AI images are fascinating in that they look right at first glance, but the second you try to resolve details about what you're looking at it all falls apart. Look at this one:

Teddy bears doing chemistry, right? But is it...? What exactly is that thing he's holding? In fact what are any of those things they're working with? Is the bear on the right wearing a tie or...wtf is that? An ascot? And what's in his pocket?

AI art is really cool in that it can create images that completely fool your brain into thinking they're describing actual objects and shapes, but the closer you look the more you feel like you're tripping out. It has zero actual concept of what it's creating, it's just using keywords with associated existing images. Here's another example:

Something as simple as that is just too hard for it. I'm sure it has complete images of stop signs in it's database, but it doesn't understand the simple concept of text or language. Even just asking it to write any kind of text on something is too specific for it.

So no, this will not replace artists, because it's not designed to have our skill set. We have real brains, this is just a photobash machine. Impressive for sure, but very simple comparatively.

All that said though, I am interested in it as a tool. If you get stuck concepting a thing, maybe it can photobash some stuff together to spark some kind of idea. That's very compelling!

[TheLemmaLlama]

Honestly, even if the technology advances to the point where perfectly imitating someone's art style becomes trivial, I'm all for it. I got into art because I need a vehicle through which to execute my vision, and if I could just press a button and have a fully illustrated comic in front of me that perfectly matches my vision, I'd do it in a heartbeat. This is literally exactly what I wanted all along XD

Many, perhaps even most people who commission artists (or at least the big companies hiring an animation team etc) don't see you as individual craftsmen with your own artisanal flair. They're hiring you as grunt workers to execute their vision exactly according to their design. If a machine could do this instead (and we somehow fix the issue of letting only a few people own all the machines and keep all the fruits of their labor), it frees up us actual humans to focus on our vision.

This is not a world where no-one needs to create anymore. This is a world where we don't need to waste time on the tedious, rote aspects of creation so we can focus on true creation, the parts only a human can do. If you're born to create, you can now create more than was ever possible with your one puny human body and its carpal-tunnel-ridden wrist.

I guess though many artists aren't like me and actually value the craftsmanship of art and not just the vision. Yes, the finished product of a machine would be indistinguishable from the finished product created with your own two hands, and if that sucks to you, who am I to say your feelings are invalid? I guess if machine art becomes the norm, there will be an increased demand for live illustration viewings/speedpaints, where people see your actual process since it would be so rare in those days. I'm not sure if that's any comfort for you. I can't claim to understand how you feel. I'm just saying what I think, since that's what this thread is about :'D