When the online police spot something that is eyebrow-raising, do not expect them to tread lightly. Well, this one is a special case of Internet callout as the issue at hand involves art and AI, stirring Twitter-based AI ethics, post-modernism, and art philosophy debates.
AI-Generated Art Wins Digital Art Competition.
Last Aug. 25, a game designer named Jason Allen, tagging himself as Sincarnate on Discord, excitedly announced to the Internet that he had just won a digital arts competition. The decorated artist went on to enumerate the formidable process that he went through in creating his winning magnum opus.
A report from PCMag tells us that Allen bagged a $300 cash prize with his win in this year's Colorado State Fair fine arts competition.
In a Discord server chat, Allen explained how he produced hundreds of images with much 'fine tuning' and developed Colorado Art Fair digital art competition's first-place winner. Jason Allen disclosed that he used Midjourney, an AI-powered program to generate his piece titled "Theatre d'Opera Spatial" pixel by pixel. Much to his dismay, Sincarnate's proud exposure fell flat.
It was not long before a digital art community on Twitter picked on Allen's bizarre feat. "Yeah that's pretty f**king sh**ty," blurted a digital artist on Twitter whose tweet made tidal waves on the bird app, then also getting the attention of several online news outlets.
TL;DR — Someone entered an art competition with an AI-generated piece and won the first prize.
— Genel Jumalon ✈️ FanX Salt Lake (@GenelJumalon) August 30, 2022
Yeah that's pretty fucking shitty. pic.twitter.com/vjn1IdJcsL
Death of Artistry?
Some denizens point out that programming on a computer, writing codes, and curating AI-generated images is not art. Unlike creating digital artworks, what Allen assembled did not require him to strain arm muscles by etching lines after lines to make a full-blown digital painting.
Furthermore, some people even prophesied a digital art doom where machines would be taking over human artistry. They thought that creative jobs would soon become obsolete when AI learns to create better artworks and maybe dominate more human art competitions. Meanwhile, AI art generators are also becoming a thing for Tiktok users.
It is, admittedly, not a complex mystery why a disgruntled online mob then swarmed him: he created his art using an AI art generator. This brings us back to grade school art classes telling us that art is any object created to have meaning. Last time I checked, AI still cannot make sense of anything apart from its programmed purpose.
The Human Element
In his own defense, Jason Allen responded that people online quickly disregard his role in making the said digital artwork. In his first announcement, Allen mentioned that he upscaled the AI-generated images before he printed them on the canvas. It is also worth noting that he chose the best one of a hundred more digitally generated artworks before running the chosen few on Adobe Photoshop.
"How interesting is it to see how all these people on Twitter who are against AI-generated art are the first ones to throw the human under the bus by discrediting the human element! Does this seem hypocritical to you guys?"
Anyhow, PCMag also tells us that the Colorado State Fair's spokesperson claimed that the event's organizers are now aware that Allen's artwork was produced by AI-driven software. However, the use of artificial intelligence is presently not prohibited by the contest guidelines regarding the digital art category. Perhaps, a rule revision is in order or not.
At the moment, the public discussion goes on on Twitter.
