As someone who is both fascinated and neutral to the idea of AI image generation I wanted to propose an idea that came to me during my research into creating my own AI generation tool. In conclusion, unless you’re a trained Python programmer this will not be such an easy task but I believe it will be important for any artist in the near future. As sites like hugging face collect AI models and make them accessible to the public, individual AI generators are going to be something that every artist should probably have on their website.
Most of the artist community has a problem with AI and is afraid of their work been stolen and reproduced without credit or consent. The problem is much deeper than that however and it is rooted in the copyright law system. An art style cannot be copyrighted, an artist cannot gate keep an art style. With billions of artists in the world this is simply not possible. We cannot all have different styles, there’s only so many art styles to go around. This is how the AI is trained, in the style of the images.
My proposal is for every artist to create their own AI generation tool that replicates their style. I’m aware that this is also problematic since artists enjoy creating their own work whether it’s painting or 3d. But this in turn can generate another form of income for the artist. With your own AI art generation tool you are both able to charge whatever you want either per image or on a subscription basis. You can create your own scarcity levels of artwork produced by shutting your AI generator down during periods of the month. This is also great for artists who cannot take on a lot of commissions at once. Your own AI generator can speed up your workflow and even help you in the idea generation process.
AI tools are not going anywhere and in this cut throat creative industry you either sink or swim. Not adapting to changing technologies could be the death of your career. AI is here to stay and while this is just a proposed theory it’s better to be prepared for the storm.