Nowadays, we live in an era in which technology is developing cumulatively. The core of all these advancements is artificial intelligence. Applications of AI are beneficial to us in many fields, including banking, finance, and customer service, as well as health and education. Beyond that, it is now an integral part of our everyday lives. We use language translation, voice assistants such as Siri and Google Assistant, and ask for some content recommendations.
Tools of artificial intelligence are evolving quickly and acquiring new capabilities. This leads to the emergence of new potentials in many fields, like art and culture. Lately, many AI systems have been developed that enable individuals to create visuals such as images, videos, or graphics. To illustrate, DALL·E, which generates images from descriptive text, is one of the most prominent AI tools that people use. It makes the production of high-quality drawings or illustrations possible for people who are not traditionally skilled (Ye et al., 2024).
Image source: https://openai.com/index/dall-e/
Furthermore, the newer versions of DALL·E with the capability of producing even more natural and precise visuals with better resolution have emerged. DALL·E 3, which was introduced by OpenAI, comprehends more nuanced and elaborated prompts.
Another AI tool for visualization is Leonardo.AI, which promises to uncover people’s creative capacity. According to its website, over 1.2 million people use Leonardo.Ai to craft authentic art for many cases, such as their personal or professional objectives. Furthermore, more than 1 billion images and 2.7 million videos were generated with this tool.
Some other foremost AI-driven image generators are Midjourney, Stable Diffusion, and Adobe Firefly. Although the operations they perform are similar, depending on the type of the model and how detailed the given prompt is, the level of preciseness and quality differs. These tools are not just utilized by single individuals but also by businesses in many fields—marketing, advertising, video game designing.
Perceptions of AI-Driven Art
Until recently, AI was considered not possible to utilize in creative processes, artworks, as well as examination of art. Even though AI is a controversial subject in the field of art, as people experience new AI tools, their viewpoint has begun to change. (Latikka et al., 2023). But, to what extent do people accept their artistic aspect? Perceptions about artificial intelligence change based on which field it is employed. For example, people’s attitudes toward AI tend to be more favorable when it is utilized in data science or simple tasks than its application in complex circumstances requiring human judgment and intuition (Schepman & Rodway, 2020).
More specifically, a study conducted to analyze the attribution of people to AI-enabled art revealed that people prefer human-crafted art over AI-driven ones (Tubadji et al., 2021). Also, people are more inclined to call humans artists rather than artificial intelligence (Mikalonytė & Kneer, 2022). The reason behind this tendency is that creativity and originality are generally attributed to being inherent in art and culture. In addition to this, creativity is normally considered unique to humans (Tubadji et al., 2021).
Besides differences in identification of AI-driven image generators as artists, there are several other concerns about its impact on artistic creativity. Jiang et al. (2023) address a number of negative effects that AI art has on artists, including reputational harm, financial loss, plagiarism, and copyright issues. Moreover, some are concerned that artists are being replaced by AI and that the art pieces created by these AI tools appear to have greater quality and authenticity (Tubadji et al., 2021).
Conclusion
Undoubtedly, the advent of AI has transformed the world. It offers tools that bring innovation to the art field as well as many others. These tools expand the boundaries of creativity by allowing individuals to create authentic designs without requiring talent in this field. While AI-powered image generators are being adopted and used for different purposes, they also bring with them certain concerns. Nonetheless, as AI-driven art continues to evolve, society must balance technological innovation with the preservation of artistic values, ensuring a future where both human and AI creativity can thrive together.
References
Dall-E 3. OpenAI. (2024). https://openai.com/index/dall-e-3
Jiang, H. H., Brown, L., Cheng, J., Khan, M., Gupta, A., Workman, D., Hanna, A., Flowers, J., & Gebru, T. (2023). Ai art and its impact on artists. Proceedings of the 2023 AAAI/ACM Conference on AI, Ethics, and Society, 363–374. https://doi.org/10.1145/3600211.3604681
Latikka, R., Bergdahl, J., Savela, N., & Oksanen, A. (2023). Ai as an artist? A two-wave survey study on attitudes toward using artificial intelligence in art. Poetics, 101, 101839. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.poetic.2023.101839
Mikalonytė, E. S., & Kneer, M. (2022). Can artificial intelligence make art?: Folk intuitions as to whether AI-driven robots can be viewed as artists and produce art. ACM Transactions on Human-Robot Interaction, 11(4), 1–19. https://doi.org/10.1145/3530875
Schepman, A., & Rodway, P. (2020). Initial validation of the general attitudes towards artificial intelligence scale. Computers in Human Behavior Reports, 1. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.chbr.2020.100014
Tubadji, A., Huang, H., & Webber, D. J. (2021). Cultural proximity bias in AI-acceptability: The importance of being human. Technological Forecasting & Social Change, 173, Article 121100. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.techfore.2021.121100
Ye, Y., Hao, J., Hou, Y., Wang, Z., Xiao, S., Luo, Y., & Zeng, W. (2024). Generative AI for visualization: State of the art and Future Directions. Visual Informatics, 8(2), 43–66. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.visinf.2024.04.003
