Most artists have experienced it before— you’re meeting someone for the first time, you ask them “what do you do?”—they say “real estate agent,” “project manager,” or something of that ilk, and then ask you the same question in turn.
Simultaneously, the words “I’m an artist,” escape your lips, and their face instantly lights up with childish glee. They’ve been waiting for the chance to say the following words to someone: “oh, really! Aren’t you afraid AI will make you irrelevant?”
You explain, while grinding your teeth a little, that no, AI art is inferior to work created by a human being, and that there will always be people who are willing to pay someone to create real art. They nod condescendingly, and with a touch of pity in their eyes. After all, the Facebook post they read said that human art is a thing of the past, so it must be true.
Like most other artists I talk to, I was initially revolted by even discussing artificial intelligence. Why would anyone want the cobbled together, glitchy dollar store version of an image created by a soulless algorithm? All these AI companies were doing was stealing people’s art to train it, and then spitting out a worse version. It was unethical, and I initially raised an eyebrow towards anyone who would use it.
While that may be true, gradually we’ve seen that these algorithms are getting more and more advanced. A dog that once was spat out with six limbs now has four, properly proportioned, realistic looking legs. A model with three eyes and fingers morphing into spaghetti was now fairly passable as a photograph from a fashion magazine.
It’s fair to say that artists in particular will still notice if a piece of art is generated. There is something instinctually and visually “off” about it that we can hone in on, whether we can put it into words or not. I think a lot of us are aggressive about the use of AI, thinking that it completely cheapens our profession and everything we’ve worked to learn.
The truth is, people are riveted by novelty, and the fact that any random Joe can type a prompt and create a massively detailed image in seconds is novel. Even before AI was as prominent as it is now, artists at times had to fight for some to see that their work had value beyond just decorating a hallway.
There will always be two audiences when it comes to being a consumer of art/design services—the masses that want something superhumanly fast, even if it’s subpar quality, and those that understand the value of an artist’s skills. The years it took for them to learn their trade and the obsession over the details. Something very human, in summation.
With the growing debate on AI, I started thinking about ethical ways to use it as a tool to compete with the speed at which people can pump out Canva creations.
With creations like Adobe Firefly, a model that only uses stock images from Adobe Stock, (for which they compensated the original creators,) there is always a way to use these tools in a way that doesn’t violate personal principles.
Perhaps the way to handle the AI market is to use it to our advantage. Using it to speed up certain tedious parts of the artistic process would keep timelines competitive, and the end product still original. Maybe there’s an interesting sketch idea you want to turn into a sticker, but need a reference for drawing— if you can’t find one that tickles your fancy, maybe generate one, and put your own spin on it. Maybe you’re doing mockups for a client and need placeholder text, but don’t want to use Lorem Ipsum— generate some text with Claude.
I recently did something to this effect with a self-directed UI project. Working on a plant app, I needed a lot of consistent, well lit photography of plants to keep the screens visually consistent. Instead of spending potential hours searching through stock images trying to find a perfect set of images, I looked to Firefly. With only a couple of tries, I crafted a prompt that I could edit for each plant, giving me dozens of convincing, perfectly matching images that filled out my Figma prototype nicely. No one that saw the project could even tell the images were generated until I enlightened them.
I would never be comfortable with generating something, and passing it off as my own work, but I have started to learn tricks like that to help me move faster with the background elements that serve as a small part of a larger whole. Naturally, if I ever made the app a fully coded, functioning app, real photography would need to be involved, but for a prototype that trick worked wonders. Whether the AI craze lasts a few more years or a few more decades, learning to non-invasively adapt our artistic process like this will help artists save time, without compromising quality.