The relationship between artificial intelligence and artists is something… complicated. Many choose to turn to AI, either for inspiration or as a starting point in their work, but others are aware of the significant risks they face as image generation models improve and refine their flaws.
The main reason is easily deducible: the loss of jobs. We have already seen several examples online of illustrations, posters, or book covers made with AI that “caught quite a bit of attention.”
Many companies, the moment they realize they can save a few cents by not hiring qualified professionals, don’t hesitate to resort to whatever means, even if it may harm their brand.
In the latest instance of artists’ discontent with AI, we encounter the new Firefly model, Adobe‘s artificial intelligence, which was launched this week in Illustrator to create vector images (images that can be scaled without losing resolution) simply by entering a text indicating what we want.
“Vectors are completely editable and scalable, compact, and organized into groups, making their reuse easy,” Adobe states in a blog post.
“The vector model has been trained on licensed content, such as Adobe Stock, and public domain content whose copyrights have expired, and it can generate high-quality vector results specialized in scenes, themes, icons, and patterns that offer unparalleled versatility.”
While we mentioned that the new Illustrator feature, called Text to Vector, could be very useful for professionals, that was just one side of the story. Following Adobe’s announcement, many users, both artists and consumers, have expressed their dissatisfaction on Twitter because this new feature could eliminate the need for certain jobs.
Even though Firefly has been trained on Adobe Stock images and, therefore, hasn’t stolen images from artists, this doesn’t seem to have eased the concern of many professionals who see how, little by little, many companies are turning to AI to replace them.
