#redFlag
Some drive-by verse, rattling along mainly as a hook to hang my opinions on AI-bonkers illustrations
I rode the news cycle
down a dark, glassy lane,
with hopes for fun content
– a gentler vein.
But I didn’t get far:
vitriol in the chain.
I ALMOST DID NOT BOTHER publishing this clunker. The shortcomings of social media are so obvious, and this one goes a bit Pam Ayres. (Not a problem in itself: Pam’s a significant modern poet!) That image is a bit mad though. Given that AI is such a social-media battleground, it’s ironic [reader’s voice: “Yeah… annoying!”] that I’ve used an AI illustration for a piece about social media. I’ll never know where Adobe got the ingredients for this image – other than “nicked from prior art”. But my point here is: what’s the alternative? It’s certain that this six-line doggerel is never going to spin enough gold to merit paying £400 to an illustrator with more skill than it takes for me to write angry man falling off bike over handlebars, panoramic aspect ratio, pop art style into Photoshop. The obvious fallback is to have no illustration at all (and somebody is self-righteously snarling just that right now), but all research says that illustrated posts get a lot more attention. As with almost all 2024-era AI art, it’s several degrees off from what I requested; but it’ll do for a bit of eye-catching drama (even though he has upward-pointing nostrils, a right arm like a horse’s leg and a left one like a leper). All self-justification aside, I do feel a little guilty using AI. I guess I care about as much as I ever cared about, say, pirating music onto a cassette: it’s around the same value, and the same minimal impact on the artist. Cumulatively, it’s changing the cultural landscape, and the tide carries us with it.
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Illustration generated by Firefly.
Hmm. My problem with ai art is not primarily that it steals from artists (though that's less than ideal), its that the art it produces is lacking in beauty. With all due respect, posting an ai image like this is... immoral, in my assessment, because it constitutes (at the risk of sounding negative) increasing the ugliness of the world.
This image has nice colours, and at first glance (only), the facial expression of the man (along with no other element of the image) is interesting. The biggest thing it lacks is linework. The (many) mistakes would be forgivable if there was an artist using linework (or brushwork) with character to tell us a visual story around those mistakes. You can draw a nostril pointing up from that angle, if you draw it well (ei. exaggerate other elements of the composition with a similar kind of visual flourish or rhythm).
If this was an illustration made by a real person, I would tell them that they obviously had a (remarkable) grasp on what things look like (at a first glance), but that they'd need to work on the confidence and consistency of their brush strokes (this is an easy thing to practice), identifying a focal point (his crotch shouldn't have more contrast than his face, also something you can teach a beginner), and that instead of copying the flat appearance of their references, they should take the time to study the shape of a few bicycles and arms, (which should only take a couple hours of practice over a few days, and then they can apply that knowledge to many future illustrations).
I would personally charge only £40-50 for a line illustration that's this simple, maybe a little more depending on delivery, time, if the client wanted colour, etc. Again, with all due respect, and also out of curiosity, I wonder if you'd consider ceasing to use any ai art in the future? It hurts artists, not because the thousands of talented people adobe stole from are being directly ripped off by this image, but because the precedent and principle of using these images undermines our lifelong study and craft -not just financially! Images like this that fail to exemplify the principles of illustration, that cannot be studied or looked up to by young artists, spit in the face of the legacy and beauty of our kind of work. At least when you pirate a cassette tape, the music still sounds good. Would you still have done that to your music if it erased the bass and the drums from all the songs?
The idea that ai will get better in the future (ie. learn the basic principles of illustration) is speculative, and would require the consultation of illustrators anyway (who else knows the principles?). The idea that "this is the way things are now and we have to accept it" does not satisfy me, just like it wouldn't satisfy anyone whose core principles were affronted by a new development (my core principle being, beauty not ugliness shall be shared in the world). Anyway, sorry for the long comment.