I saw Prequel in an ad and thought it looked cool, so I gave it a download and started playing with it. From the first photo I gave it, I thought the output was fabulous. I decided to subscribe to it, at least for a bit, and give it more photos of myself that I like - usually photos that I’ve been using for swimsuit contests or Instagram posts.
To “make” these, I used the AI Style called Watercolor in the Prequel app. Most of the images here are first-time outputs, so I didn’t re-run the AI over the photo - the first try, I thought, was cool enough.
The faces are a bit uncanny at times, but they do seem beautiful when all I gave it is a face.
What all of these remind me of are Photoshop or illustrator magazines, where the cover of each magazine features a beautiful woman and stylistic flourishes of color, linework, or paint splotches. Only the AI work is a bit less exact, there are moments where ears, noses, and facial edges aren’t that clear or defined.
I couldn’t find much about how the AI works or how it operates - if it’s highly trained on people’s existing artwork, or less so. I found a few apocryphal blurbs on Wikipedia and that’s about it. Unlike some AI art generators, it’s not based on prompts, only photos and AI filters.
What I notice it seems to do is make my eyes ever-so-slightly bigger, darkens my eyebrows, and it grabs highlights on my face and makes them even more highlighted. After looking at these I felt drawn to the idea of applying more moisturizer, or I felt the need to buy some highlighter, or something. I don’t dislike it, it’s only something I notice. I did like what it did with a photo of me with my hat on, it turned me into a kind of Indiana Jones type character.
After looking at this I sort of thought - I should get a hat like that, haha. I had the same thought when this one below popped out - the dress in it is pretty, though I don’t like the ragged edges at the end so much.
When I was in my art major and heck probably even right now, people would get a little depressed when they learned that many realistic artists use projectors to paint. I think I was a little dismayed too. Some of the magic or romance of art went away, but it’s also nice to know that some art is made with tracing tools, because unique deviation from reality and the human element is what makes good art so good. It’s still worth it to learn to paint and draw realistically.
I’d say the same is true of AI, it’s still worthwhile to be an artist even if machines seem to be outpacing us. It’s a way, and there are many other ways, to make images.
It would be a mistake to say that AI art is a phase or fad, that would be like saying gouache paint is a fad. It’s hot right now, and it might wane in popularity, but I don’t see it going away completely like pogs. I see it as a quick and easy tool that’s there, has near instant gratification, and people will continue to utilize. It has to be a lot like when the camera came out and painting suddenly seemed slow and a lot of work. It has to be like when phones got cameras and suddenly nobody had to go into a darkroom anymore, and everyone was and still is a photographer.
Is it hard to make these? I would say it can sometimes be hard to throw on a swimsuit and get a pose right. It’s not ‘easy’ to stay on the extremer side of fit. It is easy, though, to download an app and push a button and have a computer fairy put flourishes of paint around me, lengthen my already-long hair, and mist my face over with the sheerest digital makeup.
The other question that comes to mind with AI is: Is this taking someone’s job away? In my case, I think the answer is no. I don’t know if I would ask anyone to make a drawing of me like this. I can’t imagine myself sending someone a swimsuit photo and saying “Please make this into a drawing.” That’s not something I would do. But now that I’ve had an AI do it… the idea is in my head and maybe it would be cool? We also have to talk about the ease factor here. Pressing a button and paying 5 dollars is easier than mustering up a bunch of courage, vulnerability, and self-acceptance to ask a living, breathing artist to make a painting of us. Unless a person is a fount of confidence, there’s going to be some worry about how an artist will paint our necks, inner thighs, freckles. Like a duke getting a portrait commissioned in 1800, we’re going to assume the artist will smooth out our wrinkles but, what if they approach things so realistically that they don’t?
I think AI art - with all of its instant-ramen ready-now power - is giving us an opportunity to connect with those who create non-AI art. If we want something instant that gets us through the day, that is going to be forgotten in a week, we can ask the robots. If we want a deep, real connection, we will ask an artist.
