Preserving the Soul of Art

Throughout human history, people have used art to express themselves, record their daily activities, capture moments and share their emotions.

- Michael Shane Neal

Think back to those ancient cave paintings in places like the Lascaux caves-they are like snapshots of life dating back to 15,000 BCE. Or think about paintings like the Mona Lisa's smirk or Van Gogh's Starry Night and how they communicate the creator's vision with us, the viewer.

Now, fast forward to the 21st century and at the forefront of both excitement and skepticism is artificial intelligence (AI).

The fusion of AI and fine art sparks both controversy and enthusiasm, challenging traditional notions of creativity, authorship and the very essence of art itself..

Although most of us probably think of Algenerated art as a new idea, it actually dates back to 1968 when artist Vera Molnár began experimenting with early programming languages to produce randomly generated artwork. Now in 2024, the use of AI to create art has become accessible to anyone with a computer and an internet connection.

With AI text-to-image generators, one can simply type a prompt (such as "impressionist painting of a landscape with a river and purple trees"), and the AI creates the image, usually in under a minute. If the user isn't happy with how the text was initially visualized, the process can be repeated to generate more images, either using the same prompt or by changing the wording a bit to better refine what the user is envisioning.