Collab - Adobe Firefly
If you tell me that you don't use AI then I believe you.
However I do use it. It's incorporated in the latest generation of Sony cameras, in photo editing software like Photoshop, Topaz Labs, Luminar, Lightroom,.. Video editors like Runway use it. It's in your phone, your car, your house, your browser and it's evolving faster than any scifi author could have imagined 10 years ago.
AI is everywhere and just like the climatic abberations humanity has caused: it's here to stay and to change our lives.
The cyberpunk dystopia that was imagined in the last decennia of the 20th century is our present.. and so is all the corporate/religious/state control, the fear-mongering, the lack of common sense, the self-destructive behaviour for short term wins/profits, the dumbing down, the fear/hate for the unknown, the lack of schooling that opens the mind instead of turning bright young people into worker ants who only believe those who yell the hardest, the black/white thinking that ends in radical populism (both political & religious),.. from the darkest post-WWII dystopian literature.. like for example "1984"..
But still that's a tiny little bit better than what was heralded in the bloody post-apocalyptic Mad Max/Walking dead/Judge Dread/.. scenarios.
What isn't yet, can still happen.
Or watch this version where Genmo AI added movement, turning the still into video.
But I was talking about AI: As long as AI doesn't become sentient and unavoidably realizes that humanity is the virus destroying the planet (Paraphrasing ideas from both Terminator & Virus), it will help us.
There is much resistance against using AI for artwork and that very understandable.
1. It should not have been trained on the art of unaware artists. Absolutely not done. But it were humans who fed this art to the AI.
2. It should not copy the work of others. Absolutely. (Eventhough many masters became masters after copying the masters before them in order to learn and evolve.) Yet it's humans who ask AI to make something in the style of someone else instead of thinking out of the box.
3. It should not make us doubt even more about what is real and what is fake/AI-generated. Painters, SFX-artists, cinematographers/photographers have a long history of using their art & craftsmenship to create alternative realities as they dream/imagine/fear them. We all have the right to wander of the path of reality and explore dream vision (or nightmarish visions). But it are humans trying to abuse AI constructs to create fake news & possible slander.
Or the version of this nun in 3D - animated with the LeiaPix convertor
The red line here is: AI is like an innocent child that needs a decent eduction and sadly enough most humans, especially those in (political/ideological/corporate/financial/religious/..) power or helping those in power, are selfish, scrupulous, short-sighted, evil, dumb, blind, self righteous,.. and the worst possible teachers for a child with powerful abilities like the AI's.
How humans treat, teach and use AI, so will it behave.
4. AI will take our jobs. Honestly: if it could take all the boring jobs and give humans more quality time to do as they please, to learn, to heal, to care, to create, to grow, to become harmonious, to help nature,.. instead of working like slaves to pay utility bills: please do.
But it's artists, photographers, designers, and other creatives fearing for their jobs. They fear becoming obsolete because everybody now has the power of creation within reach.
And that's why I play around with AI art. That's why I test it and try to learn to work in harmony with it. To have it help me create my visions. To create images I can add to my own so I can make new things.
The video above was shot with a Sony camera and then reworked with Runway AI
If you resist evolution and refuse to see the benefits of working together/incorporating it in your workflow, yes, then you might become obsolete. Just like many photographers have become obsolete through the use of cellphones that made everyone suddenly a photog.
There will always be evolution and there will always be resistance & adopters. (just look back onto the shift from analogue photography/videography to digital.. back in 2000 most colleagues said "never" to digital imagery and just look at it now.)
Work together with AI. Learn how it can help you realise your visions. Don't choose to abuse it for short-term profit. Those who learn to incorporate new ideas into their work and to live in harmony with new ways have a chance of surviving.
That's how I'll try to survive as a "creative being".
And eventhough there are again many shadows lurking in my head, I feel beaten down and I am lying in a deep pit; I will find light, get up, climb out of that that pit and survive. Always have. Always will.
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And one more 3D based on a model still might be coming.
Meanwhile: check out all AI tests on Flickr
UPDATE: Been playing with the generative AI in the new Adobe Photoshop beta version and this is a great tool when handled with restraint, moderation & wisdom.. but those words are very unhuman.
Namaste
