This AI-generated ad scares me

Using AI to create digital art is becoming a worryingly hot topic for many professional artists. The rise of AI that can create incredible and creative paintings could put artists out of work; that’s the fear. But AI art isn’t taking over just yet, in fact some of it is absolutely horrific. Seriously, these images would give Salvador Dalí nightmares.

We’ve seen big tech brands enter the AI ​​art space and some, such as: DALL-E 2 and Google’s imageare certainly impressive, although I wonder if they can actually replicate human expression.

The London agency’s new advertising project 10 days (opens in new tab) saw the AI ​​platform Midjourney launch a series of campaigns around famous 10 well-known brands, including Nespresso, KFC, Gucci, British Airways and Ray-Ban. Frankly, I find the results shocking. Not because it could replace artists, which is of course bad, but because art terrifies me.

Midjourney’s results are downright frightening, and include a painting of a hen eating fried chicken, a Gucci-colored snail on a tongue, and a mashup of great human sharks – it’s mechanical abstract expressionism and I find it disturbing.

The art is made by entering six genre-based words into the algorithm, such as “sci-fi,” “noir,” and “cinematic,” in addition to the required brand names. It took Midjourney minutes to create 24 unique images per brand. 10 Days believes that using AI in this way is not designed to replace creatives, but to create iterations on a theme that artists can then elaborate and embellish — and improve upon.

It would certainly require some tweaking too, if Midjourney were ever unleashed on an actual ad campaign. The AI ​​may be able to create abstract and awkward artwork, but no spell checker has been found yet – we’re not sure if ‘KFFC’, ‘Ubber’ and ‘Wumbldoon’ would impress the customers.