It's one of the most well-known portfolio websites for digital artists, but head to ArtStation right now and you're in for a surprising sight. Pretty much the entire homepage has been transformed by protesting artists. The bone of contention? You guessed it – AI art.
Artists have been angry with ArtStation for allowing AI-generated art for a while now, but things seem to have reached boiling point as AI art has begun to appear at the top of the site's 'Explore' section of featured artworks. And now, a visual protest is sweeping across ArtStation. (Not sure what all the fuss is about AI art? Check out our guide on controversial text-to-image generator DALL-E 2 for the lowdown.)
Now, the homepage is full of repeating instances of the same image, created by Alexander Nanitchkov, which reads “No To AI Generated Images”. It seems we know where the ArtStation community sits on the issue, then.
Seeing AI art being featured on the main page of Artstation saddens me. I love playing with MJ as much as anyone else, but putting something that was generated using a prompt alongside artwork that took hundreds of hours and years of experience to make is beyond disrespectful. pic.twitter.com/4p2MLDbADDDecember 9, 2022
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So why is AI art so contentious? As well as questions surrounding its existential threat to artists, there are issues over copyright. Recently, hugely popular AI app Lensa has been accused of spitting out AI "art" with evidence of the original artists' signature still visible. And then there's the issue of over-sexualised AI art.
Daniel John is Senior News Editor at Creative Bloq. He reports on the worlds of art, design, branding and lifestyle tech (which often translates to tech made by Apple). He joined in 2020 after working in copywriting and digital marketing with brands including ITV, NBC, Channel 4 and more.