"New Zealand politician Trevor Mallard standing beside a giant moa"
"New Zealand politician Trevor Mallard standing beside a giant moa"
COMMENT/ANALYSIS/ART
BNZ recently sold its collection of paintings by great New Zealand artists.
The auction raised millions for the bank's charity foundation, but former PM and Arts Minister Helen Clark fretted that some of the un-named buyers might be offshore.
But now we don't need toworry about the paintings being lost to New Zealand, for I have created the next great generation of New Zealand art, using an AI programme. And much more besides, including creating a new flag and a new logo for Vodafone NZ. imagining Dunedin 1000 years and more.
Are artists' and art directors' jobs safe? Scroll down for my gallery.
Using AI (artificial intelligence software) to create art is nothing new.
But tools released this year — with names like DALL-E 2, Midjourney and Stable Diffusion — have made it possible for rank amateurs to create complex, abstract or photorealistic works simply by typing a few words into a text box, the New York Times reported last month.
Théâtre D’opéra Spatial - the digital artwork, created by game designer Jason Allen using the Midjourney AI, that won an art prize at the Colorado State Fair in August. Image / New York Times
Suddenly, it's quite the thing. The Economist used Midjourney to create a cover, while game designer Jason Allen used the same programme (openly) to win an art competition in Colorado. His win infuriated other artists, who claimed he had cheated, the Times reported. (Allen was unapologetic, but didn't particuarly help clear the air when he refused to tell the paper what text prompt he had typed into Midjourney.)
These apps have made many human artists understandably nervous about their own futures, the Times said. Why would anyone pay for art, they wonder, when they could generate it themselves?
Trade publication Ad Age says the likes of Midjourney are now being used to automate the process of brainstorming ideas for new ad campaigns.
But Midjourney and its peers have also generated fierce debates about the ethics of AI-generated art, and opposition from people who claim that these apps are essentially a high-tech form of plagiarism, the Times reported.
I decided to see what all the fuss is about by giving Midjourney a whirl (since July 11, it's operated under a freemium model, which allows you a couple of dozen efforts free; you can access its not hugely user-friendly trial through a Discord server (Discord beeing a new-ish social media platform better known as a chat platform).
Midjourney lets you have 21 goes at creatiing art for free via a Discord server. You type "/imagine" then a line of text to promt the AI in the right direction. A result is usually delivered in two minutes.
The free trial is lightly-policed, giving a user more free images each time they register with a different email).
It only takes two minutes for Midjourney to return a set of four artworks after you type a text command - at least if everything's working. It's temperamental, and sometimes gets overhelmed.
My main takeaway: Creative directors and artists - your jobs are safe for now.
Whether made by me or one of the thousands of others on the Midjourney beta, the results have a samey, fantasy art feel about them, which lingered even when I asked the AI to create works in the style of Rita Angus or Tony Fomison and it didn't get close.
Faces often have the same pinched face or swirly eye look, and the AI is often a bit off-beam with its intepretation of your prompt, or simply leaves out one or two of the requested elements.
It simply choked on any attempt to create a work in the style of Colin McCahon, and it seems to be just taking a random guess with many public figures (unless it's used machine learning to devine that Christopher Luxon will somehow grow hair in later life - see image below).
For now, it's closer ot a gimmick than a job destroyer. But if you want to create a DIY print for your wall, or have some fun, by all means try it out.
After Midjourney's so-so efforts creating NZ art, I thought I'd also give it a whirl with an effort to generate a new flag for New Zealand, plus more light-hearted and surreal efforts.
Anyhow, here's my Midjourney gallery. Each image is captioned by the text prompt I used to create it:
"Kiwi flag"
"A new flag for New Zealand"
"A few flag for Aotearoa"
"Former New Zealand Prime Minister John Key painted in the style of Tony Fomison"
"New Zealand politician Trevor Mallard standing beside a giant moa"
"Former New Zealand Prime Minister Helen Clark as an elf queen in Lord of the Rings"
"Jacinda Ardern painted in the style of Bill Hammond"
"Christopher Luxon as an old man surrounded by kittens, painted in the style of Toss Woollaston"
"Rita Angus paints Jacinda Ardern"
"Prince Harry and his wife Meghan in medieval armor"
"All Blacks captain Sam Can as a dog"
"New Zealand politician David Seymour as a cat"
"New Zealand politician Gerry Brownlee playing rugby for the All Blacks as a loose forward"
"Phil Goff as a steampunk"
"The city of dunedin, 1000 years into the future"
"New Zealand All Blacks rugby team painted in the style of Banksy"
"New Zealand National Party MP Chris Bishop drinking a craft beer"
"Auckland waterfront after 200 years of sea level rises"
"New Zealand Green Party leader Marama Davidson painted in the style of Leonardo da Vinci's Mona Lisa"
"Sky Tower, Auckland, painted in the style of Grahame Sydney"
"Signing of the Treaty of Waitangi"
"Five giant crayfish outside Parliament Buildings, Wellington, New Zealand"
"Giant tidal wave destroying Wellington, New Zealand, painted in the style of Grahame Sydney"
"A new logo for a telecommunications company in New Zealand called One New Zealand"
"New logo for a telecommunications company in New Zealand". Don't give up your day job, Midjourney.
