These past few weeks have been huge in terms of A.I news in relation to its involvement in art. In case you missed it, one of the largest pieces of news is that someone actually won an art competition… by using A.I. to generate an image. And I have to admit, while this is certainly a morally gray area, I can’t deny that the image itself was quite stunning. Since this big event, a ton of people on social media are discussing the potential this technology may unlock in the future and whether it will put human artists in jeopardy. Use of A.I. art applications online have skyrocketed and there are tons of free ones out there if you want to mess around. I’ll post the competition-winning A.I. piece below for your own judgment. I should note that the creator did mention they spent weeks fine-tuning and adjusting the image before submitting it, however critics compared the act to winning a running marathon by riding a bike. Sure you did some work, but not much at all compared to the other contestants.

So...does it do hentai that looks this good too?

Now I couldn’t sit back and just let everyone else have the fun. You see, when this news reached the weeb community, the first thing on everyones’ mind was “if A.I. can make art, and manga is art… wait a minute”. And the answer is, definitely not yet but possibly one day, in some aspects. In other words, we’re still a long way from manga creation for several reasons. A huge one being that manga is a combination of art and storytelling, the latter of which A.I. continues to be pretty shit at. Sure there have been some impressive A.I. text games over the years that you can mess around with. However, that’s still a long shot from crafting a unique, well-written tale that captures the audiences’ attention week after week with character development, foreshadowing, plot beats, etc. Combo this with the fact that the A.I. would need a memorable artstyle, consistency across all the panels, and the ability to determine when to generate a really detailed and moving page to emphasize impact and when to keep things at a baseline. With these factors stacked against it, I think it’s clear to see that A.I. is years away from being able to do something like generate an entire manga, at least an entire manga that’s of a quality similar to a human’s work. That being sad, it’s wild how far the tech has come and it’s probably not going anywhere. It could still possibly be used in the near future to generate less pressing parts of panels such as objects in the background and complex shading. Oh, and as I said I couldn’t let everyone else have all the fun. Behold, the images of an anime girl I generated by prompting an A.l. art program with “anime girl” and “hot anime girl” respectively. Please direct any and all art award notifications to my inbox.

Apart from some issues in the face, these impressed me pretty well. I make a damn good A.I. artist I'd say.

Everytime something like this breaks out, it reminds us of all of the progress we have achieved over the years and what may still be in store. 100 years ago it would be unfathomable to anyone that a machine could produce a compelling piece of art that was indistinguishable from a human’s work. Now it’s just a mildly interesting news story for the common person of 2022. What do you think is in store for the future of A.I. and art? How far away are we from seeing the first A.I. manga that’s not shit? Are you excited for the possibilities or afraid of their negative impact on the industry? Boot up your A.I. comment program, give a prompt of “comment about A.I.” and have it post your comment for you in the comments below!