Is there a future for illustrators and designers with the development of crea...

rabiarahi

Companies have been investing in the development of neural networks and artificial intelligence for many years. And if all these years Hollywood has been scaring us with the uprising of machines, then experts on the Internet are saying that neural networks will leave us without work...

In this article, we will discuss what the future holds for the most creative representatives of the IT market and whether they should be afraid of technology.

Why designers and artists? Specialists learn about new achievements of neural networks almost immediately, but among ordinary users, the boom of visual applications occurred in 2022. Then, many companies presented their neural networks and provided access to ordinary users. In TikTok, you could see numerous collections of illustrations of social media marketing service how artificial intelligence draws countries in the future, Game of Thrones characters in the cyberpunk genre, a capybara and much more. Another example is when millions of users made avatars for themselves using Lensa AI for entertainment purposes. And although the excitement around the application has passed, the topic of using neural networks to create images is and will be relevant. Non-existent people, landscapes, photographs, paintings, animation or 3D characters - all this can already be drawn using technology. They work quickly, offer a large number of options, and are not that expensive. And any user on the Internet can make a request, you don’t have to be a designer for this. Just separate the necessary words, style, and get the result. However, we are not seeing mass layoffs of illustrators. And we will not see them in the coming years. Why? There are two fundamental points: The first is writing a request for a neural network . How many people know what they want? The option with “make something good, but don’t make something bad” will not work here. To get the desired illustration, you will have to write down many different details: color, shape, style, slopes, what to exclude, etc. Anyone can create something abstractly beautiful. But making something that will meet the needs of the business, the concept of the plot, is not so easy. A striking example is Carlson. A community competition was announced in the Ai molodca Telegram channel : to make a famous character using MJ and StableDiffusion. The options turned out bright and truly creative! But what if we need something more familiar to users? More predictable?

Works by members of the Ai molodca community
Business will need a person who will understand how to build queries, know which neural network to use for a specific task, etc. That is, it is no longer possible to replace a person.

The second point is the principle of operation of neural networks . Data is studied, an object is generated, errors are worked on... And if a person is removed from the entire system, what data will the neural network be trained on? Everything will become monotonous and boring at some point, since nothing new will be created.

Without the creative participation of people, all this does not make sense. Therefore, we are not afraid of technologies, but find an approach to how to make friends with them - and thereby become even more sought-after specialists in the market.

Neural networks that can already be used to help create illustrations:
DALL-E 2 is a product of OpenAI (whose entrepreneurs include Elon Musk himself). This network allows you to create and edit artistic or photorealistic images. And, according to experts, it has achieved impressive results.

Until the fall of 2022, not everyone could use the neural network. However, now it is available to everyone, you need to create an account and purchase the required number of credits (you will receive up to 50 free ones upon registration).

For example, it took only 20 seconds for the neural network to generate the cover for Cosmopolitan magazine. Technically. Before that, the designer spent hours searching for an idea, its subsequent improvement, etc. - which is what we talked about. It was not possible to replace a person.



(by r/NodaShogun on Reddit)
Midjourney is another successful example of using generative adversarial network technology (a machine learning algorithm in which there are two neural networks, one of which generates objects and the other determines whether they are correct). You can try creating your own art via Discord (free).


Users consider this network more artistic, because it creates truly creative art. For example, it transfers favorite characters to other genres (Harry Potter and cyberpunk).

The British magazine The Economist also used a neural network to create its cover .


"Space Opera Theater" by Jason Allen
And at the Colorado Fine Arts Competition, the winner was Jason Allen's painting in the Digital Art category. By the way, the author himself confirmed how important human participation was in the creation of the painting.