Is this Art? – The truly magical power of the AI generated image
Ai Generated Art is sweeping the art world and casting a clear divide in the sand. It seems artists either love it for it’s vast inspiration and possibilities or hate it for it’s elimination of the process and soul.
The Dictionary definition of Art is, “the expression or application of human creative skill and imagination, typically in a visual form such as painting or sculpture, producing works to be appreciated primarily for their beauty or emotional power.“
Wolf_headed_human_with_black_fur_large_ears. Made with MidJourney.
Therefore, one could say, images that are generated by AI aren’t Art, however, the fact that these images can be appreciated for their beauty or emotional power, could start the debate for a revision in the Dictionary definition; but Art, to a very broad extent, is subjective.
So what is MidJourney, and why should you care?
Let’s go back to 7 years to provide some context. Incorporated in San Francisco in 2015, OpenAI said it was developing safe and friendly AI systems in a way that benefits humanity as a whole. The company’s founders — Elon Musk, Sam Altman, and others, collectively pledged US$1 billion, with Musk resigning from the board in February 2018, to focus on Tesla (especially) & SpaceX, but remained a donor.
In June 2020, OpenAI announced GPT-3, a language model trained on trillions of words from the Internet. It also announced that an associated API, named simply “the API”, would form the heart of its first commercial product. GPT-3 is aimed at natural language answering of questions, but it can also translate between languages and coherently generate improvised text.[14]
In January 2021, OpenAI introduced DALL-E. One year later, their newest system, DALL·E 2, generates more realistic and accurate images with 4x greater resolution. In late 2020 MidJourney was born, as a competitor to DALL-E, as research lab and the name of the lab’s artificial intelligence program that creates images from textual descriptions. Last month they went into Open Beta.
Samurai_in_staircase_blowing_dust_across_the_mid. Made with MidJourney.
To artists and researchers utilizing AI, generative Art matters a lot. Creativity is in itself is a generative method. We can’t drum up an idea without the open system-style structure our brains operate on. 6 years ago, someone said, “Art is an expression of human creativity, imagination, and improvisation – something that computers will never have.” And yet, here we are!
I’m constantly impressed by, (or is it scared of?), the incredible speed at which technology is changing and improving our everyday lives. MidJourney is very impressive, but it still in its very early stages, so one can only imagine what could be next.
“So how does it work? Just /imagine.”
In terms what is actual behind the powerful AI generator? Well this is obviously their IP and being kept under wraps. In terms of how you can start using this very powerful AI generator, here is a guide.
1) Create a Discord account if you don’t have one already.
2) Go to Midjourney.com and sign up for one of their plans, starting at $10 per month.
3) After you link your Discord account, navigate to the Midjourney server and look for the “Newbie” bot channel.
4) In the channel – type /imagine and then type whatever you can imagine. Viola!
We would love to see what you have created, so please post to instagram and #loveartinsurancegroup
