Jason Allen’s Theatre D’opéra Spatial won first place in the digital category at the Fine Arts Competition in Colorado. But he didn’t write it.
“I won first place,” user Sincarnate said on Discord, attaching photos of AI-created canvases hanging at the fair. Under the pseudonym is Jason Allen, the president of the board game company Incarnate Games.
Allen’s picture is impressive. Baroque figures on the stage and in the hall look through a huge round porthole at a sun-drenched radiant landscape. Allen didn’t paint the painting directly, it was done by an artificial intelligence called Midjourney. The AI used human prompts, but Jason did not make digital brush edits.
Well
Java evening
The fact that AI won the competition caused controversy on Twitter. Real artists and enthusiasts accused Allen of bringing the death of the creative professions closer.
“We are watching the death of art unfold before our very eyes,” said Twitter user OmniMorpho in a response that received more than 2,000 likes. “If creative professions are not protected from machines, this means that highly skilled labor can become obsolete. What will we get then?
We’re watching the death of artistry unfold right before our eyes – if creative jobs aren’t safe from machines, then even high-skilled jobs are in danger of becoming obsolete
What will we have then?— OmniMorpho (@OmniMorpho) August 31, 2022
“I knew it would generate controversy,” Allen said on the Midjourney Discord server on Tuesday. “It’s interesting that all these people on Twitter who are against the art created by artificial intelligence, they themselves discredit the human element! Doesn’t that sound like hypocrisy to you?”
The fact is that Jason made a great contribution to the creation of the picture, even if he did not draw it by hand. As a result of his hints, artificial intelligence created hundreds of images. After many weeks of fine-tuning and curating the work, he selected the top three images and printed them on canvas.
“What if we look at it the other way, what if the artist made an incredibly difficult and complex series of restrictions to create a piece – for example, he created it by hanging upside down and getting spanked while painting. Should this artist’s work be judged differently than the work of an artist who created the same work “normally”? Allen asks.
The artist did not hide the method of creating the painting and signed it “Jason Allen with the help of Midjourney”. “I create images with MJ, perform actions in Photoshop, and zoom in with Gigapixel.” The victory in the competition, despite the controversy, inspired the artist and “strengthened his mission.”
TikTok introduces AI text-to-image conversion feature
Source: Vice
