I have decided to use for my book’s cover an AI image generator.
The image below has won the top prize in a US art competition, fuelling fears about the obvious: the pandemic has accelerated the adoption of automation and AI; the pace will not slow down.
Jason Allen’s AI-generated work “Théâtre D’Opéra Spatial” or ‘Space Opera Theater’. Source: The New York Times
Recently, Charlie Warzel from The Atlantic used an AI Alex Jones generated image in one of his articles which brought a lot of problems:
I went to Getty and saw the same handful of photos of Alex Jones, a man who I know enjoys when his photo is plastered everywhere. I didn’t want to use the same photos again, nor did I want to use his exact likeness at all. I also, selfishly, wanted the piece to look different from the 30 pieces that had been published that day about Alex Jones and the Sandy Hook defamation trial. All of that subconsciously overrode all the complicated ethical issues around AI art that I was well apprised of. What worries me about my scenario is that Midjourney was so easy to use, so readily accessible, and it solved a problem (abstracting Jones’ image in a visually appealing way), that I didn’t have much time or incentive to pause and think it through. I can easily see others falling into this like I did.
Creative industries are on the edge of being totally disrupted.