It’s no secret that artificial intelligence has not only been gaining attention but has also become more advanced. From initially only generating simple paragraphs to being able to produce full images, AI has become a tool of endless possibilities. Software such as DALL-E and CRAIYON can now generate full images in mere seconds.

But with these possibilities comes problems, one of the largest being AI art. 

AI art itself is contradictory. At its core, art is an expression of human creativity and emotion. Taking the human element out of art and simply letting a robot generate it through prompts rejects the entire purpose of its existence. Not only lacking human creativity, AI rarely matches the skill and craftsmanship of human artists. Frequently, certain objects and sections of a piece will merge, appearing quite off-putting. Its soulless expression places its creations squarely in the uncanny valley. 

With that being said, there is a risk of artists losing work from the advent of AI. Should AI ever improve to compete with human creators, artistic roles such as designers and illustrators will soon be replaced by unsalaried computers. While art markets, where human ingenuity is at the forefront, will likely remain untouched, the decline of creative jobs will undeniably cut the supply of artists, creating smaller niches which defy the wider trend. 

That said, not all applications of AI are detrimental. For example, animators who worked on Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse used AI to assist in the animation of the film. They fed a library of reference drawings to an AI program and to train it to generate new frames from different angles and perspectives. This helped them to draw in-between frames and assisted them in animating sequences that would otherwise be repetitive and time consuming for humans.

The flaws of AI art shine when it generates images without human intervention. AI art is at its best when being used as a tool to assist with smoothing the rough edges and to helping processes that would otherwise be monotonous. There is a similar issue with ChatGPT: you could have it write a whole essay for you, but if you want excellence, do it yourself.  

AI is just like any other tool. If used properly it saves time, energy, and stress. But if it is used carelessly, the consequences are more negative. Right now, we can only hope that AI progresses as a helpful tool than as a replacement for human creativity and expression.