The Upcoming Business Revolution of AI Art

How will the business world be forever changed by the introduction of AI art? We explore some potential impacts of this burgeoning industry.

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The Future of Art is Artificial

The creation of new technologies have changed the world rapidly over the last several decades. Now, yet again we find ourselves in the middle of a monumental change brought on by the new, and ever expanding field of Artificial Intelligence.

When most people think of AI they might imagine the personal assistant in their phone or maybe a futuristic robot that acts like a human, but that isn’t the limit of what AI can be. Companies like Google and Nvidia have both released AI that assists its user in creating art!

Background on AI Art

The picture above is from Nvidia’s Canvas AI. Looking at the picture on the left we can clearly see a very basic and simple drawing, with no real attempt at any of the typical artistic elements one would expect to see in a painting in an art gallery. However, with just the simple input on the left, Nvidia's AI created a beautiful image of a cool blue pool of water on a rocky beach. This image could easily pass for a desktop screen saver or maybe a scene from a movie. This just goes to show that the limitations of an individual are quickly becoming obsolete with the assistance of AI.

This year the Colorado State Fair had its art competition won by a painting created by an AI. The painting entitled “Théâtre D’opéra Spatial'' was created by a man named Jason Allen and an AI called Midjourney. Arguably, the most incredible thing about this painting is that not a single painting or drawing or even MS paint sketch was used to make this work. The entire painting (shown below) was created by the Midjourney AI from just a text input of words into the AI.

What was before thought to only be accessible to skilled artists who spent years dedicated to honing their skills can now be created by anyone with a creative enough imagination and the vocabulary to express it.

What is the Business Potential?

This technology, incredibly enough, is only just getting started. We can see that there are still many issues with these programs, for example most AI’s have trouble creating humans in a realistic manner. Faces can become distorted, have extra features, or even have missing features entirely. Many animals may have extra limbs added for seemingly no reason or will stand in impossible positions since the AI doesn’t know what exactly a human or animal looks like or how they move and operate; the technology is rapidly improving however. With each passing day these AI are being refined and honed to an incredible degree. Some AI are even able to recreate specific artists' styles like van Gogh or Dali into entirely original works.

Imagine working in a marketing department and having a new campaign for a product, your team has decided on this fun idea of theming advertisements around renaissance paintings. Unfortunately, not a single member on your team is able to mimic the art styles well enough! This however, is not an issue for you; with the assistance of AI creating art, which can perfectly mimic any artstyle with the same level of detail as an artist who has spent their entire life studying and perfecting, is as simple as typing out a few sentences and looking at the options the AI has come up with. This saves time and money as the art created is nearly instant; instead of waiting days or even months to finish. And using AI software, even if it is not free, is far less expensive than having to hire freelance artists or hiring an increasing number of employees to perform increasingly specialized tasks. With this technology even a small business can create ads and ad campaigns on the same level or quality and scale as the largest marketing teams; all that is required is the creative vision and an AI to do the heavy lifting. This is just one theoretical example and as time goes on there will be more use cases and actual examples of this technology in action. Additionally, while this technology is still too new for any conclusive data to exist yet it is fairly evident that this is going to be a game changer in the near future, the only question being how large will its impact be and how soon is it going to be widely adopted.

Companies are just now starting to play with the AI generated content just to see how it can help in areas like marketing and graphic design but that isn’t where this technology stops. AI is starting to write original stories and music too! While the music isn’t going to win any awards anytime soon and you shouldn’t expect the next harry potter or twilight to be written by an AI, it does point to a future where like the art we see now, there may be books or songs created by single individuals with the assistance of AI that have the quality on par with today's experts. Speed, quality, and overhead can all no longer be obstacles to a business with huge ambitions, and the businesses who are dipping their toes into this cutting edge technology now are going to be the ones who are miles ahead of the competition who didn’t invest in this opportunity now.