Predictions for illustrators in an era of AI
Some meandering thoughts on the future of commercial art in an AI-generated world.
A few years ago, I was working as a project manager for a design studio that produced a magazine called Matters Journal. The fourth (and final, so far) print edition was all about ‘learning the future’; articles on the changing landscape of work and education due to rapid advances in technology.
Megan, the editor of this issue, asked me to contribute a comic for the back cover. The brief was ‘whatever you like, just tie it into the subject somehow’. I came up with 4 different ideas and pitched them to her. I was recently scrolling through my photos and stumbled across the sketches.
These are from 2019. Just a few years later ChatGPT would come crashing into our lives and every corner of the internet. There are plenty of people who saw it coming, but I’m not sure how many of us realised just how quickly the entire landscape of the internet would change. And how quickly we’d go from ‘wow’ to ‘ick’ on AI generated content.
Now every man and his dog can create shitty digital art!
Social media feeds are now choked with low effort AI slop. People send me things they think I’d find beautiful or funny (e.g. ‘Harry Potter in the style of Wes Anderson’) and I feel… nothing. Not a glimmer of joy, of humour, of awe.
The rapid proliferation of AI generated content really does feel like the logical conclusion for a society that’s become addicted to convenience, consuming, and fast everything; fashion, food, plastic in all its various forms.
I really enjoyed this article (found via Transmissions) that talks about convenience culture and AI taking the friction out of life, when it’s this friction that makes life worthwhile.
‘“All destination and no journey” is a pretty good explanation for why using AI to create art is mainly compelling to people who think about creativity in terms of producing content and generating intellectual property. They just want the thing they can market and sell for money or clout; they don’t care how they got there.
…But everything in my life that is worth having, love and friendship and art and community, I found by fighting my way through discomfort. Pain does not mean growth, but growth does require pain.’
And I can see a lot of people, initially charmed by the possibility of generative AI, starting to turn on it. After all, why should I spend my time engaging with your art if you couldn’t even be bothered spending the time making it?
A growing response to convenience culture
Over on the cesspool that is social media, there are a few little glimmers of light amidst the endless carnival of crap.
I’m watching a woman make a dress. She’s not just sewing it; she’s making it from scratch. She’s grown the flax, harvested, processed and is now spinning it on an antique spindle, with the intention to weave it.
I’m watching another guy make garum, fish sauce and other preserves that take months or years to come to fruition. Yes, he could buy his bottle of Kikkoman down at the shop, but instead he’s going to go through the painstaking process of fermenting and processing his own soybeans to make soy sauce.
People are documenting their analogue adventures growing their own food, foraging, weaving, crocheting, learning niche crafts and skills. These efforts are interesting and help to contextualise just how divorced we are from the real cost of production of everything in our lives, but they also require affluence.
They require enough:
Money to invest in equipment
Time to devote hours and hours to a niche interest (these people have time for their hobbies, meaning they’re not working all hours to make ends meet)
Land and/or space for working and storage (it would be a bit harder for someone in an apartment in Melbourne to have a go at growing their own flax, for example)
Which leads to…
Human effort and expertise as markers of affluence
When anyone with an average computer can type in a prompt and get a book or an artwork spat out in 10 seconds, the markers of wealth are going to be being able to afford things that take human hands and many hours to perfect. An oil painting that takes hundreds of hours of practice to master the skill, for example, or detailed metalworking that takes thousands of dollars in start-up materials before you can produce a single item.
Digital illustration has opened up doors for my career I couldn’t have predicted back in 2019. However, I can see the tides changing. Despite digital artists clocking many hundreds of hours perfecting their craft, and spending many thousands of dollars on equipment over the years, I feel like the perceived value of digital art is in decline.
My predictions for commercial illustrators?
Clients are going to want to see more work-in-progress and behind-the-scenes from digital illustrators to prove that illustrations are being drawn by an actual human
Physical mediums will come back into vogue… and maybe we’ll see a resurgence of some more obscure ones (anyone keen to try egg tempera? Fresco?)
People are going to gravitate to the obviously and imperfectly human, and reject anything ‘too polished’
Digital artists will start finding more and more work doing illustration in real time; live portraits at weddings and conferences, graphic recording, live murals during events
Finding work offline and in-person will make a comeback as people will want to buy from real people (not ideal for us working remotely, but hey, what can you do)
The final comic that made it on the back cover of Issue 4! Artists will start finding offline ways to connect with their audience after getting their art ripped off too many times by the Sheins, Temus and Alibabas out there
Snail mail is making a big comeback already, and this will continue to grow as people opt for the tangible and touchable over the digital
The businesses that cheap out on good graphic design and illustration by using AI will continue to cheap out this way, so there’s no point in trying to convince them to invest in human-made art and illustration.
What do you think is the future for illustrators and artists? Do you agree with me or do you have another hot take? Tell me below in the comments! 👇
