OH NO! IS CONCEPT ART DYING?

The past year there has been a lot of discussion and controversy on social media about Midjourney (and similar art prompt AI’s) and its uses for generating concept art. We have been exploring these tools and, through our artist network, seen many others experiment with them too. This has resulted in exclamations such as “Concept art is dead!” or “This is the end of concept artists!”. This begs the question: Is concept art really dying? Is our entire art niche in danger of becoming obsolete?

… so, is it? Well, we certainly don’t think so.

It’s a tool! And, as with any other tool there are pros and cons. But, with Midjourney, and similar AI art prompts, there are some contentious ways in which they are being developed and employed.

This article reflects our views on how we see AI art’s current use within the gaming industry for the purpose of creating concept art.

Concept art solves problems

Referring to one of my previous articles, I defined concept art as an approach to solving creative problems through art. As stated above, Midjourney is a “tool” and, as such, does not solve problems on its own. An artist or designer needs to operate and direct the tool before it is of any use. It is great for inspiration or cloud watching, trying things out and getting inspired. But it cannot make a final delivery for you. That would be malpractice.

If you are using Midjourney output as your final result, you will be pushing the workload onto the art director you are working for. They have hired you to solve their visual problems, so if you deliver an AI output and cannot explain the reasoning behind the choices made or incorporate feedback given by the art director, you have failed in your task as concept artist. The art director might as well be using this tool themselves without hiring you for it.

This brings me to my main point about AI art prompts being “just tools”: if there is no artistic intention or interpretation behind the images, it is just a “sophisticated” machine outputting images. If the results have no culture or opinion, no ethical or otherwise meaningful and conscious consideration put into them, it is just “junk food”. It might be fast and get you a feeling of being full. But it is empty calories with limited nutritional value.

If the purpose of concept art is solving problems, you, as a concept artist, should be able to answer the questions of “Why, how, and what” of the final designs that you produce. Every aspect of your art is conscious decision. You, the artist, have consciously chosen to design your art in one way, and therefore simultaneously chosen NOT to design things in a thousand different ways. An AI art prompt will, at it’s very best, be able to answer one thing for you – and that is: “What”. It is “what” you asked it to be and nothing more. “How” and “Why” will remain unanswered.

So, it is important to remember that AI Prompts are a tool among many other tools, and not a quick fix that can be used to solve problems on its own. Nor is it a threat or a substitute to concept artists, as long as the artists focuses on problem solving.

Whose art is it anyway??

On Midjourney’s website you can read their Terms of Service regarding copyright:

“Rights you give to Midjourney: By using the Services, you grant to Midjourney, its successors, and assigns a perpetual, worldwide, non-exclusive, sublicensable no-charge, royalty-free, irrevocable copyright license to reproduce, prepare Derivative Works of, publicly display, publicly perform, sublicense, and distribute text, and image prompts you input into the Services, or Assets produced by the service at your direction. This license survives termination of this Agreement by any party, for any reason.”

In other words, Midjourney will get the right to use your output in their system – no confidentiality and no discretion. Even if you come up with something unique, others can replicate it and Midjourney themselves can use it too for whichever purposes they may have.

“Your Rights: Subject to the above license, you own all Assets you create with the Services. This does not apply if you fall under the exceptions below.”

Exceptions being, not paying for the right type of user license. And even if you do own it, as stated above, so will Midjourney.

One of the most controversial uses I see, is artists posting Midjourney output on their social media and claiming it as their own creation, given they have written the prompts. The way I see it, you might as well post an image you found by searching with the right words on Pinterest. You cannot use it as your own! Pinterest or Google would probably be an even faster way to find a great image. You do not have sole ownership of the images and are infringing others’ rights as well if you input “in the style of [Artist Name]”. If you go to the Louvre and take a picture of The Mona Lisa, your photograph will be unique – one of a kind – but you still won’t be the creator of The Mona Lisa. You just have a nice photo of a painting. And in the world of AI Prompts, the photo will not even be yours.

Even more controversial is the way in which the AI’s have been trained. The harvest of unwilling, uncredited, unpaid artwork is an atrocity. You would never grab 100 peoples hard work and do a gallery exhibition that you charge money for, without involving any of the artists. So, grabbing 5 billion images without consent to train your AI is immoral and could be considered a massive copyright infringement.

The art test

While doing an internal art challenge at our studio, I tried using Midjourney to create my concept art. The theme of the art challenge was “Wait, Are We the Bad Guys?”. I used this phrase as basis input for the for prompt. ?

After some failed attempts I found a much better reference by searching on Google. Now, I am aware that I cannot use the Google result as my own creation, but neither will I use Midjourney’s output.

Admittedly, my goal here was to try to communicate an idea and not to create a beautiful piece of art. And that is the exact point, when highlighting the use of AI art for concept art! Problem solving does not necessarily need to be a high definition, polished illustrations. It CAN be a polished illustration; but 90 % of the time concept art are ideas, sketches, colour tests, and different visualizations that solves specific creative problems.

On the other hand, if you are an illustrator whose actual goal it is to create a beautiful piece of artwork for a client, the issue of ownership and user rights becomes an even bigger problem for you and your client. You will need to accept the shared ownership with Midjourney, the risk of subsequent derivative use of the art your prompt produces, and potential copyright obligations to all the artwork and artists the AI has used as reference.

What about the future?

So, what does this mean for the future of concept art? When tools to make art becomes more accessible the standard will rise, so artists must perform even better to stand out. Every time a new area of tools or methods emerges, you should learn about it, weigh out the pros and cons, and dip your feet in it, to see if it can help your workflow. If you dismiss new tools, you will fall behind. If every concept artist had dismissed photo-bashing or 3D programs (or for that sake Photoshop, back in the 90’s), relying only on what was available at the time, the current standard would be considerably lower.

Concept artists whose primary value is their design skills, creative thinking, and ability to adapt new tools and methods, while critically evaluating which tools are best for the job, will become even more valuable than concept artists who can “just” do the art.

With that in mind, concept art is very far from dying. It is transitioning, though. And it will transition again and again, as it has always done. That is the essence of creative problem solving. We change our methods and approaches every time we find new tools and techniques, which makes us better and more effective as artists and creative thinkers.

However, as a final note, I do hope that the unwilling harvest of art will become illegal practice very soon. While it might not kill concept art, it can severely damage and undermine the artists who make a living out of producing art. AI’s should compete on and uphold the same standards, practices, and copyright laws as any other artist.

By Jannick Lund, CEO, Vizlab Studios ApS