AI PROGRAMS NEED STRICT REGULATION

The development of artificial intelligence has been huge in recent years. While that is a technological advancement in general, to the art community, AI is a threat to the future. A few years ago, Open AI, the makers of Chat GPT, released Midjourney AI, a program which can generate images based on text prompts within seconds. It seemed to be just a fun game until it was able to generate rather impressive image results. Now, it is a threat to the future of the whole art community.

AI can now generate realistic images and even artworks in almost any imaginable style. And while it takes years for digital and traditional artists to polish their skills and hours to create expressive art, it takes seconds for the layman to type in a prompt and create something that appears just as polished and then call himself an “AI artist.” This is very discouraging to art veterans and beginners alike. Some studios have even started to use AI to do the work that once belonged to concept artists, and AI artists have saturated media and art publishing and monetization platforms. And while we are told to embrace the future and adapt or get swept under the rug for being rigid “gatekeepers,” the generative AI is trained using the work of real artists.

With the recent reveal of Sora AI, which can generate believable videos based on prompts, the future is looking very bleak for some of us unless some regulation is placed on these programs, or artists are given a choice on whether their art is part of these training data sets and conditions for their inclusion. For now, we artists can only rage online and hope for the best.

Oluwatobiloba Taiwo Akinwande,

UPEI student,

Charlottetown, P.E.I.