Headline, November 15 2022/ ''' '' ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE ARTISTRIES '' '''

''' '' ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE

 ARTISTRIES '' '''

FOR YEARS - THE CONVENTIONAL WISDOM among Silicon Valley futurists was that artificial intelligence and automation spelled doom for blue-collar workers whose jobs involved repetitive manual labor.

Truck drivers, retail cashiers and warehouse workers would all lose their jobs to robots, they said, while workers in creative fields like art, entertainment and media would be safe.

WELL, an unexpected thing happened recently : A.I.entered the creative class. In the past few months, A.I. based image generators like DALL-E2, Midjourney and Stable Diffusion have made it possible for anyone to create unique, hyper-realistic images just by typing a few words into the text box.

Those apps, though new, are already astoundingly popular. DALL-E2, for example, has more than 1.5 million users generating more than two million images every day, while Midjourney's official Discord server has more than three million members.

These programs use what's known as ''generative A.I.,'' a type of A.I. that was popularized several years ago with the release of text-generating tools like GPT-3 but has since expanded into images, audio and video.

It's still too early to tell whether this new wave of apps will end up costing artists and illustrators their jobs. What seems clear, though, is that these tools are already being put to use in creative industries.

Recently, I spoke to five creative-class professionals about how they're using A.I. generated art in their jobs.

''It spit back a perfect image'' : Collins Waldoch, 29, a game designer in New York, recently started using generative A.I. to customer art for his online game, Twofer Goofer, which works a bit like a rhyming version of Wordle. 

Every day, players are given a clue - like a set of rhythmic moves while in a half-conscious state '' - and are tasked with coming up with a pair of rhyming words that matches the clue. [In this case, ''trance dance'']

Initially, Mr. Waldoch planned to hire human artists through the gig-work platform Upwork to illustrate each day's rhyming word pair. But when he saw the cost - between $50 and $60 per image, plus time for rounds of feedback and edits - he decided to try using A.I. instead.

He plugged word pairs into Midjourney and DreamStudio, an app based on Stable Diffusion, and tweaked the results until they looked right. Total cost : a few minutes of work, plus a few cents.

[DreamStudio charges about a cent per image; Midjourney's standard membership costs $30 per month for unlimited images.]

''I typed in 'carrot parrot,' and it spit back a perfect image of a parrot made of carrots,'' he said. ''That was the immediate 'aha' moment.''

Mr. Waldoch said he didn't feel guilty about using A.I. instead of hiring human artists, because human artists were too expensive to make the game worthwhile. ''We wouldn't have done this'' if not for A.I., he said.

''I don't feel like it would take my job away.'' : Isabella Orsi, 24, an interior designer in San Francisco, recently used a generative A.I. app called Interior AI to create a mock-up for a client.

The client, a tech start-up,  was  looking to spruce up its office. Ms. Orsi uploaded photos of the client's office to Interior AI, then applied a ''cyberpunk'' filter. The app produced new renderings in seconds  -showing what the office's entryway would look like with colored lights, contoured furniture and a new set of shelves.

Ms. Orsi thinks that rather than replacing interior designers, generative A.I. will help them come up with ideas during the initial phase of a project.

''I think there's an element of good design that requires the empathetic touch of a human,'' she said. ''So I don't feel like it will take my job away. Somebody has to discern between the different renderings, and at the end of the day, I think that needs a designer.''

''It's like working with a really wilful artist.'' : Patrick Clair, 40, a filmmaker in Sydney, Australia, started using A.I.generated art this year to help him prepare for a presentation to a film studio. 

Mr. Claire, who has worked on hit shows including ''Westworld,'' was looking for an image of a certain type of marble statue. But when he went looking on Getty Images - his usual source for concept art - he came up empty. Instead he turned to DALL-E2.

He predicted that rather than replacing concept artists or putting Hollywood special effects wizards out of job, A.I. image generators would simply become part of every filmmaker's tool kit. ''It's like working a really willful concept artist,'' he said.

''Photoshop can do things that you can't do with your hands, in the same way a calculator can crunch numbers is a way that you can't in your brain., but Photoshop never surprises you,'' he continued. ''Whereas DALL-E surprises you, and comes back with things that are genuinely creative.''

The Honour and Serving of the Latest Global Operational Research on Artificial Intelligence and Art and Creative Work, continues. The World Students Society thanks author Kevin Roose.

With respectful dedication to All Creative Artists, The Future, and then Students, Professors and Teachers of the world. See Ya all prepare and register for Great Global Elections on The World Students Society  -the exclusive ownership of every student in the world : wssciw.blogspot.com and Twitter - !E-WOW! - The Ecosystem 2011 :

Good Night and God Bless

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