Written for Influencer Intelligence
Generative AI is shaking up the influencer marketing landscape. Wrapped up within this conversation, is the existence of AI art generators. Models such as DALL-E and Midjourney can generate original works of art from the input of a few choice keywords. The technology works by scraping the internet for existing imagery with matching meta data and teaching algorithms to replicate those data patterns to create new images. This has been a point of contention for a few years now, inviting claims of plagiarism.
Sparking a number of concerns over ethics, intellectual property, creativity, ownership and overall legality, these programmes often use real artist’s work to train their AI models. In fact, on some systems, it is possible to command the AI to generate a picture in the style of a specific named artist, without permission.
AI app, Lensa, hit the headlines in 2022 when its ‘magic avatar’ feature became an online phenomenon. The app creates a variety of custom digital avatars based on the input of a few human selfies, turning people into cartoonish anime, photo-realistic fairies and more as though designed by a talented digital artist. After gaining viral popularity with users sharing their bespoke likenesses on social media, Lensa hit the top of the App Store charts in December last year. Similarly, the tag #aiart has 3.7bn views on TikTok.
At the height of its fame, Lensa came under fire for exploiting human artists, with users discovering real artists’ signatures in many of the app’s ‘original’ output, confirming fears that the technology uses existing work, without crediting or financially compensating those artists. Artists who upload their work to the internet are now at risk of having their art used as a training tool for artificial competitors.
The 2022 Colorado State Fair’s annual art competition gave a blue-ribbon prize to digital artist Jason M. Allen, for his piece: ‘Théâtre D’Opéra Spatial’, which was created with AI programme, Midjourney, igniting backlash from other artists. Indeed, several ongoing lawsuits deal with use of AI-generated images, with the issue of ownership and authorship much of a grey area at present. For that reason, the concept of copyright infringement is a contentious one. In 2023, many video game developers have outright banned AI art to avoid any ‘possible copyright issues’ as the debate rages on.
So what does this mean for artists and creators?
Artists and content creators are now having to compete with free, easy-to-use and incredibly quick software that could threaten their livelihood. Similarly, this technology broadens the art space, making every user able to be a potential artist, which could devalue the output of skilled creatives, who often train for years to hone their craft. However, currently there is no evidence to suggest AI generators will replace influencers entirely. Instead, creators may need to work a little harder to convince brands of the inherent advantages of human input. In March 2023, Coca-Cola launched a global competition tasking consumers with creating a new branded design using AI tools, effectively levelling up its UGC outreach in one fell swoop. Whilst there are no restrictions against full-time artists and content creators entering the competition, this decision by the drinks corporation could give cause for concern amongst creators who may now be losing out to an entire world of technologically-advanced submissions. That being said, there is still certainly a market for designers and artists to take detailed briefs and commissions, with many brands and clients preferring a human touch.
Another layer to this discussion is the advent of AI art influencers – digital creatives and tastemakers who produce AI art exclusively and, in some cases, have created entire digital worlds and concepts. Take @thevisualdome, an account which sprung up recently and has rapidly amassed 138K Instagram followers. The creators of the account have designed an immersive parallel world complete with a host of AI-generated characters and lands.
This further diversifies the influencer landscape, and widens the playing field for brand collaborations. Brands looking to partner with AI influencers or use AI-generated systems in their marketing strategies need me mindful of the potential pitfalls, working with legal teams to establish clear guidelines and framework to protect content.
The newfound ease of content production will lead to an increase in the volume of content created, with new accounts flooding their feeds with several posts a day. This can lead to certain accounts being favoured by social algorithms, growing audiences and followings at record pace. What impact this level of platform flooding will have on other influencer content remains to be seen, as does the bleeding of this type of content into other industry sectors.
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