These artists are embracing AI in their workflow

The auction house Christie’s is selling its first major collection of artworks generated with the help of artificial intelligence. The auction is attracting big dollar bids, but also controversy — thousands of artists have signed an open letter calling for the sale to be shut down over concerns that many works were generated with the help of AI tools accused of training on copyrighted works without permission.

The rise of text-to-image generative AI has roiled creative professions, with some artists fighting back in ongoing lawsuits or by trying to sabotage their data so AI web crawlers can’t train on it. But many art and design professionals are also embracing the new technology as a way to expand their businesses.

“I think that graphic designers are a lot less scared of the AI tools than folks might think they are,” said Nicola Hamilton, president of the Association of Registered Graphic Designers. Surveys of members have found they’re using the technology most often in early brainstorming or for administrative business tasks.

“The threat for designers stems less from AI itself and more from a lack of education on the employer-client side, about like, how to actually use AI properly,” said Hamilton. “Without designers at the center of this AI usage you’re opening yourself up to really poorly executed campaigns.”

Last year, Paula Scher, a partner and principal at the design firm Pentagram, was leading a project with some unique constraints. The federal government hired them to help create the website performance.gov, which translates long wonky government reports into bite-size, user-friendly summaries for the public.

“The goal was to make it really completely self-operating — that the report would automatically turn out in the appropriate typeface and in the appropriate layout and format that we designed,” Scher said.

It would even generate a unique graphic logo for every topic, from veterans’ health to roadway safety and space technology. 

To make a library of 1,500 pictograms on a limited government budget, Pentagram started with a small sample of original illustrations made in house with paint and cut paper. Then, using an AI tool called Midjourney, they applied the design language to make the rest of the logos. They used text prompts to tweak the style and color palettes. 

“It’s a series of accidents and corrections, just like all art is,” said Scher. But it’s much faster than doing it by hand or with traditional illustration software.

That’s a big selling point for surrealist digital artist Elise Swopes.

“Saving time — oh my gosh,” she said. “I mean, if I had the the ability to do what I do now, I would have saved myself maybe years off my life.”

Swopes works as an Adobe “evangelist,” sharing how she incorporates Adobe’s suite of AI tools into her workflow. Features like “generative fill,” which allows users to remove parts of an image and fill in the background with AI, or “generative expand,” which she uses to adjust the dimensions of her content for various platforms.

“I would feel limited in some aspect if I didn’t give myself the opportunity to learn it and to acknowledge it and to add it to my bank of different skills that I have,” said Swopes.

Adobe’s AI is unique in that it’s trained only on licensed images. 

Most other image generators don’t disclose what’s in their training data, which raises ethical and legal questions, said independent branding designer Eric Vasquez, who works on mostly entertainment and sports content.

“A lot of the companies that I work with — they’re very skeptical about AI,” said Vasquez. “They don’t want AI to be in the final output of anything that they are going to have as like a client facing image or campaign.”

To avoid potential copyright infringement, he only uses AI for brainstorming and early mockups.

But AI could offer new business models for artists like Lisa Vleming, who works with smaller clients. She designs posters, logos, event invitations and more in a retro groovy style.

“My work is extremely time consuming and my pricing reflects that,” said Vleming. “I get a lot of people that want to work with me, but they can’t afford my services.”

She’s trying out some new AI features launched by the freelance marketplace Fiverr, like the new AI assistants, which Vleming has used to correspond with clients and gather initial information about what they’re looking for.

Fiverr also recently launched “Creation Models,” which allow freelancers to train generative AI models on their own body of work, which clients can then use to generate images.

“And they can take that and come to me and say, ‘Here’s what I created. Can you keep that, change this, or just use it as an inspiration?’” Vleming said.

Fiverr CEO Micha Kaufman described the AI as “another ultra phase of the industrial revolution, because it makes every person into a production house.”

He said he hopes the AI tools will help creatives to scale their business in a sustainable way.

“These models were developed based on the heart and soul of their creators,” said Kaufman. “The fact that it’s generated very, very fast doesn’t mean that it’s worthless, it just means that it’s efficient.”

Artists retain control of the models and set their own prices and conditions for what’s generated. Vleming said she hopes it will allow her to take on more clients at lower price points.

This could feed into concerns the technology will devalue artists’ skills. 

But, after five decades in design, Paula Scher at Pentagram said there’s no use in hiding from AI.

“I’ve gotten through the notion that you can’t be scared of the technology. You’ve got to find out what it’s going to do,” she said.

She’s already seen the job change a lot since the days of literally cutting and pasting images by hand.