You might be surprised to hear this as I am known for generating and posting AI images: I’ve always believed that AI-generated images (or AI Art) have very little or no value in themselves. They’re just like NFT pictures (remember the silly craze of pixelated monkeys a few years back?), in that they are infinitely replicable and editable by anyone, and thus have no real value.
“Then why do you post so many AI-generated images, Ian?”
My first reason is that I see AI imaging as a tool to turn our ideas into visuals that aid understanding and action. It’s like the ready-made clip art or icons that you have in PowerPoint – you use them alongside bullet points to get your point across. It’s your ideas and actions that have value, the pictures and words are meant to deliver them to the audience.
In the same way, an AI-generated report or infographic has no value in its form, but in its substance. Is the content true, useful, and applicable?
What people should realise is that AI imaging unlocks a new capability (not a talent) for the majority to generate visuals that they couldn’t create themselves. Not to pass themselves off as artists, but to communicate their thoughts more clearly and effectively to their target audiences. Is this not a good thing?
As such, the bar is lowered for anyone to do marketing, but at the same time, it is raised for professional marketers to prove their worth. If you are a marketer who decides to fully automate your ad designs, then you are no different from a non-marketer who can replicate your automation. Audiences will learn how to recognise heartfelt, human content from automated content, even if the messages are personalised with your name. Gen AI apps still cannot create great ads – you need humans to guide the AI, and edit the visuals and words.
BTW I pay little attention to “AI artists” or “NFT creators” because I still treasure the work of real artists who use traditional and/or AI skills to create truly human output.
And if you’ve read this far, my second reason for posting AI-generated images is that I’m always playing around with concepts and I’m always eager to show everyone what we can do with this crazy technology. I started my Gen AI journey by learning Stable Diffusion, an open-source imaging engine, and I continue to be delighted by the advances in this field. But I’m very clear that nobody will want to buy any of my AI-generated images.