Is AI better at making art than humans?

On Thursday, May 11 at 19:30 GMT:
Popular AI image generators are able to produce seemingly endless amounts of stunning visual art in just a matter of seconds. So where does the technology leave professional artists?

Earlier this year, a group of artists and illustrators filed a class action lawsuit that claims the generative AI tools Midjourney, Stable Diffusion and DreamUp violate US copyright law by repurposing artists’ work found on the open web.

AI image generators are trained on datasets made up of billions of images collected online and generally without the artists’ knowledge or approval. Users can then prompt the AI to create new artwork in the style of a specific artist. For many digital artists, the technology represents a threat to their livelihoods. Yet others see AI as a powerful new medium that can be used for artistic expression.

In this episode of The Stream, we’ll look at how artificial intelligence is disrupting creative work and getting people to re-examine how we think about art.

On this episode of The Stream, we speak with:
Boris Eldagsen
Artist

Katherine Elkins, @katelelkins
Professor of Humanities, Kenyon College

Shane Balkowitsch, @balkowitsch
Artist