Everyone's An Artist Now

The illustration shown above was a collaboration between my friend Ted DeWeese and Google's AI. Ted is not an artist despite the evidence to the contrary as seen here. Instead he works in the field of electronics maintenance. But after reading my recent post about telling AI what to draw, he decided to try it himself and came up with this fantastic image.  Below is another of Ted's creations:

According to Ted, "Each was done with a sentence less than 10 words in length." Which means it took him less than one minute to create a complex illustration any art director would love. 

So this is life now: everyone's an artist. I remember my days as a newspaper illustrator, toiling well into the wee hours of the morning over a drawing that would garner few, if any, accolades and ultimately end up in the next day's trash. So I guess AI is a good thing, except for it being a bad thing, i.e. eliminating an entire career.

At the very least you have to marvel that someone who earns his living fixing electronic equipment has this wild and crazy imagery rattling around in his brain. Who knows -- perhaps your plumber or insurance salesman is harboring an inner Picasso. Or maybe even you.