Digital Disruption – Cubist AI Art

I’ve written a bit about this already here, but my confidence in AI art has just grown exponentially with some tests on Open AI. AI will CERTAINLY take over digital art production from this year forward. It’s only getting better. And that’s WORSE for artists. If you’re an artist in the digital space – honestly – GET OUT NOW.

Harsh advice, right? I think you’ll come to the same conclusion by the end of this article.

I ran some tests this morning. My newfound interest is Cubist art of all kinds. I have more fun making this kind of art than anything else.

Where is Digital Cubist AI Art Today?

What can digital art do now? Is there any person alive who can create digital art this good in less than one minute?

I gave Chat GPT (OpenAI.org) a prompt for it to create a digital painting of a landscape in Cubist style. Here’s the prompt I used:

AI Prompt: pls generate a cubist painting of a beach scene in hawaii. Use a limited number of colors - turquoise, green, other bright blues, grays, and white light with a hint of yellow for sunlight... include diamond head volcano and the ocean at sunrise.
Exact prompt instructions given to AI to create the following image.
A colorful Cubist painting of Waikiki featuring sunrise behind Diamond Head Volcano. By Dall-e.
Waikiki, Oahu. Sunrise behind Diamond Head Volcano. Cubist art by © Dall-e.

Keep in mind, the image above was shrunk down to 93 Kilobytes from nearly 400 Kb. The size of the original was 1024 x 1024. The one above is 600 x 600.

I love it that the volcano is smoking! It has been over 150,000 years since Diamond Head was active. I also love how the water is not flat. There is some attempt to show the 3-D nature of the waves in some areas. Just enough to make it have some texture beyond the flat geometric shapes.

Seeing this, I immediately wondered if I could get a similar image of another area of Oahu. I tried this prompt. In the past, when I’ve tried this, the style of the painting changed pretty considerably. This time, it did not. Open AI maintained the style and created a matching painting. As if by the same artist. In less than a minute.

AI prompt: that is stunning. With this same style and colors, can you make a painting of the windward side of oahu with the towering ko'olau mountains and the sun rising out of the east? Show the perspective as if from the beach in Lanikea beach park looking from the ocean inland toward the mountains.
I never expected the following result to be so good. It matched the style of the first piece very closely.
A colorful Cubist style painting of sunrise behind the Ko'olau Mountain Range on windward Oahu Island in the Hawaiian Islands. © Dall-e.
The Ko’olau Mountains of Northeast Oahu Island are stunning in real life. It’s surreal that a machine can reproduce this scene in less than a minute. Cubist art by © Dall-e.

What is the fastest an artist could paint something like this – with traditional or digital tools? An hour?

Look at the levels of the ocean in this Cubist digital masterpiece! It’s magical. Chat GPT made the ocean slightly higher the further out it is. At the beach level it has to climb the sand a bit. The attention to detail is mind-blowing in this Cubist representation of Oahu’s northeast shore.

Keep in mind, these are just 1024 x 1024 pixel digital images that Chat GPT spits out in less than a minute with little processing time. When you pay for the full version, you get more credits to create digital art, and you can have it modify paintings according to your instructions.

It gets WAY BETTER than this, is my point. It won’t be long before you could get a digital file of an art piece like one of these above – in 36 inches x 20 inches. You could take it to a professional printer and have a massive piece of art for your wall.

The cost of the art itself – the digital file – at the moment is virtually free. You have many credits each month for the $20 USD fee, and you’d use just a few to create an oversize piece like this.

You’d be paying for the tangible digital image to be printed on good paper and framed.

What might have been a $3,500 art piece could be as little as a few hundred dollars. SIGNIFICANT SAVINGS!

Who Will Continue to Commission Human Artists for Cubist Art?

The problem with someone commissioning digtial art is that the difficult part is communicating exactly what is desired. The artist can only interpret what is said, and/or what is inferred. The artist then goes about it as best she can.

What if the person who needs the art just creates it herself with Chat GPT? She endlessly refines it until it is exactly what she wants?

Sure, the art is missing the human touch, but how much will people care? Or worse, how much could they actually NOTICE that it wasn’t created by a person?

What is this emotional depth people are talking about is missing in AI generated art?

It’s in someone’s head, isn’t it?

AI can add emotion if you ask for it. AI art need not be emotionless and cold.

AI-Generated Art Advantages Over Human Artists

  • Speed and efficiency
  • Cost-Effectiveness (virtually free for the file)
  • Endless possibilities, endless renditions, endless patience, done without emotion.
  • Timeless originals
  • Choice of print surface

The Limitations of Human-Generated Digital Art

  • Much slower by hours and days
  • Time and effort cost more money
  • The more detailed the piece, the more time, the more money.
  • Limited editing before price increases

What Should Cubist Artists Do Today?

RUN!

Let’s be honest, in a very short time, and maybe NOW, artists cannot compete with digital art made by Dall-e and other artificial intelligence. Nobody can.

Within a year, two years, everything digital will be done faster, cheaper, and BETTER with machines. That’s just the cold, hard truth of the situation. The reality is that AI is stealing art jobs from under our noses right now and will continue to decimate the industry. Artists who remain in digital art will be prompters. They’ll tell AI what to do. AI will do it – and do it really well.

What should artists DO NOW?

If you want to include painting or drawing in your bag of tricks, you’ll have to throw away any idea of creating digital art on your own. You’re too slow, with too many errors, and at massive (comparatively) cost to consumers.

You’ll need to paint and draw with traditional media. AI won’t be doing that for a while. It’s messy, it’s expensive, it’s less than perfect. People can control paint applied to a canvas much better than any machine at the moment. Sure, for certain jobs – AI could excel. For oil paintings like Renoir did, or watercolor paintings like Monet did? Human artists need to do this.

Takeaways for Artists

There’s really just one takeaway here. Wrap it up. It’s the End of the Party. Digital art is no longer humans’ domain. AI has taken over and will continue to take over art in ALL areas unless limited by governmental restriction and control. It’s one time when artists of all kinds are going to welcome government intervention – isn’t it?

Focus on traditiional painting and drawing on paper and canvas, walls of buildings, interior walls of hotels and successful dot coms.

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