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In today’s artistic landscape, Artificial Intelligence (AI) is changing the way we create and perceive images. With deep fakes becoming ever more realistic, it’s becoming more difficult to distinguish between content generated by humans and that produced by AI.

This piqued my interest, leading me to wonder if AI could replace human photography and image creation.

My Journey as an Aspiring Artist

In my younger years I desired to master the art of drawing, just like my mother. However, after numerous attempts, I came to realize that I was not cut out to be an artist and soon gave up on that dream. As Artificial Intelligence evolved, I found myself wondering, could AI perhaps make the drawings for me ?

The Emergence of AI Image Generators

AI image generators are a tool with tremendous potential and can create images which would otherwise cost days to make, within seconds. Additionally, AI requires no physical materials and is accessible to more people. This decreases the cost significantly, compared to commissioning artists to make an image or logo for you.

However, opinions are divided within the artistic community.

Some artists have expressed their concern about AI replacing them, while others argue that AI will never replace the “authenticity” of human created paintings and images.
Illustrator Anoosha Syed stated: “AI doesn’t look at art and create its own. It samples everyone’s then mashes it into something else.” (Shaffi, 2023).
AI doesn’t make its own art, it scours the internet to find images that are fitting to the prompt and works out what traits it has and then combines it to create something else.

A human would think of a specific image or scene they have seen before, inevitably misremember it and create something that bears a faint resemblance to that image or scene, but in their own style (Shaffi, 2023).

My experiments with AI

My personal experiments with AI-driven image creation have yielded mixed results. Using the platform pixlr.com, I tasked AI with generating an image of a KLM Boeing 787 departing from Japan. This resulted in “interesting” images, with mutated airplanes with asymmetrical wings, floating engines, and bizarre curves (See figure 1 & 2). Simplifying the query (e.g., “airplane from Japan”) did improve the results, but the images still bore peculiarities (See figure 3).

Oddly enough, instructing the AI to draw an airport runway produced aircraft that could easily deceive an untrained eye into believing they resembled real airplanes. Yet, upon closer inspection, these images were still lacking in the details (see figure 4).

The AI was significantly better at drawing abstract images such as “an alien pyramid landscape” or urban scenes like “Tokyo with Mt. Fuji in the background”, as these images are more open for interpretation (See figure 5 & 6). Other image generators such as deepai.org and perchance.org have the same limitations, where overly specific queries resulted in poor images (See figure 7).

The future of AI image generation

In my assessment, AI image generators consistently outperform my own artistic abilities, doing so at a speed no human can match. However, the quality of AI-generated images remains highly unpredictable, making it an unreliable choice for producing aesthetically pleasing and realistic artwork.

Thus, I tend to agree with the artists stating that AI will not replace human authenticity.

Nevertheless, I see potential for collaboration between AI and artists. AI can inspire artists with the images it generates, which the artists can emulate and refine to achieve a more realistic image. This collaboration allows artists to make use of AI’s creativity while still adding their own unique inputs to the final artwork.

As AI continues to evolve and artists adapt these technological breakthroughs, the line between human creativity and artificial intelligence may become increasingly blurred. This will open up new and exciting possibilities in the field or art.