How DALL-E’s disruption is both a blessing and curse for creativity

DALL-E – the disruptor of worlds or at least the art world. This online service is one of the many AI artwork generator platforms disrupting creative-based industries right now and causing many debates on how this technology benefits and hurts businesses centered around art. 

The Good Disruption

This platform has allowed anyone with a creative flare and an idea to create an image. Whether for a project or to have fun, all one must do to get their dream image is with a few keystrokes. But how does it work? As Ben Hagag, head of research at Darrow AI, explains to the Engadget blog, AI art-makers learn how to create art just as a child would learn to create art. “If a baby looked at a 1,000 pictures of a landscape, it would soon understand that the sky – normally oriented across the top of the image – would be blue while land is green.” 

So just like how an artist looks toward other artists for inspiration to create art, services like DALL-E are doing the same. This service can inspire creative and artistic people to get ideas for their work and help people get images for stories they are writing. The possibilities are endless. Below are two examples of descriptions of artwork by DALL-E.

The Bad Disruption

There are many problematic things to consider with platforms like DALL-E, though. The biggest concern is plagiarism. Since all of the art is based on AI looking at as many images as possible to develop art pieces, people wonder at what point ideas are being outright stolen to produce AI-generated artwork. Open AI claims not to steal from artistic sources, but it is hard to determine this claim when DALL-E is pulling inspiration from many pieces of art on the web.

Another problem with DALL-E is whether the pieces are “art” if a computer makes them rather than humans. In September 2022, at the Colorado State Art Fair, Jason Allen demonstrated how AI-generated art is beautiful and can win an award. Allen, a digital artist in Colorado, got the idea to submit one of the AI-generated pieces he had created under the “digital art/digitally manipulated photography” division of the fair and won $300. Many other artists were outraged that Allen won, and many said, according to the New York Times, that open AI won, not Allen, and he does not deserve to claim he won.  

Conclusion

Whether you can only see the good or the bad disruptions of software like DALL-E, the fact of the matter is that it is not going away.