A lot of people are worried ai will steal their work.
So I’m here to share a way to protect your career from ai, and I’m NOT talking about opting out of your imagery being used to train it.
Funnily enough, the fact my work might be used to train ai or be used in some weird amalgamation that’s spewed out after someone types in a few words, isn't what bothers me.
I’ve seen my work copied loads of times over the years, sometimes credited, often times not. So artist’s don’t need some AI software for their work to be compiled and spat back out by someone else.
That’s literally the process all us artists do, my style is a mix of 20-30 artiststhat I love and have stolen elements from, ai might be airing artists dirty laundry but it’s still just the creative process in action.
I also appreciate people have issues with the outcome essentially being a collage of everyones existing files, but from what I’ve read that’s not exactly how ai works, and even if it did… that’s essentially just a digital collage.
All of this has already been happening, waaaay before ai came onto the scene.
Clients put mood boards together of everyone else's work and they ask an illustrator to merge them or sometimes even sending over a specific illustration or artist and ask you to replicate their style, it already happens!
But in terms of protecting yourself from your work training ai, you’d have to never post anything public ever again. You could stick to doing solely in person exhibitions but still someone might pop a photo of the exhibition online and bam it could be snapped up by some training software.
I’ve been posting my work online for 20 years… I doubt ai is gonna want to be trained using my final fantasy fan art from when I was 12, but my work islittered around the internet so there’s no way I could fully stop any of it being used to train.
As long as your work is public and accessible, you always run the risk of it being copied, ai or not.
Think of the amount of inspiration we take in on a daily basis, all our Pinterest reference boards that we don't credit, runway photographers that fashion illustrators don't credit, so we just gotta accept we’re all part of this big creative moodboard, it’s give and take.
Don’t get me wrong, I can’t stand ai being used to create art, but rather than focusing my time and energy on fighting a battle I don't have full control over...I’d rather pivot!
So, back to the subject at hand, if I’m not suggesting ways to protect your work from training ai, what am I suggesting?
There’s a reason I used the term 'protect your career' from ai, rather than 'protect your work'.
The first step to counteract ai, is to create work that isn’t just a pretty picture.
If you create illustrations that are uniquely yours, born from your own perspective and focus on the process of creating, rather than just spewing out a finished image, this is all things an Ai can’t mimic.
Ai might be able to mimic the overall aesthetic of a finished piece but that’s where it ends, and as artists we are all much more than just an overall aesthetic.
I know some of you are sitting there reading this thinking 'I'm a Fashion Illustrator, not Tracey Emin' but I don’t mean every time you do a drawing you need to tear your own heart out for display or write a 4 paragraphexplanation of it.
But think of all the artists you admire.
You love their work because it’s born from their unique point of view. They have a specific way of looking at the world, that’s why if you give 6 artists the same thing to draw, they’d each tackle it a different way.
Because it’s all our experiences, loves, dislikes and passions that come together to create something, whether we realise it or not.
And that’s how you protect yourself from ai, by creating work that is an extension of you, coming at each piece from your own unique point of view.
Even IF ai mimicked a piece of your work entirely, it's a surface level replica, it lacks the context of you as an artist, it's a lonely island, whilst your body of work is an entire continent.
So it’s not necessarily about keeping your work away from prying ai, but it’s about being such a good artist with a specific outlook, that a client would choose to work with you over just getting a manufactured mass of pixels spat out from a few key words.
That's what we all have to remember, ai might seem like this omnipotentbeast but it's real people who are using it, you can’t really compete with ai’s offering and that’s the whole point, it’s not to compete.
If someone wants something done cheap or quick, those options have always been available. Does anyone remember when fiverr first started? It was a place you could go to get illustrations or logos done for literally £5.
Completely shitting on actual illustrators and graphic designers, but people still used illustrators and graphic designers. It’s all about vision, quality and branding
If everything was about price and quickness, then Prada wouldn't exist because of Primark and Nobu would't exist because of Itsu.
I know this all sounds a bit arty farty but it’s just a convoluted way of saying everyone has more to offer than just a finished piece and everyone can approach art from a unique point of view.
My new drawing course, which is a brand new and improved version of my extreeeemely well reviewed illustration course, that was retired earlier this year, has been designed to help guide you through doing all that!
Giving you the tools to be able to explore your illustration work further and find your own unique style and voice, creating work born from your own experiences, all whilst enjoying having a good ol' scribble and improving your skills!
When I'm saying 'unique point of view' and 'work that's your own', it's a lot simpler than it sounds, and whatever your existing drawing style, it can be adapted to include it!
So hesitate no longer, come and join the course:
Click here to grab your space on my new course
This drawing course will help you with creating work that’s unique and your own, whilst the career course launching next year will help you with branding yourself as uniquely as your art, 2 pronged attack!
That was a long one ay? So thank you for reading and I hope to see you on the course!