We often get asked if we use AI to generate our images. The short answer is “no.” The long-winded answer is “hell no!” But seriously, while curating our social media feeds and seeing what else is out there, it’s not difficult to understand the question.
Of course we use a variety of different analog and digital tools to create our artwork. Mary paints and writes. I write and capture imagery using different cameras, film, and sensors. We both use software to reflect our artisitic vision. Some of that software contains sophisticated algorithms and machine learning capabilities. And we make use of those to remove objects that clutter scenes, like everything from trash to road signs to power lines to people. But we don't put anything in that wasn't in there in the first place. And we sure as heck don't make up pictures of stuff that never existed, such as "create image of lightning bolts and rainbows over abandoned farmhouse." Some of the stuff on social media is just awful, even physicially impossible in our universe.
Now, we've got nothing against digital art. If AI is someone's medium, go for it. Just don't try to pass it off as something it isn't. And don't pretend that what's being created is not based on the theft of work by actual artists. It is. In this regard, our hearts are with Brush Warriors' stance on AI.
Of course, as we've written before, we're big fans of computational photography, whereby devices like phones become progressively more and more capable of helping photographers create better imagery from ever smaller devices. But those technological developments don't rely on stealing other people's work. In its present form, AI does.
[NOTE: the image above is not ours; we found it at BrushWarriors and borrowed it. We hope that's okay.]
