AI and Art are at Loggerheads! Yet NFTs and Metaverse Endure

Though AI and art are at loggerheads, NFTs and Metaverse are bound to find their sweet spot in future

The year 2022 has been quite the year for AI art. Nothing proves more than the controversies and the aplomb it received last year. It was the fastest-moving technology, particularly, in the second half. From generating images, though some distorted and hardly meaningful, to making movies with few worded prompts, it seemed as if it is about to obliterate humans from art and artistic pursuits. But what provoked art critics into under-rating is the fact that AI art was getting more than required attention so much so that one of the pieces 'Theatre D'Opera Spatial', was awarded the top prize at Colarado State Fair. To add to the furor, artists were copyrighting AI-generated art. 'Zarya of the Dawn' the AI generated graphic novel created with Midjourney, by graphic novel artist, Kris Kashtanova was granted US copyright registration. The way AI art was gaining popularity and acceptance as the original art was raising many questions around its originality putting AI and art at loggerheads.  Critics are calling AI art pieces, paintings by numbers but not humans. Irrespective of what status it is appended, AI enthusiasts would find myriad new ways to take AI art forward and find new avenues forcing art critics to embrace the technology. NFTs in Metaverse is already proving this point.

Though the year 2021 has seen tremendous growth in NFTs, 2022 has not been that good with NFT market falling by 60% in the last quarter. What still holds NFT enthusiasts is its democratising ability. Its failure only proves the inability of NFT artists to bypass gatekeepers and the unexplored potential of NFTs. To date, only cartoons and memes dominated the NFT space with projects like CryptoPunks and Bored Ape Yacht Club grabbing the center stage. For sure, as AI progresses and learns to critic itself or rather retrain itself, the space will be ripe for NFTs and Metaverse. Big tech companies have already walked the NFT path with big-ticket collaborations. Google, to help the AI artist community, making it easy to work with its Colab product on NFT projects. Other examples include IBM Cloud & Watson Studio. The reasons why NFTs are perceived as the future AI art go beyond decentralization. Dr, Alex Alter, principal AI scientist for Altered State Machine states that apart from looking unique, NFTs generate an abstract feeling to individuals. No two NFTs would have similar pixels and would be created through DAOs and chatbot technology, which is currently not possible. They will prove to be disruptive just because of the functionality they offer, if not the aesthetic value they carry. Alex says, "In the future, people will be able to own their own 'AI artist' NFT (AI which can produce art) or use a DAO AI to create art together with that AI artist."