AI is harming artists and harms the way people think about art.

Social media has several people calling themselves artists, but really using generated art. Their generated art is created by Artificial intelligence trained by using stolen art. It is considered stolen due to the fact that they will use this art without the artist’s knowledge or even permission. 

AI art causes mistrust in other artists, leading to actual artists getting blamed for using AI. Due to the fact that AI trains off of actual art, many artists have or had the style that AI trained off of, meaning that when they would draw in their own style, they would be blamed for AI even if the art was made by them. 

Art theft hasn’t just started with AI programmers though, plenty of people have outlined existing art to claim it as their own without crediting the original artist. The AI programmers don’t steal it with the outlines, or taking the style. These programmers will have a code that they wrote to scan the drawing. Using this code they can put in specific ideas and make their own “Art” This is only making artists more upset with their art being stolen, and causing more distrust in the community. 

What is the future going to be for artists in a world overrun by AI? 

Before AI, there were already many artists complaining about having their art stolen, now the problem is at an all-time high due to Artificial Intelligence. You don’t even have to have a drop of skill nowadays to steal someone’s art. 

As an Artist, just posting photos of your art online could lead to AI stealing your art style. Artists must go to extensive lengths to avoid having their art stolen by AI on instagram or any other social media sites. The artists who don’t know how to opt out of getting their work immediately put through AI on instagram, have to lower the quality of their art by covering it with a watermark or a random pattern of colors, making it harder to steal. Artists will also pile tons of photos over their artwork to scramble the AI. Some people steal art by going in and removing the watermark with AI because some artists just lower the opacity on their watermark and lay it over the top of their art in one spot.

The stealing of art creates a snowball effect when artists whose art styles are taken by AI are being accused of AI art because of their art style. The creators who use AI as a base to learn from are being bashed for it. Honestly, using the same thing that steals art from other artists is just terrible. Learning from AI art is not the best of ideas either, there are tons of mistakes in it, including anatomy and shading mistakes. Artists who have an art style close to AI art have to post videos of their speed paint to still be accused of AI art. 

However, some have taken to calling AI art magic, defending those who steal hours of work from artists, which is disgusting—as an artist, saying that art theft is ok implies that artists waste time when making art. 

Where is society going with this use of AI? 

Individuals are losing jobs by being replaced with AI. People are using AI to cheat through college and school. Some people are stealing art from artists and selling their AI-generated art at a lower price than the normal art prices, leading to a decrease in value of custom art. All of these possibilities pose some critical questions. Will AI compromise even more jobs? You already hear a robot voice over the phone if you call a customer service line, which is an AI program. 

I can see AI being used for good. Newer car systems can use it for early detection of maintenance. Medical professionals can use it for diagnosing patients quicker. It’s used for facial recognition at airports and in our phones, it is also used for marketing to see how customers behave.  There are some people who can use AI to recreate voices and videos of people. These videos/ audios can tarnish someone if it is used to discredit them. There was a YouTube video of a song completely made from AI, the lyrics, the voice and the photos. Think about it, you randomly see a video of you that wasn’t you. That is the stuff that scares me sometimes, that AI could be taking our lives away from us. 

I’m a digital artist and I hate the idea of my art possibly being stolen, so for those who use AI for a goofy fact, that’s okay, just please don’t use an AI art generator and post it, it just encourages the people who make the generators, that includes those picture to anime art filters. The creators of these filters steal real art for others to use and abuse, stealing artists’ time. Also, support #SupportHumanArtists on Twitter, TikTok, YouTube, and Facebook