When Art and Technology Collide

It’s scary to think about machines replacing human creative output. But I tend to take the glass-half-full lens when it comes to innovation; I’m a perpetual technology optimist. Tools like DALL-E and Midjourney and Stable Diffusion will greatly amplify human creativity.

Midjourney has rapidly become one of the most popular servers on all of Discord, with 2 million members. This has thrust text-to-image AI into the mainstream, which was all part of the plan for Midjourney’s founder David Holz. Holz told The Verge last month (in an excellent interview worth reading in full): “A lot of people ask us, why don’t you ju... See more

It will still require skill to make high-quality art. Even with an iPhone in 1.2 billion hands, many people are still really, really bad photographers. iPhones can now be used to make feature-length motion pictures that nearly mirror in quality films shot on expensive professional equipment. But you still need to be a talented director to make some... See more