By Natalia Galicza

Jason Allen carried three canvases onto the Colorado State Fairgrounds in Pueblo last August with as much confidence as he could muster. The 39-year-old had never considered himself an artist, but a recent discovery had emboldened him to enter a small art contest: a new artificial intelligence software called Midjourney, capable of creating novel images based on the user’s input. The fair was as ordinary as you can imagine, with carnival rides and fried food, monster trucks and a mullet contest, but Allen’s submissions turned out to be more revolutionary than he expected.

Using AI as his medium, instead of a paintbrush or stylus, he generated a series of images reflecting his interest in fantasy worlds; he also runs a fantasy games company and writes AI-fueled science fiction. He thought of each visual, typed a string of words into a chat box, conjured up an image within seconds and repeated the process — tweaking descriptors — until he was satisfied.

After more than 80 hours and nearly 1,000 iterations, he chose three for his “space opera” series: otherworldly scenes of robed figures communing among the cosmos. The outcome was remarkable. One judge, an art historian, compared them to renaissance paintings. A critic at The Washington Post said they evoke the style of 19th century symbolist painters like Gustave Moreau.

His method could well become a new model of artistic creation. While AI has been developing for decades, its capabilities in the arts have come to a head in recent years, embodied by Midjourney and numerous other art generators launched in the past year or so. There are now cellphone applications that turn selfies into illustrated avatars; text-to-image apps that render photorealism; robots with more of a penchant for the abstract; and chat bots capable of writing anything from haikus to academic papers and even novels.

Allen’s submission took first place in the Colorado state fair’s amateur “digitally manipulated photography” category and made national news several times over. The concept wasn’t exactly new; world class institutions now proudly display AI art. But as an outsider, Allen’s win ignited controversy.

https://www.deseret.com/2023/2/27/23593997/artificial-intelligence-art-ethics