One emerging technology that I've been watching very closely is the use of artificial intelligence (A.I) software to create artistic imagery.
As a graphic designer, the idea of computers creating art & design comparable to humans makes me uneasy- in the same way a horse-drawn carriage maker must have felt watching automobile factories coming online. I think that the human mind will continue to have a unique place in the creative process, at least for the foreseeable future. However, I look at some of the results coming from A.I. image processing programs & I'm like fuuuuuuuuck... this is amazing.
From what I've seen, a lot of emphasis has been on the generation of fine art and illustration, creating images using descriptive keywords and style references. What worries me is the use of A.I. for design-related projects like logos, where many options can be generated in a speed & variety that no human designer can match.
Business Insider:
Artists say AI image generators are copying their style
to make thousands of new images — and it's completely out of their control
I wanted to talk about this topic after seeing a post in r/damnthatsinteresting in which human evolution is "imagined" by the A.I. Stable Diffusion software.
Human evolution generated by AI Stable Diffusion
I just stopped typing so I could mess with the program a little bit, and now I'm even more amazed & perturbed.
This image was generated when typing in the name of my blog, The Monkey Buddha:
This is so crazy to me... I mean, what the hell??? This just shows that even human creativity is just an emergent phenomenon, that can be simulated and improved upon. These technologies and A.I. applications are going to be just as revolutionary & disruptive to culture as the Internet itself was.
I'm pretty good at spotting Photoshop work, but it's going to be impossible to distinguish the source of photos & images in the near future. It will be interesting & disturbing to see this all unfold, but there's really no way to put this technology back in the box. So, we humans have to do what we do best, adapt & improvise - something it looks like computer networks are beginning to emulate.
Prompt: "computers taking my graphic design job"
In addition to the monkey at the beginning of this post, here are some more screenshots I pulled from the video above:
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