You’ve probably heard A LOT about AI lately…
“It’s going to replace us! It’s going to take over the world! It’s going to take steal all of our private information!”
We won’t be getting too deep into the general ethics and power of AI in the world right now. That’s a rabbit hole we don’t really want to dive into at the moment. In this blog, we’ll be talking about the crazy world of AI Art, and if it’s something you can use to help elevate the visuals of your small business.
What Is AI Art?
AI Art generation has been around for quite a while but has recently exploded in popularity thanks to the general public getting their hands on it. With software platforms like DALL-E, Midjourney, NightCafe, and more, anyone could go on their computer or phone, type in a prompt, and get a completely original piece of art created solely by artificial intelligence.
The process is simple. Open an AI art platform (our favorite is Midjourney). Input your prompt, and the software will create an image related to the prompt. The image above was made in Midjourney. The prompt we typed was simple: Colorful We Design.
To explain it in the simplest way, the AI learns about art styles, subject matter, and objects from ALL the information available on the internet. It learns by looking at all the human-made art to create new art within a few seconds.
The Ethics of AI Art
AI Art does have some ethical debates attached to it. Is it real art if a human didn’t make it? Will this technology take jobs away from real-life artists? We’re not here to tell you what to think, but we will share our opinions!
AI Art for Small Businesses
Most of our clients are small businesses. They don’t have the time or money to find a professional artist and purchase custom art from them. Custom art is incredibly expensive. So, custom art isn’t something small businesses have the luxury of purchasing. AI-generated allows these types of businesses to get some awesome visual content at a very low monthly price (and sometimes free). In the small business industry, AI art doesn’t really take any jobs from real human artists, because the small businesses wouldn’t have hired an artist anyway. So the small business will either use AI art, or use no art at all. That’s why we’re not too hung up on the ethics of AI art in small businesses.
AI Art For Big Corporations
This is a little different for larger corporations, like Coca-Cola, Ford, Phillips, or any other giant company you can think of. Many large companies or big media publications hire artists to create visuals. There have been a few situations (not many) where the company will decide to use AI instead of a real human artist. In this situation, an artist did lose a job to AI Art generators. However, we don’t see that happening in a large-scale sense for quite some time. These large corporations want complete control over their designs. The only way to get everything perfect, they will need to use a real artist.
AI Can’t Replace Everything
Part of this agency is providing graphic design services, so why would we talk about how awesome AI art is? Won’t we just put ourselves out of a job? Absolutely not! AI art generators can’t design business cards, create effective magazine ad designs, or lay out an entire website (yet). We’re not threatened by AI art in any way, because we know that our design requires some actually Human Thought.
AI Art Wins A Contest
The image won a digital art contest this year. There is no denying it is absolutely beautiful. It’s an incredibly detailed piece that you could probably stare at for an hour.
Many people were upset about this piece winning the top prize against the art created by humans. Even after learning the artwork was made using Midjourney, the judges stated they still would’ve chosen this one as the winner.
Here’s a fun way to start a possibly loud debate: At your next family dinner, show off this piece. Then ask around the table to see who believes it should’ve won.
Is AI Art Any Good?
AI Art is rather good! Depending on your prompt, you can get an incredibly detailed piece of art that can be moving, and beautiful.
The quality and detail of the art all depend on how your prompt. You can type something vague like “Colorful Web Design” or something detailed like “3D cute anime whale with 3D flowers coming out, hyper punk, neon colors, pop art” (pictured above).
AI Art Isn't Always Accurate
Just to see what would happen, we typed in “Tarpon Fishing Charters Logo.” Unfortunately, no matter how we edited the prompt, we couldn’t get the AI to create an image with an actual tarpon. As you can see in the image above, the fish in the logo is NOT a tarpon. Some of the fish look like trout, and others are just jumbled combinations of features across different fish species. So, to hit this point again, AI isn’t going to be replacing graphic designers anytime soon.
Have you ever tried to draw hands? They’re hard to draw. And sometimes, AI gets them wrong as well. As you can see in the photo above, the presenter’s hand looks a little strange and unnatural. Also, some of the laptop screens on the conference table are just floating there. Maybe this is just a weird future where people have extra long fingers and floating laptops with no keyboards?
Using AI Art In Your Small Business
The website above used AI Art generators to make some of the really cool (and adorable) images on their website. Full disclosure, this isn’t a website we’ve built. It’s just a cool example of how you can use AI art to help your small business. This user sells hoodies for dogs. They used AI art to create hyperrealistic photos of dogs where hoodies, then laid their designs over the dog hoodies for their store. It’s a great use of this software! This business user didn’t have the money to hire a professional pet photographer, but they did have the ingenuity to use AI to create a realistic and engaging site with realistic art!
This is just one example of how you can use AI art for your small business. The way we use AI art is by creating pieces that relate to us. Below is are some examples of art we can use for our agency:
AI art can be a great tool for creating visuals or just giving you inspiration on a project you might be stuck on. You won’t know the true value of it until you start playing around with the prompts to see what you can get out of it.
Give it a try, and send us what you created! We always love seeing new, cool designs!
About The Author
Kaity Kimball
