URLINGAME B THE

AI-generated art threatens human creators

BY ISABEL LIU Copy Editor

Four months ago, a Reddit user published a post titled: “Battle of the Sams! Which SamDoesArts Model does it best?” e post featured eight illustrations of a woman standing against a desert night. e pieces mimicked popular digital artist SamDoesArts’ compelling painting style and use of color.

However, this Reddit user didn’t do any painting. ey generated eight di erent renders using arti cial intelligence (AI) models and uploaded them to r/StableDi usion, a subreddit dedicated to popular text-to-image generative AI models.

e post generated controversy. SamDoesArt made a public statement against the AI art models for feeding 300 of his artworks into AI without his consent, but the Reddit user responded con dently that artists shouldn’t be o ended because Stable Di usion could “recreate [Sam’s] work, perhaps even improve it.”

SamDoesArts’ story is one of many resulting from AI art’s recent explosion of popularity. In 2022, AI art generators such as DALL-E 2 and Midjourney were released, enabling anyone to generate an image according to a text prompt they entered. To do this, the AI is trained on millions of images and their captions to learn how much a given string of words relates to an image.

“ eoretically, I’m opposed to [AI art], but in practice, it’s so cool and helpful,” junior and advanced art student Julia Edmondson said.

Similarly, art teacher and former so ware engineer Eislyn Wolf-Noyes believes AI opens many doors for creativity, especially as someone with unique experience in both the tech and art world.

“I love to see what people who don’t consider themselves artists can make through the AI interface. It would be like having an artist friend… ey can put in criteria and use the AI to massage the artwork into place,” Wolf-Noyes said.

Despite AI’s remarkable capabilities, some Burlingame artists believe the art it creates is missing the emotion that is inherent in human-made work.

“Art is a way to express myself. I don’t know if there’s any really deep meaning behind it. at can only be created by humans,” sophomore and Advanced Placement Art student Luke Frikert said. “I don’t think AI art really compares because it lacks emotion.”