Two Women Dancing

I said in my first post that Mage Space allows a lot of variety in the images it creates. That's true, but if you look at the several hundred images I've drawn so far you'll see a lot of repetition. You can think of it as my personal style. There are themes that I keep returning to. One theme, if you can call it that, is that I draw beautiful women.

Let me tell you how I create my pictures. It's all about the "prompts". I might have a simple idea, like "House on a hill". I look at the random image that I get, and I add specifics to it, such as "House on a steep hill at sunset", or "House on a hill in the style of Vincent Van Gogh". I narrow in to what I want. Typically I need ten attempts to get my picture just right. That takes about 30 minutes. I end up throwing away most of my images. If two are worth saving, I'm happy. Some days all the pictures are failures. You'll never see them.

A question I've been asked is, "Are pictures generated by artificial intelligence really art?" That's a difficult question to answer. My pictures look like art, and they're an imitation of art, but are they really art? That's the same question that can be asked of photography. One man paints a picture of an orchard on a canvas, while a second man takes a photo of the orchard. The first man ("the painter") puts his soul into the painting, whereas the second man ("the photographer") just copies reality. The first man spends hours making a picture, whereas the second man needs only a few seconds.

The photographer can defend himself by saying that he spends time adjusting his camera's settings to get the lighting and the angle just right. I've heard long discussions on the topic. I can see that there's a certain amount of artistry in photography. My daughter and I can stand side by side and take photos of the same objects. My photo looks good, hers doesn't. I have something that she doesn't. A better eye? I don't know.

But when it comes to generating pictures with artificial intelligence, where is my individuality? I use AI as a tool, just as a photographer uses his camera as a tool, but if a second person used my exact prompts and AI settings he would generate the same picture as me. Does that mean my picture isn't good? I wouldn't say that, but it means my picture is lacking individuality.

From a moral standpoint, I would never sell any art that I create, however good it looks. Every image on this blog can be copied free of charge.

I'm imitating art. In an example I gave above I said I might imitate the style of Vincent Van Gogh. That's getting onto a slippery slope. I have no qualms about copying the style of dead artists, such as Vincent Van Gogh or Paul Gauguin, but I wouldn't imitate the style of a living artist. Others might, and Mage Space even makes it possible, but I wouldn't do it. It seems wrong.

Is my imitation of art really art in its own right? I can't answer that question definitively. All I can say is that if a picture looks so good that I want to hang it on my wall, it's art to me. If you like the picture above, you can do whatever you want with it. If you click on it you'll see a 2K image suitable for use as Windows wallpaper. And if you don't like it, scroll down to the next picture. Maybe you'll like it more.