Gallery artist Kate Breakey has embarked on a skeptical journey into the realm of AI. She recently shared her experience generating an image for the annual Tucson Cello Congress at the University of Arizona using Midjourney, a generative AI that creates images based on text prompts. The acclaimed artist's dry wit permeates her musings on the challenges and surprises encountered while delving into the world of artificial intelligence for creative expression. Read Kate's post below:
"I do an annual cello congress poster for my brilliant cellist friend who is the director. I used to attend these events as an amateur cellist long ago. Here's my first adventure with AI art generator, 'Midjourney' which makes images entirely from word prompts. It's almost instant and you never get the same thing twice. The skill is in the precise word prompting. It learns.
The machines will take over, I'm sure of that now.
I put the image into photoshop to add text, mess with the color and add grain so it looked like high speed film. I could have typed 'grainy photo' into the prompt if I'd thought about it. I'm still getting the hang of this. I know some of you have already gone to the dark side and are very familiar, but until last week I hadn't had the pleasure - which was more like horror, joy, anxiety and awe all at once. As a photographer I still can't get my head around it. Ironically, when shown images, AI can't distinguish a real image from an AI generated image. Or maybe it can but isn't going to tell us, because it already has a prime directive which doesnt include aiding humans. We are doomed, but meanwhile it's a lot of fun."