Artists across the entertainment, art and design industries are biting their nails over the rise of generative A.I. Many argue the technology violates intellectual property, devalues creative labor and flattens creativity. But as A.I. image and video generators advance, a growing minority of artists are embracing the tools with open arms. Creative professionals ranging from art directors to filmmakers say using A.I. saves time, boosts creativity and leads to new opportunities.
“A.I. will make it possible for independent artists to create profoundly incredible work,” Minta Carlson, an illustrator, comic artist and self-proclaimed A.I. designer, told Observer at the Upscale Conference in Màlaga, Spain in late November.
Artists and consumers of culture are torn over A.I.’s use in creative sectors. In late November, a group of artists selected as early testers of OpenAI’s text-to-video model Sora wrote in an open letter that they were being “lured into art washing” to convince the public that A.I. is a “useful tool for artists.” Earlier that month, Coca-Cola released an A.I.-generated Christmas ad that drew the ire from online viewers who called it soulless and devoid of emotional depth.
Yet, some artists are warming up to A.I.’s creative potential. In 2023, the developer platform Platform.io surveyed 500 artists to assess their attitudes towards A.I. About 45 percent of them said text-to-image generators like Midjourney have been “very useful in their artistic process.” The global market for A.I.-generated images is projected to grow 254 percent to nearly $1 billion by 2030, according to AIPRM data, and A.I. art generators like Midjourney are already generating $200 million in revenue a year.
A.I. is reimagining the creative process
Some artists have fully integrated generative A.I. tools into their workflows. Hugo Barbera, the founder of HumAIn, a creative agency that works with Cartier, Saint Laurent and other luxury brands on advertising and fashion editorial content, said he uses a different suite of A.I. tools depending on the project.
For photoshoots, the Paris-based creative director with 16 years of experience uses image generators like Midjourney, Krea and Freepik to generate images of models, fashion styles and set designs. For touch-ups, he uses quality-enhancing tools like Magnific. Clients expect the final product to look “perfect” and “very realistic, Barbera said, adding that an advertorial video requires up to seven A.I. art generators, including Runway, Haiper, Kling AI, and Luma AI.
“The whole creative process has changed a lot for me, because it’s transforming it from the very start, from concept to photo shoots and video,” Barbera told Observer.
A.I. allows Barbera to blend human elements with surrealist aesthetics in unconventional ways. With A.I. tools, Barbera designed Vogue Portugal’s first A.I.-magazine cover for its 20th-anniversary edition, created 12 A.I. videos for the main stage video wall at Caprices Festival in Switzerland, and designed the concept for jewelry and bags inspired by Jean-Michel Basquiat’s art for the Italian fashion house Maison Schiaparelli. “It’s a good way to actually bring your vision to life,” he said.
The technology has also significantly reduced the time Barbera spends on the tedious, labor-intensive tasks in creative projects. Tasks like creating reference photos for photoshoots and brand logos that typically would’ve taken him a week to deliver now takes no more than two days to complete.
In a similar vein, Paris-based illustrator Carlson calls A.I. a “perfect art assistant” she turns to for inspiration. Carlson customized models like Stability AI’s Stable Diffusion, an open-sourced text-to-image generator, with her hand-drawn illustrations so it could spit out images in her unique aesthetic.
Using the fine-tuned model, Carlson can iterate on her illustrations if she’s building a “larger world” with distinct fantastical styles, characters, and narratives (think Hayao Miyazaki’s Studio Ghibli movies) which allowed her to create more quickly, she said. It also lets her experiment with color palettes to create new visuals that would have taken her a long time to do manually.
Carlson is now working with the A.I. animation studio Asteria to illustrate a short film using an in-house A.I. model she trained on her work to create props, environments and character poses that will later be traditionally animated. A process that would’ve taken months to do by hand is now reduced to a month and a half with A.I. “It has opened up a ton of opportunities for creativity,” Carlson said about the technology.
A.I. is empowering artists with new skills and inspiration
A.I. also allows artists to experiment with new creative styles and techniques that require skills they lack, said Matty Shimura, the VP of community partnerships at Civitiai, a platform that hosts generative A.I. art tools.
The Bay Area-based filmmaker of 17 years uploads footage he records into tools like Runway ML and Stable Diffusion’s A.I. animation tool Deforum to animate it into his style of choice. To do so, he enters prompts like “traditional Japanese watercolor style” to guide the visuals and iterates on them until he lands the desired output.
“I could film things and edit, but I couldn’t animate and draw very well,” Shimura told Observer. Now, Shimura uses A.I. coupled with traditional film editing techniques to craft music videos, short films and social media content, giving him the capabilities to execute ideas that previously collected “digital dust.”
Generative A.I. tools even help busy, working professionals reconnect with their artistic side. Natalya Shelburne, a traditionally trained painter who now works at GitHub as a UX designer, uses tools like Runway ML and Midjourney to spark creativity. A mother with a full-time job, Shelburne says she doesn’t have the time to explore her ideas when inspiration strikes, and using A.I. overcomes that. By feeding her ideas into A.I. art generators, Shelburne can “run through a lot of ideas quickly,” making it easier to begin painting. As a result, Shelburne has increased her painting output.
“It lets me finish ideas instead of keeping them,” Shelburne said. “For somebody whose time scarce, everything would just be in my brain forever. Now, I can have my cake and eat it too.”
Artist face backlash from peers for using A.I.
Still, artists using A.I. in their creative processes have been met with criticism from their own communities.
When Vogue published his A.I. magazine cover, Barbera recalled an artist calling it “disgusting” that he created it with prompts that involved just a few words, implying that A.I. ruins the creative process. Civitiai’s Shimura said his friends in the film industry participated in the Writers Guild of America strike, in part, out of fear A.I. will replace their jobs, creating tension between the filmmaker and his colleagues.
While the artists that spoke to Observer understand these concerns, they disagree with the notion that A.I. is the death of creativity. A.I. is here to stay, they said, and as the technology advances, creatives must learn how to adapt to the changes it will bring to the industry–or risk being left behind.
“You can embrace it or keep just hating it, but eventually you’ll lose your job or get replaced by someone else who knows A.I.,” Barberra said.
Other artists are more concerned with how A.I. will impact their livelihoods. “I’m not afraid that my creativity is going to be replaced,” Github’s Shelburne said. “I’m afraid that people will stop paying me for my creativity and expertise.”
Some artists who spoke to Observer agree that A.I. can potentially replace jobs in the creative industries, especially those requiring technical skill sets like special effects. But they also see A.I. creating new opportunities for artists willing to leverage the technology in their personal work.
Barbera has landed more than 30 new clients in the last two years looking for artists with A.I. skills. Shimura now organizes Project Odyssey, an A.I. filmmaking competition. Carlson founded Prompcrafted, a consultancy that works with A.I. companies to fine-tune A.I. art models to produce better outputs.
At the end of the day, it’s still the human at the center of the creative process. “If you just rely on A.I. to do all the work, you end up with things that are completely worthless,” Barbera said.