Dabbling in AI-generated Art

I've been playing around with an artificial intelligence (AI) art generating program called Midjourney. I'm not going to get into the debate on whether AI-generated art is a good or bad thing, in general. As an artist, I'm aware of the potentially slippery slope computer-made art could be, especially to human artists who make their living via their art. Lawsuits are already pending with claims that AI art tools violate copyright law by incorporating artists’ online work without consent, so this is a contentious topic, with much debate ahead. 

That being said, I've experimented with the free (and legal) version of Midjourney, and included some examples below. The part of AI-generated art that intrigues me is the ability to take descriptive words and generate an image from them. As a writer, I've used words to describe characters, scenes, locations, and more, with the intent of painting a picture in the reader's mind. By feeding these same descriptions into Midjourney, it provides me a tangible image of how AI interprets my descriptions.

It's fascinating and fun, and I was inspired by an AI artist on Counter Social making her versions of GRRM characters, so I decided to try creating portraits of individuals from my epic fantasy series The Oxbow Kingdom Trilogy.

The orphan Jetsam (Eidryn Lothyrn)

The bounty hunter Yduk Thiern

The enigmatic fugitive Seryn Vardan

The Princess Giselle

Tramp

The orphan leader Ratboy

The Grimlord

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