In March 2024, I got to attend Art-O-Matic in DC. I’d never been before, and after being there for 2 hours, I’d barely seen a third of it, and I really want to go back. Art-O-Matic is a temporary art experience that arrives every year, and I’ve always wanted to go check it out. It’s 8 floors of an empty DC office building filled with all kinds of visual art, performing arts events, interactive art exhibits, and more. It’s a free event that hangs around for about two months each spring, and it’s a great place to spend a rainy Saturday, which is what we had.
However, what drew me in and reminded me of Art-o-Matic’s temporary presence was a Meetup event that offered an opportunity to meet one of the artists. To be honest, I barely skimmed the description- something about 3D art, 4:00, and a gallery number on the 4th floor. It was enough to intrigue me to get the husband out on a spontaneous day date. Besides, the cherry blossoms were in bloom, and who knew if the rain would wash them all away?
We arrived at 3 pm, and went to the second floor, taking in all the other art galleries, and arriving in a small gallery space, where we were eventually prompted into a “pop-up” room with the artist, who had setup a slideshow so that he could show a lot more of his art, and talk about it.
It turned out that this artist, who was probably in his early 60s, was looking into AI and what he could do with it as an artist. I will admit, I was less than impressed. How can (the art of) creating prompts compare with the obvious skill of someone who can take a paintbrush, pencil, chalk, etc. to a canvas and create something straight out of their imagination and bring it to life with their artistic skill? I had hoped to be convinced that I had missed something in this assumption.
I wasn’t convinced. His slideshow shared many other artworks he had created before he discovered AI. They were good. By the time he shared the AI pieces, I just felt he was trying to try out a new technology to
create a lot more work to sell without having to work so hard in it’s creation.
A few days before this event, I had been working on a video project and I had used AI to create a television channel logo for a fictional project that required some fake news stories to be produced. This was a “text to photo” project, and I was happy with the result, as I don’t have graphic design skills outside of what I can do in Canva, and the budget wasn’t huge for this project.
This project involves creating video elements to support an emergency management education course. On a small budget.
It was around this time I also learned about Sora, an AI tool currently in beta-testing, that can use text prompts to create very realistic videos. Looking at the samples they’re working with, you’d be hard pressed to tell the difference at a glance between what they’ve produced, versus what an expensive shoot might create. But the price tag on either will vary wildly, I’m certain.
Imagine needing footage of a trail derailment, near a coastal town, that’s carrying hazardous materials into the waterways. To create this in traditional methods, even if that method is CGI, would be prohibitively expensive for my client. I’d be left to creatively and resourcefully tell the story, using images as they’re appropriate….and afforded. I’m hoping that as my work continues on this project through the fall, that I might be able to try out Sora in my client’s videos.
This is the potential of using AI to create video FOR GOOD.
I’ll leave it to others to blog about how AI can used to create video for negative purposes. I’m sure they already have.
And as my husband says, “If you want to see where the future’s going, look at the porn industry. They always get there first.”
I’ll just leave that here.
