Artists put their best effort into their pieces. Most people do art as a hobby, and others pursue a career out of it. However, many jobs are starting to implement artificial intelligence to create images or logos. This puts a huge risk to artists wanting to work for corporations or for commission.
What is AI? AI, according to HCLTech, is, “the science of making machines that can think like humans”. Artificial intelligence has been used in order to detect fraud and manage risks in the financial field and also diagnose diseases. However, AI programs such as Stable Diffusion have started to develop images by scanning through the internet, and in that process, stealing other people’s artwork. Companies don’t realize that AI art is unethical in every way.
AI artwork has many inconsistencies such as mangled fingers and elements in areas that don’t make sense. Other than stealing art from other people on the internet, it all has a similar art style. AI art usually has a semi-realism style, with the eyes being more anime-like and exaggerated.
User Rebonbeta on Reddit can’t find any work because artificial intelligence has taken over.
“I’m an illustrator and I can’t seem to find any more work, whether it’s full-time or freelance. My girlfriend, who is also an illustrator, and I want to live together, but neither of us are able to find anything to make money. So we’re still living with our parents with no hope of changing our lives”, said Rebonbeta.
With AI starting to spread, Rebonbeta feels like they’ve wasted their time for their career.
“I’m starting to feel like I’ve wasted all my time, like when I told my parents I was studying in college to make a better future for myself, or when I encouraged other artists by paying for their courses, helping with materials, etc”, said Rebonbeta.
Artists also promote their work and services on social media sites such as Instagram. Although Instagram has an algorithm that has posts reach a specific audience, it has done poorly with artists. Many artists, especially small artists, have had a rough time trying to promote their work through social media because the algorithm doesn’t favor real human art. In order to show up on people’s feeds, an artist usually has to do a trend and put hashtags that most people would see onto a reel instead of a post.
I’ve unfortunately had this encounter with my own art. I usually do digital and traditional art and I post it on Instagram. However, my art is not getting the same recognition as it used to. I used to get about 40 likes per artwork and now I usually get between 5-12 likes, which is a major downgrade. The algorithm usually favors reels more than posts, but even when small artists post reels, they don’t get a lot of attention.
Although there are programs such as Glaze, a system designed to protect human artists by disrupting style mimicry, that can help artists protect their work from AI, they are still at risk. Companies will still use AI programs because they believe they can cut costs. Most artists make around $32,000-$58,000 a year, and if they’re fired from their jobs all because AI is the more favorable option, they will have a rough time trying to provide for themselves.
