As artificial intelligence generated art becomes more popular, and accessible, it is raising more controversy. Many creatives and artists tend to question in terms of artificial intelligence is art, arguing that art is intended to be completely original and artificial intelligence cheapens the value of such original works.
This conversation has become even more prominent as the AI art mobile app Lensa went viral in recent weeks. Users have flocked to the app to generate altered personal pictures to post on social media platforms, particularly Instagram (NASDAQ: META). At this time, the Lensa app is free to use, but payment is required if users would like to make use of the artwork feature.
Although Lensa has been around since 2018, the app came out with a feature known as "Magic Avatars" about a month ago. This feature allows users to create selfies based on preset images that are inspired by real pieces of art from professionals. Themes can range from fantasy to horror to pop art.
Currently, Lensa stands as the most popular Apple (NASDAQ: AAPL) iOS app in the United States. For ten images in five different styles, it costs $3.99, and for a full annual subscription to Lensa, it costs $35.99. "Magic Avatars consume tremendous computation power to create amazing avatars for you," Lensa said on its checkout page. "It's expensive, but we made it as affordable as possible."
Although there are many other platforms that have made use of AI art, Lensa is currently the most trending one. It utilizes a feature known as "Stable Diffusion," which takes both image and text prompts in order to create entirely unique images. "It's showing you pictures that nobody took; it's just able to stitch them up from all the other images that it has seen," said Subbarao Kambhampati, a professor in the School of Computing and Augmented Intelligence at Arizona State University.
For several reasons, this AI art app has ignited mixed reactions from users. Many have suggested that Lensa tends to over sexualize the pictures that they intend to present as self portraits. "It turns out the AI takes those Photoshopped images as permission to go wild, and it appears it disables an NSFW filter," TechCrunch reports, who experimented with different images of celebrities to see how inappropriate they could become. But Prisma Labs (overseer of Lensa) referred to this as "harmful" acts and did not condone the experiment done by TechCrunch in any way.
Another reason that Lensa is so controversial is that artists feel that artificial intelligence art is a ripoff of real creativity. Having a machine create images for you tends to cheapen the value of true artistry, many creatives have said.