By R. Thomson

AI-created art has been a hot topic over the past few months as easily accessible programs are becoming available for public use. These programs use submitted prompts to create original images that are almost indiscernible from human-created works. Many are wondering how artificial intelligence will change the entire landscape of art. If work created by an AI is indiscernible from hand-crafted pieces created by humans, how will audiences traverse the new landscape and determine the monetary and social value of art?

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How does AI make Art?

Artificial intelligence programs are designed to consume large portions of the internet to create a huge database of knowledge to draw from. When programmed with the purpose of creating original images, AI programs use a database of already existing images and knowledge to create new pieces that contain the same elements of the already existing work. For example, if you ask an AI art program to create an image of a sunset over a mountainous landscape, the program will pull images that contain those properties. It will then create images that utilize the same lines, shapes, colors, and lighting as the images that already exist. These new images will be completely original but will capture the essence and the overall structure of the collection of knowledge the program can access.

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Finding the Difference between AI and Human Art

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AI programs that draw from a vast collection of data create images that are indiscernible from art crafted by human hands. So much so that an AI-created image was submitted to an art competition and won. The judges of this competition were classically trained artists and individuals who have decades of experience in the art world. Early AI-created images felt cold and uninspired, but as the technology advanced, so did the art. Now, an AI-created image can look like a piece of fine art without anyone being the wiser. This is because AI is drawing from millions of already existent pieces of human-made art to mimic all of the qualities it detects. AI art and human art are so eerily similar because one is simply mimicking the other and creating something original.

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Does AI Art Make Human Artists Irrelevant?

AI can create images that look like human-created art, but it cannot do the thing that human artists do best. Creating art for many artists goes far deeper than the visual creation they put on the canvas. Art, when made by humans, is a far deeper conversation between the artist and the audience. When an artist creates, they are capturing unique emotions and experiences and interpreting those ideas into a visual image. Artists take the intangible world of human experience and make tangible things that we all get to share. AI art may look the same, but it can never replace the artist's work of making the unknown, known. It can never help humanity collectively translate its own existence.

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Keywords: #AI #Futureofart #Art #Future #Artech

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September 30.2022 

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