AI has reshaped the art world as AI-driven tools gave artists the ability to explore new frontiers of creativity, helping them craft their work while enhancing their creative journey. As AI systems continue to become embedded into society, substantial concerns surrounding ethics, privacy, and security loom large. Read more about recent developments below.
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Sony and AP Introduce In-Camera Authentication to Combat Fake Images
In an effort to fight deepfakes and other types of manipulated and generated images, Sony, in partnership with the Associated Press (AP), has unveiled in-camera authentication technology.
Character.AI Launches Group Chat Feature with AI Integration
Character.AI, the a16z-backed startup, has introduced a new feature, the Character Group Chat, which allows users to engage in group chats that include both AI characters and human participants.
Adobe Introduces “Icon of Transparency” for GenAI Content
Adobe, in collaboration with the Coalition for Content Provenance and Authenticity (C2PA), has launched the “icon of transparency.” This symbol – embeddable in images, videos, and PDFs – reveals content provenance, including its creation via AI tools. When viewers encounter this icon online, hovering over it discloses details about the content’s ownership, the AI tool utilized, and other production specifics.
AI-Generated Yearbook Photos: A Glimpse into the Future or a Distortion of the Past?
The rise of the Epik app (and its AI-powered yearbook photos) has spotlighted a curious trend: students opting for generative AI images in their school yearbooks. At face value, it’s a novel application of technology, blending nostalgia with the cutting-edge, but it raises questions about authenticity, memory, and our posterity.
Character.ai Challenges ChatGPT’s Dominance in U.S. AI Market
Character.ai, an AI app enabling users to design AI personas, has seen a surge in U.S. mobile app usage, reaching 4.2 million monthly active users since its May 2023 launch. In comparison, ChatGPT reports nearly 6 million monthly U.S. actives.
Judge: You Can’t Copyright AI Art
A federal judge recently upheld a decision by the US Copyright Office denying a copyright registration for an artwork created solely by artificial intelligence. This ruling brings up important questions about the applicability of copyright law to creative works generated by AI systems without direct human involvement.
Prompting for Artistic Creation
But what if you haven’t been to art school or spent years studying art history? This is where our Midjourney Reference Art Resource Page can help. It is a collection of works by dozens of famous artists that includes: the name of the artist, the genre they are most famous for, examples of their artwork, and descriptive words you can use while crafting a generative AI prompt.
Adobe Puts the “Art” in Artificial Intelligence
Adobe has launched Firefly for Enterprise, a platform that enables users to generate images or copy from text-based descriptions. Accessible via either the standalone Firefly application, Adobe’s Creative Cloud, or Adobe Express, the AI model can be trained with branded company assets to maintain brand consistency in content generation.
Orwell Comes to Life
According to a truly disturbing article on vice.com, the Midjourney subreddit is being flooded with images of historical events that never happened, such as the “infamous Blue Plague Incident” that occurred in the 1970s in the Soviet Union, the “July 2012 solar superstorm and blackout” in the U.S., and “the 2001 Great Cascadia 9.1 Earthquake & Tsunami” that devastated the west coast of North America.
AI Won’t Take Your Job, People Will (Updated)
You must become the very best AI coworker you can become. No matter how smart you think you are, there are things a well-trained AI system can do better than you can. It can look at more data, it can see the world differently, it can augment your capabilities.
AI Ghostwriters Go to Work
Ubisoft, maker of popular open world gaming series like Assassin’s Creed and Watch Dogs, is going to speed up this process with Ghostwriter, a purpose-built AI model.
The Dark Side of Generative AI: Why We Must Ban Them Now!
Ban generative AI? Wait, what? Nonsense! Except that Paizo, publisher of popular tabletop role-playing games (TTRPG) like Pathfinder and Starfinder, said it is banning AI-created work and would update its contracts in the coming days to mandate that any work submitted must be created by a human.
Angry Artists Try To Kill AI
DeviantArt, the “largest online social network for artists and art enthusiasts,” announced DreamUp, an AI-powered text-to-image generator service powered by Stable Diffusion. The new service has seriously angered some members of the community, so much so that DeviantArt announced that all hosted images will be “automatically labeled as NOT authorized for use in AI datasets.”
Don’t Fear AI. Respect it.
Shutterstock (a leading stock image company) has partnered with OpenAI to sell AI-generated artwork. Craig Peters, CEO of Getty Images (another leading stock image company), believes firms racing to sell AI art could step into illegal territory: “I think that’s dangerous. I don’t think it’s responsible. I think it could be illegal.”
Adobe says,“AI Will Not Replace Artists”
Addressing the fear that AI could one day replace artists, Adobe’s Chief Product Officer Scott Belsky said at Adobe MAX 2022 that AI should only ever be “your co-pilot in creative endeavors.” He said Adobe wanted to develop its AI offering thoughtfully, “approaching the idea from a creator-centric perspective. We want it to benefit creatives, not replace them.”
Stable Diffusion Porn
“Porn leads tech” is axiomatic, so it should surprise no one that some of the earliest, most innovative (and most provocative) images being created using the open source AI image generator Stable Diffusion are NSFW.
SCOTUS “Fair Use” Fears
Today in the SCOTUS blog: Andy Warhol Foundation v. Goldsmith. This is a case that everyone in the media business should be highly focused on. The decision (either way) will affect every creator, every publisher, and possibly every platform as well.
AI-generated images are the new clip art in MS Office
Microsoft is adding AI-generated art to its suite of Office software with a new app named Microsoft Designer. The app functions the same way as AI text-to-image models like DALL-E and Stable Diffusion, letting users type prompts to ‘instantly generate a variety of designs with minimal effort.’ Microsoft says Designer can be used to create everything from greeting cards and social media posts to illustrations for PowerPoint presentations and logos for businesses.
AI and Art
Jason M. Allen’s piece “Théâtre D’opéra Spatial” recently won first prize at the Colorado State Fair Fine Arts Competition in the category of “digital arts/digitally-manipulated photography.” It was created using an AI image generator known as Midjourney and the human competitors are furious. Should they be?
TikTok’s Amazing Text-to-Image AI Backgrounds
Want to know how fast virtual worlds are going to appear? TikTok recently added a new effect called “AI greenscreen.” Users type a description, then the AI does its best to interpret the prose and output an image that can be used as a background for a TikTok video.