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Raphael Thys
Fifty years ago, top scientists believed AI would never be able to beat humans at chess.
We all know how that turned out.
The newest goalpost is art. As an AI artist, people routinely tell me how my art isn’t real, or how it lacks humanity because it’s machine generated.
True, there’s some credence to these claims. But I would venture most people are simply uncomfortable with the notion that AI is starting to produce art faster & better than humans.
After my last post on AI art blew up, it naturally attracted a fair amount of similar criticism. Much was in reference to a supposed lack of diversity in the samples (apparently all of the landscapes looked the same).
To respond to this criticism, I decided to run an A100 GPU for one minute.
The prompts were 10 famous sci-fi book titles, & the results (below) were — as expected — astonishing.
Infinity Beach
Infinity is a long way from home. A sweeping, blue ocean, far-off creatures, and clouds reminiscent of an oil painting combine to form a tranquil piece.
Carnival
How’s that for stylistic diversity? Though it has little in resemblance with the name of the novel that spawned it, these vibrant colors and sweeping shapes reinforce how AI art isn’t relegated to just one medium.
A Billion Days of Earth
What happens when a dandelion has sex with a supernova? A Billion Days of Earth gives us a futuristic, abstract feel to this generation, and I love it.
The Golden Age
Could you imagine a future where complex building schematics are created in seconds? Think of the possibilities, both in design & architecture. Several years ago, I attempted creating such an architecture generator — that failed, but its ashes eventually gave rise to 1SecondPainting. Perhaps I should try again.
Aeronauts
The Dark Knight III had this iconic scene where Bane boarded a plane mid-flight. This rendition of Aeronauts makes me think of something similar. How about a spacewalk, except still in the atmosphere?
Window to the Past
Imagine a 1970s hotel room overlooking a coastal city. Oil paintings seem to be a specialty of artificial intelligence art, probably because of their sheer number & degree to which their style is included in most datasets. Prompting with the word ‘oil painting’ and ‘acrylic’ yields a beautiful, textured result.
Wave Without a Shore
A turbulent, violent ocean beneath sweet, cotton candy clouds. What sort of creature lies beneath?
The Inside of an Age
Is this an overhead shot of a busy party, with people mingling left and right? Or is it a detailed pattern — one that you’d perhaps see on a dress shirt at your local H&M? Only the AI knows.
Hawken Family
Incredibly disturbing, these deformed, militant figures seem to be peering into your soul. I definitely wouldn’t want a print of this on my wall.
Bicentennial Man
In the book, the Bicentennial Man is an artificial intelligence — a robot — that yearns to become human. He accomplishes this with multiple surgeries that transform his body (& eventually his mind).
When I saw this piece, I was viscerally reminded of one of the last scenes in the novel: our protagonist lies on a surgical table waiting for his last operation. To me, this is the part where his positronic brain is, at last, replaced.
I want to note that all ten pieces took an A100 GPU approximately one minute.
Yup. Sixty seconds.
If your jaw isn’t firmly fixed on the floor after reading that, consider how, just three or four years ago, this exercise might have taken a person days or weeks to create. Today, you can do it in a minute, and that’s not even with state-of-the-art hardware.
I firmly believe we’re just a couple of years away from everyone in the world having a world-class artist in their pocket. I can’t even begin to imagine the implications, but their ripples will undoubtedly be felt all over Earth.
What other industries will AI completely upend? Leave your thoughts below.