A.I. ALBUM ART

I released a new single a couple of days ago, and only after I’d uploaded it to the distributor did I realise that the artwork was crap.

As a photographer, I have a large archive of pictures that I can draw upon for designing album covers, but I was in a hurry this time, and the photo I’d chosen wasn’t the best, and the colour editing I’d done didn’t improve things. I quickly lo went to the distributor’s website and found that it is possible to upload new artwork, even after release, so I had a chance to create a replacement.

It was then that I suddenly thought of A.I. Last year I’d played around with a site that could produce pretty impressive images from text prompts and I’d thought that this might be the way to go in the future, but at that time the resolution offered wasn’t high enough to make it possible.

Would it be feasible now? I found Google’s ImageFX, and discovered that their pictures are both free and of a good enough quality for my needs.

A few quick experiments and I was totally blown away with the results. The images are staggering, with a wide range of stylistic choices available. And with that, I’ve changed over to A.I. for the album covers of my future music releases.

The pictures on this page were all quickly generated with just a simple sentence describing the scene I wanted. It’s both wonderful and also scary in its implications.

I mean, let’s be honest, the game is up for graphic artists, illustrators, designers and photographers. Thank Dog that I’m just a hobbyist and I don’t mind only getting a few pennies from my photo and music sales. Imagine if you have to earn a living from this!

In terms of images, A.I. is already good enough for many commercial needs. Video is on the way. Music isn’t there yet, as it can only come up with some pretty poor elevator muzak at the moment, but it won’t be long.

Universal Basic Income is really going to be needed in the not very distant future if things continue developing at this pace on the articificial intelligence front.