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AI images generated by the same prompts with just a year between them show just how far the technology has come in the past year.
It's set to be the next big thing, assuming that it isn't already too massive to contain as Terminator director James Cameron fears, as AI has made some incredible leaps and bounds in recent times.
Of course it still hits the occasional hiccup, with AI sometimes threatening people or trying to steal the nuclear codes, but in general it's in a much more sophisticated place than it was as recently as a year ago.
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That may or may not be a good thing depending on your perspective, as AI getting smarter and being able to manipulate people is how plenty of sci-fi dystopias really get started.
As AI gets better at pulling the proverbial wool over people's eyes it can be more difficult to distinguish it from a real person and that extends to the world of art too.
While people have been having fun using AI to generate 'real life' versions of their favourite cartoons others have been demonstrating just how far AI has come in a year.
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Reddit user u/quarantineandesign posted a series of images side by side showing what happens when you gave an AI an image prompt one year apart and the difference is staggering.
The pictures from 2022 are clearly AI generated artworks, each one having that classic uncanny property where there's just something not quite right about it.
Whether it be proportions or fine details there was something comfortingly wrong about AI generated art which meant a person could easily tell it wasn't made by human hands.
Now, however, the same prompts a year later have generated works of art that you'd struggle to differentiate from actual pictures of people.
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The first set of images were made with Midjourney version one in April 2022 while the second set were made with Midjourney version five in April 2023.
The prompt for the images of the woman was along the lines of: "35 year old serious Pakistani woman looking at the camera. The setting is a village. Photorealistic, natural lighting, sunlight."
The prompt for the images of the man was: "A close-up scene from a drama movie, a young Pakistani man wearing a hoodie with phulkari embroidery. The setting is a garden with volumetric lighting and warm color grading. The scene is shot with a Cooke S4 32mm lens."
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AI artwork has become so difficult to distinguish from the real thing that it's even winning prizes against works submitted by actual people.
It goes the other way as well, actual art created by a person who dedicated time and effort to it is getting unfairly dismissed as an AI-generated knock off.
The technological tendrils of AI artwork has also extended to the world of photography, as an artist who recently won a major photography award revealed he'd created the image with AI, claiming he'd done it to spark a discussion about the extent to which AI was developing.
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Other photographers have had to confess that their pictures are AI forgeries after feeling bad about the praise that was being piled onto them for work they hadn't even done.
An AI's ability to generate an image that's functionally indistinguishable from the real thing is another cause for concern as it could fuel a spread of disinformation.
We all remember how the internet collectively fell for a fake picture of the Pope in a puffer jacket a few weeks ago, how long will it be until we get the next hoax?
Topics: Technology, Art, Artificial Intelligence
Joe Harker