It has been brought to my attention by family members, friends, and even some readers that my current use of the AI Mirror program to edit my artwork is really overwhelming my personal style with its anime filter. The smiling anime face on the cheerleader is a good example. The eyes are bigger than I would have chosen to make them in a colored-pencil rendering. The nose is too small, and if I highlight it on the previous layer it makes it show up in the final, but still too small. What I like about it is the way it makes the highlights and shadows on her flesh and her clothes so much more accurate to the light source than I can do even with the digital stylus. But I am noticing more and more that the AI tends to do what it wants to the picture more than it does what I want. Even though I layered my drawing over a photo and traced it before coloring, the AI made changes that were not needed. I get that I leave openings on the face for interpretation because I am not trying to make an identifiable portrait. But it even makes the logo on the top of the uniform into something far more unreadable than the “Iowa” that was there. I get that it refuses to copy logos and copyrighted stuff, but that isn’t really the case in this picture. I realize I am trading some of my control as an artist for the good things the AI can do to correct the problems my arthritis makes. But I am really no happier with the situation than some of my critics. I only rely on the AI because it allows me to draw more and more frequently than I can with pencils, pen, and paper. This Devil’s bargain allows me to still draw every day.
This is what the AI does with old drawings I have done years ago. This one, Filch the burglar and entertainer from a D & D game in the early 1990s, shows how the AI can interpret my older and better drawings almost the way I would have done it myself. Almost… but you can plainly see the work I had to do on the hands. AI art programs have difficulty with hands. The left hand confused it because three fingers actually go off the page and I highlighted the top of the palm. The program broke the little finger and tried to bend a sixth finger across the top of the palm. The right hand is nearer to correct, though my glaucoma-hampered eyes still see the fingers as too long. That, however, could also be said of the original drawing.
So, as an artist, I do battle daily. Not only with the arthritis in my hands, but also some Artificial Unintelligence. They should call it AU rather than AI. It’s too dumb to get offended by that.
Catch a Falling Star 