A few times now, I have placed prompts and ideas into AI art generators. The results come from an app called Imagine, and via Bing. Personally, I think Bing is slightly better, but both apps/sites have served up some colourful and creative interpretations of the suggested prompts.

Yes, I am going to show you what they’ve created! I wouldn’t leave you in suspense!

This AI art is very impressive, but it raises several questions, in much the same way that AI writing generators do. As the technology grows more sophisticated, will it supplant human beings, and therefore leave talented people out of work? Marvel have already used AI to generate a title sequence for their Secret Invasion series, as opposed to using humans. The AI doesn’t need to be paid, and can work all day and all night, so it is no wonder why it may seem attractive to businesses. Such an attitude would be horribly short-sighted, but the pursuit of profit above all else usually leads to short-sighted decisions.

Putting people out of work means there’s less people spending money at various businesses, so in the end, relying upon AI would have a detrimental impact on many livelihoods. It’s no wonder that we’ve had a recent writer’s strike in the USA, as people fight for their future.

Another element to all this is that an AI generator can only work off what you feed it. Give it a really simple or boring prompt, and it won’t be able to do very much. The human imagination is still far beyond what an AI can currently do. I won’t deny that AI can make pretty images, but it’s only doing so from the ideas I’ve given it. It seems foolish to replace someone’s job for a machine that still depends on human input. I’ll play around with image generators, but when it comes to desiring something truly creative, I’ll be contacting a human being!

I conclude this post with a few more experiments. Let me know what you think!