VortexOmega

Anyone with a cursory glance at the online art scene here or on other sites probably knows of the meteoric rise of AI-generated art. The boogeyman that will no doubt render all of the human artist obsolete and render the human muse nothing more than one of the many algorithms that run our lives. A new man-made horror that will no doubt destroy the creative spirit once and for all, or what many of the Luddites on the web will want you to believe.

From my experience using AI art generators like MidJourney, I can only say that the cries of panic and doomsaying are a bit premature, if not downright humorous. A few minutes with these programs will show that they are good at generating images from a few prompts, will not replace human imagination, and paint and paper...or art tablet. Many flaws still exist in such programs, and your results vary with the numerous vital words that can be used to generate images. Some look like they came from the A team of many game and art staff, while others look like a group of extraterrestrials trying to figure how how to draw human anatomy. And don't get me started on the fingers, or dear god, the fingers. With all that processing power, the almighty machine still can't make anything that doesn't resemble a rejected Freddy Kruger claw.

Instead, this should be a potentially helpful tool many artists can use to take their works to the next level. Like how analytics have helped so many professional sports teams (The jury is still very much out on some aspects of the sporting world regarding that), the artist can create pictures that far exceed their original vision. That next step up, if you will. We stand at the doorway of something potentially special, and I don't want to see it destroyed by the old-fashioned fears of progress. Yes, there are many risks and problems with these programs ranging from copyright to theft. But many of these are still in beta and will no doubt tackle this problem in one way or the other. Until then, we should use these programs to the best of our abilities, warts and all.