"Everyone is an Artist Now"

Artificial Intelligence rips the Commercial aspect of Art to Shreds

What an amazing World this continues to be. One can only be awed by our species’ ability to bring forth astounding new inventive technologies that yield a cornucopia of possibilities that feed our voracious nature, our unending desire to wield the two-edged swords of our creation.

Introducing Stable Diffusion. This is a recently created AI technology that makes everyone an artist. For better or worse, gone are the days of the editorial illustrator. What editor is going to shell out good hard cash to an artist for a unique illustration when the editor can save the budget by generating their own free unique AI image?
Here is an example: Say you’re writing an article about guitarists in the volcanic highlands. The editor simply goes to one of the many free online AI art generators and types in a specific phrase that relates to the pending article.

The AI spits out as many image iterations - each one unique as the editor desires and - voilà! A happy, satisfied publisher has just the right image for the article, completely free of charge

…And there you go: “Guitarists in the Volcanic Highlands”

So what kind of future can we expect to see from hereon in?
Immediately, artwork will be divided into two epochs; Pre-’22 and Post-”22. Even if you think you are looking at an original painting created by an artist, you can never be sure that it was not initially inspired by an AI generated work that the artist then copies into print or paints onto canvas. It is truly a devaluation of uniqueness.
Pre-’22 illustrators and artists are blessed, because they can prove through existing public records that the work was done before this AI revolution and is thus the images are original.
Furthermore, if a given Pre-’22 artist with has a sufficient quantity of artwork, they can teach an AI art program to generate artwork unique to their own style. They can then generate individual works that are exclusively of their own design. or if they choose, they can sell their AI kernel, hopefully for massive amounts of money.
Post -’22 artists? Life will be much harder for them. How can they ever prove that their art was done with the human brain and hand? These could easily have been inspired by a generated AI image, then copied. Due to this AI revolution, confirmation of human production is completely gone.
It will be interesting to see how this affects our society not so far down the road.

-Stephen Goodfellow Oct. 2022