My First AI-Generated Images

AI-Generated Illustration/Image By Tewfic El-Sawy

As the title of this blog post announces, these are my very first AI generated image produced as a result on inputting a short string of "prompt" words on Midjourney. 

Midjourney is an independent research lab that produces an artificial intelligence program under the same name that creates images from textual descriptions...also known as "prompts". I created these images by just adding words such as "Chinese Opera artists realistic portraits" or something like that, and in a matter of seconds of rendering, these appeared as a result of these "prompts". Users create artwork with Midjourney using Discord bot commands.

I would quibble with them being "realistic", and I think they are more like overworked portraits with a very heavy-hand using a bunch of tools from a photo-editing software. However, they are beautiful for what they are...the details of the make-up and silken robes are truly impressive.

While I admired some AI images I had seen on social media platforms before, my  interest was piqued by this recent blog post by The Phoblographer. The article correctly (in my view) says that AI generated visuals don't deserve to be called "photographs", but that there's definitely immense potential for AI usage in art and CGI. 

Will I ever hang up my cameras because of AI and its potential? Of course not...but I will occasionally experiment and have fun with it. 

I've photographed many Chinese Opera artists in the production of my monograph "Chinese Opera of the Diaspora", from New York City, Penang, Hong Kong, Taipei...and while most of these AI-generated images are eye-catching, they're "lifeless" when compared side-to-side with the real photographs I made during my two years project. 

For this last entry, I worked the AI-Generated image by processing it in ON1 Raw software (adding a darker background -also AI preset- and some slight adjustments to the face).