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The Rise of AI-Generated Imagery

Artificial intelligence has boomed within the past year, and this advanced technology is now more accessible than ever. For digital marketers, AI has opened up a whole realm of possibilities when it comes to carrying out everyday work tasks and has pretty much become a staple in the digital marketing toolkit. This kind of technology helps with content creation, data analysis, and much more recently AI has developed the ability to artificially create almost any imagery using AI image generators.

In this article, we'll explore ‘How does AI image generation work?’ and what this means for the digital marketing sector going forward.

How do AI Image Generators work? The Technological Insights


AI image generators, including the likes of DeepArt and OpenAI’s DALL-E, have the unique ability to generate almost anything you request from it through textual descriptions and prompts. Other platforms such as Adobe,  have integrated AI image generation into its creative suites. This integration enables features like 'Generative Fill', where users can select a portion of an image and have the AI inventively fill it in, adding elements that weren't originally there.
While the capabilities of these advanced technologies are indeed impressive, they naturally lead us to an intriguing question: How exactly do they work?

According to this blog by Narrato, an AI image generator uses artificial neural networks (ANN) to generate new images, learning patterns and styles from large image-text pairs. For instance, when we provided a festive-themed prompt to OpenAI's DALL-E. (It is December after all!)



And this is what it generated…

How impressive is that! Completely conjured up from artificial neural networks in seconds. 

This tech not only saves time but also brings a unique beauty to the content it creates. While authentic imagery is always ideal for branding, this AI assistant is a great backup when resources are tight.

Ethical and Practical Considerations


Yet, it's not all smooth sailing. Despite its benefits, generative AI imagery poses ethical and copyright challenges that we can't ignore.

AI relies heavily on data, often using materials without proper acknowledgement or compensation to the original creators. This can lead to AI-generated artworks that closely resemble existing pieces, raising issues of copyright infringement. In some cases, people discover artworks that resemble their own yet were never created by them.

This copyright infringement is only part of the ethical challenge with AI art generators. Another issue is that, except from alerting the public that their work is being stolen, artists have little power to reclaim their property and prevent engines from stealing more.

Recent legal cases, such as the GitHub Copilot litigation, underscore these complexities, spotlighting the infringement of creators' rights by major tech entities.

In conclusion, the rise of AI has been nothing short of a game changer in the digital marketing industry and is reshaping creative approaches towards everyday tasks. We just need to remind ourselves of the importance of balancing innovation with respect for the craft.

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