A game designer submitted an art piece created by an AI text-to-image generator and won first prize.
After creating the image using Midjourney, Jason Allen submitted his work entitled Theatre d’Opera Spatial in the Digital Arts/ Digitally-Manipulated Photography category at the Colorado State Fair arts competition.
Social media posts regarding the artist’s ethics have gone viral on many online platforms, especially Twitter.
“I wanted to make a statement using artificial intelligence artwork,” the artist explained to The Pueblo Chieftain. “I feel like I accomplished that, and I’m not going to apologize for it.”
Text-to-image software can generate billions of possible visual designs. Users can write a description of the future image and the program will create one that corresponds with the words. Some view this as a great opportunity in digital art and others find it unethical. The debate will continue as long as artists are using forms of technology to create their art.