My Take on A. I. Art

Note this image is an original photo with a topaz lab filter from about ten years ago; NOT an A.I. image

So I'm an independent artist.  Where do I stand as a designer, on using A.I. art.  Well one i am not educated enough on how and where the Ai program gets it's base images, but if i use non public domain images i would be fried for it.  I'm just sayin, it sounds a bit wild west.  akin to the early days of napster in the music world.  However, that being said, it does intrigue me that you could instantly create beautiful images with word descriptions.  I have to admit, I have not tried it yet.  I have not been to one A. I. art site.  I think viewing beauty should be free.  give people a chance to create.  But that does put me on a less fancy and less air brushed plane of art existence.  But we have been moving in this direction a long time.  I have been using instant filters with toggles for fine details on photos to make them have paint like texture for the better part of ten years on my art.  see above example done with Topaz Labs old suite.  They don't even offer it anymore.

  So my art has to compete with a. i. now.  Or could i use it to make images out of my images?  I don't really know if I like this.  First of all, my new years resolution was to get back into some analog art and buy some acrylic paints and easel.  I just miss it.  I was trained in studio art in the nineties and did figure drawing and portraiture.  Now i'm all abstract and cartoony trying to sell things that twenty five years ago would have been deemed too commercial to be called art.  But now with print on demand, the lines have blurred between fine art and designer just a bit more.  we all had to put on designer hats to make any money.  But it's still art.  Oh its not a sixty hour soul churning adventure into obliquitude, but its original and it typically takes only a couple hours to achieve passive income once or twice in six months to a year. This amounts to less than 20$ in most cases per sale and put it on a two hour time frame, we sell one a day.  That's no life of luxury my friend.  However with the internet alive and full of social media we have enormous potential of everybody's dream:  going viral. 

So should we allow a i art in print on demand.  This question is not yet ready to be answered frankly.  We need to know how complex it is to write the description, how often the thing fails, and where it gets its base images.  Now of course if it's created in a programs, on a site, that site has to issue creative commons at the very least and would probably do good to offer a monthly membership for commercial license productions.  You know where I think they can't because they have to disclose their process.  

For now, It's a big nopey no.  Stay away from the dreaded a. i. art commercially.  use it to text your mom or something, but dont make greeting cards with it.  Maybe a nice profile pic avatar or something.  it's a novelty.  Like something you would use as a new contraption at the turn of the century World's Fair.  

So that's where I stand.  Firmly, wobbling into to the defensive as an artist who clearly needs no further competition in the already saturated print on demand market.  But that doesn't mean I won't go try it at some point.  I don't really want to because it does sound kind of addictive.  Thank you for reading my friend and have a wonderful time going about your business in this strange new world of brilliant devices.