Why This Artist Isn’t Afraid of AI’s Position in Artwork

As AI enters the workforce and seeps into all aspects of our lives at unprecedented pace, we’re advised by leaders throughout industries that if you happen to’re not utilizing it, you’re falling behind. But when AI’s use in artwork enters the dialog, some retreat in discomfort, shunning it as an affront to the very essence of artwork. This ongoing debate continues to create disruptions amongst artists. AI is essentially altering the inventive course of, and its function, significance, and affect are subjective to 1’s personal values—making its trajectory laborious to foretell, and even tougher to confront.

Miami-based Panamanian photographer Dahlia Dreszer stands out as an optimist and believer in AI’s powers. She likens AI’s use in artwork to the act of portray or drawing—merely one other medium that may unlock inventive potential and a creative imaginative and prescient that will have by no means been realized with out it. Utilizing generative AI fashions like Steady Diffusion, 3.5, Midjourney, Adobe, Firefly, and Nova, Dreszer skilled an AI picture generator on her type for over a yr, instructing it to provide paintings together with her sensibilities, with one piece in her present exhibition produced completely by AI.

Entitled “Bringing the Outdoors In,” Dreszer calls the present a “residing organism.” (It’s on show till Could 17, 2025 at Inexperienced Area Miami.) Her vivid, maximalist nonetheless lifes depict layered familial heirlooms, Judaica, flowers, and textiles made by Panamanian indigenous ladies. Attendees can work together with an AI picture generator within the exhibition to provide their very own artworks in Dreszer’s type, telling the machine in a sentence or two what they need it to provide, and in seconds, an paintings is created. Additionally as a part of the present, Dreszer programmed an AI-generated clone of herself, which seems to be and speaks like her, to information guests by way of video chat via the house.

This interview has been evenly edited for size and readability.

TIME: Take me again to the primary second you realized AI may improve your artwork. What about AI drew you in? What did you’re feeling? 

Dreszer: I consider expertise is right here to supercharge us. When generative AI entered the mainstream, I knew I needed to get my fingers soiled straight away. I used to be already on this planet of NFTs, however this was a special dialog. It took over a yr of experimentation and dialogue with picture mills to really feel snug lastly creating a chunk to incorporate in a physique of labor.

This exhibition contains one piece I made in collaboration with AI. I personalised an AI picture mannequin on what the exhibition means, looks like, and appears like, feeding it photographs embodying my type. I included the Florida Everglades within the foreground, reflecting the panorama the place I am residing in the present day. I’m not solely eager about AI and artwork, but additionally in including nature to that dialog. I’ve hung flowers on prime of this piece that fall onto the body or the bottom once they die, permitting nature to do its factor. I’ve not intervened bodily. I consider nature, artwork and expertise can coexist properly.

I truly thought that all the items in your exhibition have been produced by AI.

That is additionally the intention, proper, as a result of they don’t seem to be. I am at all times making an attempt to play with the viewers, to disorient, as a result of all the things will not be what you see at first look. There is no synthetic enhancements in most of those works, however simply the truth that you assume there are—I discover that narrative attention-grabbing. 

What impressed you to create a clone for this exhibition? 

My clone is so enjoyable. I am making an attempt to pose inquiries to the group as they have interaction with these works: Transferring ahead, what does it imply for relationships after we’re talking to a machine as if it was a human, and we can not know the distinction? What’s our function as people if now we have clones that may mimic what we do? I need to see how that dialogue evolves. There is a practicality as properly. The clone guides you thru the present, most likely higher than I can. It is skilled on what I do know, however as a machine, it is supercharged. 

Why did you embody your clone?

I needed to have an AI model of myself to information viewers and reply questions, to teach others in an effort to demystify AI. By means of the clone, I can humanize the expertise, “the artwork of the potential,” of incorporating expertise into inventive workflows. 

Will you retain your clone after the exhibition? Will you educate it about different components of your self? 

I am very eager about persevering with the connection together with her. I am working via concepts and methods to coach her. I have never shared it but, however there are totally different personas of the clone. I will be tremendous tuning and creating totally different variations based mostly on the connection I need her to have with the viewers she’s partaking with.

Some critics would name using AI in artwork “dishonest.” What do you say to these critics?

I’d like to have a dialog to grasp how that opinion was shaped. I’d encourage them to see it as a collaboration. Many individuals don’t perceive the method and the time it takes. 

I’d invite critics to dive deeper, and give it some thought not simply as: “I put in a immediate, it makes artwork, then I am executed.” It is a lengthy course of.However this relationship between expertise and the humanities will not be new. We’ve had disruptions in artwork via expertise earlier than. That is simply extra aggressive, intrusive, and fast in its pace and tempo of innovation. 

What particular challenges have you ever confronted up to now utilizing AI in your artwork?

Oftentimes the outputs should not what I needed. As an artist, I’ve excessive expectations. I like to manage the visualization so it’s extremely stylized, curated, and composed. With AI, that management goes away, as a result of AI has its personal intelligence and creativity, regardless of how good the immediate is. It is a laborious and irritating but additionally enlightening course of; it could not create what you needed, however it will probably make one thing you did not know you needed. Then there’s technical issues it would not know the way to do, however ultimately will. It’s not nice with sure renders or visualizations. 

What scares and excites you about the place AI is headed for the following technology of artists?

I am principally excited due to the fast tempo. Updates to generative AI software program occur in a matter of weeks. There’s additionally a wholesome competitors available in the market, which signifies that as customers, our wants are being happy faster than ever. Our suggestions is being integrated and the instruments are altering. 

You requested about fears. AI is getting into our workflows and industries in a technique or one other. Will we settle for it? Deny it? Who will fall behind, and who will probably be on the forefront? I’m extra excited than fearful, however I see why others could also be fearful. It disrupts our workflows, and if we’re not prepared to alter or study new abilities, it may be scary. 

Will collaboration with AI substitute collaboration between artists?

No, no, no. There are lots of examples of how me and several other artists have collaborated with AI. One artist got here to me together with her inventive imaginative and prescient and her phrases, and I used my immediate engineering abilities and data of AI techniques, and collectively, we created an AI piece that was her imaginative and prescient come to life—this stunning crimson textile tree that had an enormous trunk.

As an artist, there’s a journey one goes via when creating. Once you use AI, does it nonetheless assist you to entry this other-worldly expertise of the inventive course of?

There’s positively components of the inventive course of that AI will not be inclusive of. So for instance, once I’m making AI artwork, I am not portray, or getting my fingers soiled. There’s physicalities that aren’t included in that journey. However I feel that is just like any medium. So as an example I am selecting to make use of my digicam as my software and never a paint brush. There’s additionally experiences which might be missed out via my photographic inventive course of, that if I have been utilizing a paintbrush or one other software, can be a special journey. In order that’s why I see generative AI artwork as its personal medium, and every medium comes with its personal journeys and processes which might be unique to that medium, proper?

Do you see the time period “post-human” as an correct option to replicate this period we’re getting into in artwork?