VFX TRENDS
PROMPTING AN EXAMINATION OF AI ART By TREVOR HOGG
TOP: One of the leading artists incorporating AI into his creative process is Refik Anadol who created a sculpture inspired by high-frequency radar data collections called Bosphorus. (Image courtesy of Refik Anadol) OPPOSITE TOP LEFT: The iconic photo of Buzz Aldrin on the moon, taken by Neil Armstrong on the 1969 Apollo 11 mission, reimagined in the style of Van Gogh’s Starry Night. This is one of the earliest artworks ever made with NightCafé Creator, and still one of the best. (Image courtesy of Night Studio Café) OPPOSITE TOP RIGHT:Trevor Hogg experimenting with DreamStudio by Stability AI to create a futuristic environment by using prompts such as steampunk city block, nighttime, dance club, wet snow falling, in the style of Syd Mead and Ralph McQuarrie. (Image courtesy of Trevor Hogg) OPPOSITE BOTTOM THREE: Machine learning is seen as an essential element by Autodesk for developing future tools for artists and has been incorporated into Flame. (Image courtesy of Autodesk)
Much has been made lately of the proliferation of artificial intelligence within the realm of art and filmmaking, whether it be AI entrepreneur Aaron Kemmer using OpenAI’s chatbot ChatGPT to generate a script, create a shot list and direct a film within a weekend, or Jason Allen combining Midjourney with AI Gigapixel to produce “Théâtre D’opéra Spatial,” which won the digital category at the Colorado State Fair. Protests have shown up on art platform ArtStation consisting of a red circle and line going through the letters AI and declaring ‘No to AI Generated Images,’ while U.K. publisher 3dtotal posted a statement on its website declaring, “3dtotal has four fundamental goals. One of them is to support and help the artistic community, so we cannot support AI art tools as we feel they hurt this community.” “There are some ethical considerations mainly about who owns data,” notes Jacquelyn Ford Morie, Founder and Chief Scientist at All These Worlds LLC. “If you put it out on the web, is it up for grabs for scrubbers to come and grab those images for machine learning? Machine learning doesn’t work unless you have millions of images or examples. But we are out at an inflection point with the Internet where there are millions of things out there and we have never put walls around it. We have created this beast and only now are we getting pushback about, ‘I put it out to share but didn’t expect anyone would just grab it.’” ‘In the style of’ text prompts are making artists feel uneasy about
14 • VFXVOICE.COM SPRING 2023
PG 14-19 AI ART.indd 14
3/5/23 4:26 PM