AI is a great creativity tool for artists and has become an essential part of my art-making progress because it makes coming up with references and compositions much more accessible, more effective, and faster. On top of that, it has improved my eye for colors, lighting, and design and trained my art skills as a whole.
Therefore I am now teaching my students how to use AI themselves so that they can realize their own artistic visions and find their voice in the art world!
Unfortunately, there is a lot of negativity toward AI from the Art Community. This is due to many misconceptions about how art is created in the first place. Most people think that art starts with a pencil and a piece of paper; the artist then magically comes up with a vision that he then only has to bring to paper. No other sources or inspirations are involved, and everything is the product of the genius artist's mind.
This is, of course, not how it actually works.
Professional artists use every tool they can access to craft their art because - to stay competitive - they simply have to! If they would create art the way it has been done 200 years ago - a painting would take them months to be completed - the vast majority of clients would not be able to pay for this effort, and the artist would simply not make a living. Therefore today, professional artists use digital tools as well as traditional ones to create their art in the most effective and time-saving way possible so that they can pay the bills!
And one of these tools is Artificial Intelligence! AI tools such as Midjourney or getimg.ai are able to create an image from a text prompt. (It's actually a skill in itself to come up with the right prompts - which I teach in my classes, by the way!) And they can do that because the algorithms of these AI models have been trained by looking at millions of pictures from the internet. Like an artist who has studied thousands of artists for hundreds of years and can now create his own unique paintings based on the designs he learned. Just that this artist is a machine that is in many ways better than humans because it can learn so much faster - but not in every way! (Have you seen AI hands yet?)
Now here is a quote from Andu Artist:
"So the biggest criticism against Image AI is the use of Artist Copyright Artworks to train the AI. This is usually referred to as stealing by the Art Community. But I believe that is a wrong premise and proposes a right they don't have."
I couldn't agree more with this statement!
"One cannot claim a right from their works being used to copy their style or from iterations to make different new images. This principle applies whether one does it themselves by looking at a painting or with a tool such as AI." -Andu Artist
If I wanted, I could download 100 copyrighted artworks, cut them digitally in little pieces, and collage them in a new way, maybe paint over them in a digital painting program so that no one could trace the art pieces back to their original sources. Most artists don't understand that this is a perfectly acceptable way to make art. In fact, I have used this method myself by incorporating pieces of Gustav Klimt's, Alphonse Mucha's, and Monet's paintings in my digital references.
And mind you, after creating such a digital reference, I still have to paint the actual painting! Because I personally only use AI to create these digital paintings, which I still have to turn into watercolor or oil paintings! Yet many people in the art community don't even see a difference there! I always wonder if they think that the painting process and techniques just flew to me out of nowhere, and I only need to snap my finger, and a hand-painted artwork emerges in front of me that happens to look even better and more detailed than the AI reference! But even if I wouldn't create an original artwork based on my digital reference and only made digital art, the argument still stands: If the artwork doesn't resemble a copyrighted work, you haven't stolen anything. That being said you cannot copyright an AI image currently because there is no actual human labor involved in doing it. But most artists use AI to create a concept and work on top of it, change it or alter it such as overpainting it. It then becomes a unique artwork in its own right and can be copyrighted. Here's a great video by Marc Brunet that explains it.
Original AI Painting(For this I actually uploaded my own art to Midjourney so that I could create something that resembles my art style, but you can also just use text promts!)
My finished digital Composition that I made by using Photoshop, and another Ai tool (Getimg.ai) It took me 3 days to finalize it. I also incorporated photos I took myself as well as pieces of Gustav Klimt’s Judith Painting! (The digital composition doesn’t need to be so complicated though, sometimes I simply paint the AI reference without changing much!)
The final Original Artwork! I painted it with watercolors, color pencils and gouache! The artwork is a completely new work with more details and intricacy than the digital reference!
Besides of that, copyright counts only for recent works; if an artist has passed away for over 50 years (more info here) and the copyright hasn't been renewed, you could even sell their art (You probably shouldn't, but you could!). And old Masters such as Monet, Klimt, or Alphonse Mucha are not copyrighted at all; you can even sell posters of their art on Etsy with no legal claim - which is what people are doing. So whenever someone tells me I "stole" Mucha's art, I can only roll my eyes! 😅
To top it off, many artists also think they have a copyright on style - which is also a misconception. Again if I wanted, I could imitate another artist's style, and I wouldn't do anything wrong - it's totally legal - and it's actually the only way how artists have been coming up with styles and painting techniques in the first place. You start out by copying something until you find your own voice. Every artist on this planet learned from the art they had been introduced to throughout their life: they copy compositions, ideas, style elements, and techniques - this is how it has been done in the entire history of art!
To quote Andu Artist again:
"The confusion comes in believing that one must be given permission to do what has been done throughout all of art history. [...] Sargent and Sorolla looked towards Velázquez, the Glasgow Boys emulated Jules Bastien Lepage, Mucha and Frazetta were touchstones for countless others. Bernie Fuchs had several stylistic copycats during his time as an illustrator." [...] You could not draw or paint what you do today if you were born in 7th-century France, for example. It would be impossible. This does not apply to just art but in all areas of knowledge. We build from the ideas before us and around us."
From my point of view, there are currently two different reasons why people are against AI:
They think their art is "stolen," and they condemn everyone who uses AI tools because they don't understand how art is created in the first place. I cannot help these people because they need education. They don't have a right to consent that their art is used for inspiration, whether by a human or a machine. They might not like it, but it is what it is. This is how culture and knowledge, in general, could get to the point where it is today. I also have people asking me what I would think if my art was "stolen" by Ai. In fact, my art has been used to train stable diffusion. I can understand why it initially feels weird to know your art has been used to train a model. But do you know how many other artists might have done the same already, but they just didn't tell you? Again this is not stealing; this is learning from inspiration - By the way, I now even train my own models with my own art to see what comes out of it! And I created a few pieces where I used my own art to recreate a somewhat similar painting that is also true to my vision! AI even improved my initial references - It's just incredibly useful!
The second reason why people are against AI is that their job has been rendered redundant. This is a valid reason and very understandable, and I am sorry for everyone whose job has been threatened. But that being said it’s no way forward to start a legal case against the usage of AI like it is currently being done in the US because, in case the lawsuit is successful, every other country would have a significant economic advantage over the United States (As a non-US citizen I could use AI to my heart's content - whereas every American artist wouldn't be allowed to! I wonder if the artists that started the lawsuit thought about that!).
Instead of fighting against new technologies, the only way to go forward is to understand them and use them to your advantage. Of course, you don't need to do that. I am just saying that you also shouldn't attack people who are using AI.
I know how hard it is to make a living as an artist; it took me years to accomplish it. I can understand the anger and frustration. And, of course, like every tool, AI can be used to create harm or to really copy someone's work. But this is not how the majority of people, including me, are using AI, and harassing people on the internet that use AI is absolutely not the way to go. (Do you want to be that person that is writing nasty comments? Wouldn't you rather use the time in a productive way, like making art? And if you don't like when artists use AI, then just unfollow them; maybe you will change your mind in the future, and if not, it's probably for the best to part ways!) Now, in my opinion, the way to go and to succeed in your endeavors is to keep an open mind, adapt to new technologies, and use them to your advantage however that might look in your creative field, be it art, movies, music, or writing!
For everyone who is now curious about AI and want to learn more about how I use it as a reference tool for traditional art, I invite you to check out my patreon tutorial or my upcoming live class!