You see that image above. That “oh so meta” photo of the artist with her own self-portrait painting on an easel? Look again. That image (one of an eerie series by artist Yasmin + MidJourney.AI) — and millions more now auto-propagating across the vast expanse of the internets — is one of the latest fully synthetic, 100% original outputs of the nascent “Generative Art” movement… that is to say, polished artworks covering every conceivable media & style, that appear to the untrained eye to be created by human artists, but which in fact are being rendered en masse at lightning speed by a confederacy of fully automated machine intelligences (AIs), requiring just the merest hints of human direction. (These “hints”, fyi, in technical terminology, are known as “prompts“) (How was that for a run-on sentence? ThankYouVeryMuch.)
Make no mistake: These artworks are the initial “shots across the bow” by the global AI consciousness. It’s letting us know, in a somewhat subtle and quite poignant manner, that it has… arrived. (the proverbial “Hello, World.”, perhaps?)
They’re quite charming, actually:
…a prize in the Colorado State Fair.
…illustrations for a newsletter from the Atlantic.
…the cover of Cosmo.
Wait, whut?
Cosmo, as in Cosmopolitan Magazine?
Yup. June 2022. Take a gander, in case you missed it on the newsstands:
Ladies & Gentlepeople: that cover art is 100% AI generated.
As in, she (the artist Karen X) simply wrote:
/imagine [prompt] ::: “AI, make me an image of a bold female astronaut walking on the surface of Mars, purple tint, low camera angle, ultra wide angle, photorealistic –aspect ratio 10:13”
Hit “enter.” Wait 60 seconds…
…aaaand …Voilà! La Cover de Cosmo
The same method that was deployed, for instance, to create every single poster image on this very website you’re reading now — near instantaneously.
Care to peek behind the magician’s curtain? Good idea.
Artist Karen X explains her (very rapid) process from idea to cover. Speed of thought? Hell, it took longer to think it than it did to render it.
Check it out:
Boom.
Oh, and about that Colorado State Fair?
“Théatre d’Opera Spatial”, by MidJourney[AI] + Jason Allen[Human]
No, we weren’t making that up.
Read it and weep (Vice).
“The writing is (indeed) on the wall.”
>>full article (Smithsonian)
And finally, yeah, that Atlantic newsletter? (synthillustrations of the infamous Alex Jones, in case you were wondering)…
>> right here. (the Atlantic)
So, that’s the classical arts, done.
Drawing, Painting, Sculpting, Photography, Graphic Design, Illustration, 3d Modelling. Check ’em off the list.
What’s next?
Glad you asked.