So You Love (or Hate) AI Artwork… This is the Identical Advice

Roughly 5 months in the past, I held an AI artwork competitors associated to the fantasy world I’ve been building. I used to be attempting to peek round corners, as I typically do with new applied sciences.

As soon as it wrapped up, I felt an odd mixture of issues. It was one thing like one half falling in love; one half child in a sweet retailer; and two elements watching metaphorical birds flying overhead, harbingers of a large forest hearth on its manner.

This publish will share some learnings, artwork winners with highlights, and extra.

There have been a handful of guidelines for submissions, however the bolded parts under are an important to me:

You need to use any AI instruments or mixture of instruments that you just like, together with DALL·E 2 (@OpenAI), Midjourney (@midjourney), Stable Diffusion (@StableDiffusion), Lexica (@LexicaArt,) NightCafe Studio (@NightcafeStudio), and many others. You’re additionally allowed to do guide touch-ups and fine-tuning. IMPORTANT: You *should* use Loom (@loom) or different tech to seize your full course of.
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Alternatives might be based mostly on high quality, creativity, presentation of course of, and extra. Course of is essential. Folks ought to at the very least be capable to try to duplicate what you probably did.

Your entire level of the competitors was to create this weblog publish, a easy assortment of how-to tutorials that may get anybody up-skilled in a brief time period. Even in the event you hate all the pieces about AI, right here’s why I believe it’s price spending time on this…

The AI genie is out of the bottle. The extra true specialists I converse with, the clearer that is.

Regardless of how one feels about AI—and I’ve loads of misgivings—the genie can’t be put again within the bottle. That is true for a whole lot of sectors and thousands and thousands of individuals, together with artists. I’ve watched members of the family work their asses off as artists, I wished to be a comic book guide penciler for 10+ years, and I’ve paid conventional artists a whole lot of 1000’s of {dollars} through the years. It’s a world that’s close to and expensive to my coronary heart.

However… there isn’t a going again to the way in which issues was once. In actual fact, there isn’t a compelling strategy to stall issues for lengthy. So the query for me isn’t “How can we cease AI artwork?,” as I don’t suppose it’s attainable, however moderately one thing like:

“What can artists do to get forward of the curve?” or “How would possibly proactive artists place themselves to profit from this?” or “How can artists restrict the injury of AI and carve out, or protect, good niches for themselves?”

There are dozens of different comparable questions we might ask, however I believe the preliminary reply is identical for all of them: Be taught to make use of AI instruments.

To kickstart your artwork profession, and even in the event you plan on utilizing extra conventional strategies… study to make use of AI instruments.

To turbocharge your individual artwork by streamlining mundane duties… study to make use of AI instruments.

To study the present weaknesses and blindspots of AI instruments so you possibly can plan round them… study to make use of AI instruments.

Most high-calibre artists don’t have anything to worry, many would-be artists have quite a bit to stay up for, and all artists have one thing to study. For those who would spend 10 hours at a weekend course that promised to enhance the chances of a great residing for the following decade, I believe it’s best to decide to spending 10 hours critically utilizing and scrutinizing the higher AI instruments. Even in the event you hate all the pieces this represents, even when it’s an opponent you need to defeat, that is akin to watching tape of an opponent earlier than a boxing match. Whether or not you need to surf the tsunami, dive by means of it, or get the hell out of the way in which, it is advisable to perceive the wave. To do this, it is advisable to research it, and the earlier the higher. The most effective protection is typically an early offense.

I hope you discover this publish useful, and please go away feedback with different suggestions. I’m certain I’ll get a couple of gems and a boatload of screeds, however such is the spice of the Web.

This weblog publish is a tough draft and merely a place to begin. And in the event you suppose the tempo of AI growth has been quick within the final six months, the following 12 months are going to make your head spin. I believe the secret is all the time returning your eyes to the highway forward of you rather than the rear-view mirror.

Only a few notes on construction earlier than we dive in:

We included each “Winners” and “Honorable Mentions,” however all are included as a result of they supplied distinctive worth or a novel method.

I closely weighed the incorporation of character traits. As I point out once more under, it’s straightforward to make *one thing* fairly with AI, however to make a really *particular factor* with parameters and traits is way more durable. For that cause, I tended to reward rougher artwork with higher trait matching vs. polished artwork that used fewer traits.

Some tweets are now not dwell, and we’ve indicated that with a remark.

Particular Honorable Point out

I’m placing the below Twitter thread by @JPEGHODL first, because the thread itself represents a wonderful Midjourney 101 tutorial for individuals who haven’t used Discord a lot. That is positioned right here upfront, as lots of the submissions use Midjourney: