Less than a month ago, the first comic book produced without illustrators was published. In fact, only two names appear on the main page of the book. The writer of the story is Steve Coulson, and the illustrator is MidJourney: an artificial intelligence that knows how to produce drawings on demand
Less than a month ago, the first comic book produced without illustrators was published. In fact, only two names appear on the main page of the book. The writer of the story is Steve Coulson, and the illustrator is MidJourney: an artificial intelligence that knows how to produce drawings on demand.
We are used to flipping through comic books quickly, forgetting the amount of work that went into them. Beyond the craft of writing, the part that takes the most time is – of course – the drawing itself. Each panel requires the human painter to translate the writer’s instructions into an image in his mind, then transfer it to the page in outline. Then go over the illustration and highlight its final configuration, then add the colors and small details. In the end, you also have to match the text boxes, stand and design everything – and send it to print.
It is not surprising to find that such an ant work, which is divided between several human workers, can easily take more than six months for a comic book of less than fifty pages.
Steve Coulson created a comic of the same length, in just four weeks. himself. in his spare time. It turns out that it is much easier to do this, when artificial intelligence takes the place of the illustrator.
But are the comics even good?
There are millions of painters in the world today, and somehow there seems to be one hobby that most of them have in common: they tend to underestimate artificial intelligence. Or at least they used to until the last year. What hasn’t been said about her already? has no “soul”[1]that it is not a true artist because it is devoid of “collective psychology that has developed over a millennium”[2]which may be “professional” but it cannot evoke real emotion in the viewer.
Researchers at the academy have shown in the past year that when they expose human subjects to art made by artificial intelligence, the responses change depending on the context. If humans know that it is artificial intelligence, then they tend to be less excited, and rate it as lower quality. In comparison, if the researchers lie and tell the subjects that it is human art, the emotion scores jump upwards. We have an automatic bias, it turns out, against artificial intelligence[3].
Coulson’s comics show that artificial intelligence can certainly evoke emotion, especially when used as a tool in the hands of a talented creator. I read the comic, and it is a work that manages to stir the veins of the heart, and the illustrations usually hit the mark. They are not perfect, and in some places they tend towards surrealism, but even then they manage to convey an emotion: horror, tension, longing for spaces and freedom.
[1] https://funnyjunk.com/Ai+art+looks+better+but+doesnt+have+soul/BTNBROG/
[2] https://towardsdatascience.com/artificial-intelligence-agents-are-not-artists-9743d5dba2d0
[3] https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2022.879088/full
[4] https://campfirenyc.com/comics/
[5] https://www.amazon.com/Bestiary-Chronicles-1-Steve-Coulson/dp/B0BLGDCKKV/
[6] https://www.cnet.com/culture/ai-drew-this-stunning-comic-series-youd-never-know-it/