www.vice.com Open in urlscan Pro
151.101.1.132  Public Scan

Form analysis
2 forms found in the DOM

<form><label class="sr-only" for="search-bar__input">Input for searching articles, videos, shows</label><input type="text" id="search-bar__input" role="searchbox" value="" placeholder="Search articles, videos, shows" required=""><button type="submit"
    role="button" aria-label="Search" class="nav-bar__search-bar__button"><svg width="16" height="16" viewBox="0 0 16 16" fill="none" xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg">
      <path fill-rule="evenodd" clip-rule="evenodd"
        d="M6.55892 10.7328C8.86408 10.7328 10.7328 8.86408 10.7328 6.55892C10.7328 4.25376 8.86408 2.38506 6.55892 2.38506C4.25376 2.38506 2.38506 4.25376 2.38506 6.55892C2.38506 8.86408 4.25376 10.7328 6.55892 10.7328ZM6.55892 13.1178C10.1813 13.1178 13.1178 10.1813 13.1178 6.55892C13.1178 2.93653 10.1813 0 6.55892 0C2.93653 0 0 2.93653 0 6.55892C0 10.1813 2.93653 13.1178 6.55892 13.1178Z"
        fill="white"></path>
      <path fill-rule="evenodd" clip-rule="evenodd" d="M14.5219 15.9015C14.3906 16.0328 14.1777 16.0328 14.0464 15.9015L9.18249 11.0376L11.0376 9.18249L15.9015 14.0464C16.0328 14.1777 16.0328 14.3906 15.9015 14.5219L14.5219 15.9015Z" fill="white">
      </path>
    </svg></button></form>

<form class="user-newsletter__form" novalidate="">
  <div class="user-newsletter__form__wrap"><input type="email" name="email" id="email" class="user-newsletter__form__input" value="" placeholder="Your email address"><label class="user-newsletter__form__label" for="email">Your Email:</label> </div>
  <button aria-label="newsletter submit button" type="submit" class="vice-button vice-button--black user-newsletter__submit">Subscribe</button>
</form>

Text Content

Advertisement


Sign InCreate Account
+ English


VICE
 * Video
 * TV
 * News
 * Tech
 * Rec Room
 * Food
 * World News
 * The 8:46 Project
 * Games
 * Music
 * Health
 * Money
 * Drugs
 * Identity
 * Entertainment
 * Environment
 * Travel
 * Horoscopes
 * Sex
 * VICE Magazine
 * The Gender Spectrum Collection
 * Shop Merch

VICE
 * 
 * 
 * 

Sign InCreate Account
 * Video
 * TV
 * Podcasts
 * Apps
 * Newsletters
 * VICE Voices
 * Rec Room

Input for searching articles, videos, shows
 * 
 * 
 * 
 * 
 * 
 * 
 * 

 * News
 * Tech
 * Rec Room
 * Food
 * World News
 * The 8:46 Project
 * Games
 * Music
 * Health
 * Money
 * Drugs
 * Identity
 * Entertainment
 * Environment
 * Travel
 * Horoscopes
 * Sex
 * VICE Magazine
 * The Gender Spectrum Collection
 * Shop Merch

 * About
 * Jobs
 * Partner
 * VICE Voices
 * Content Funding on VICE
 * Security Policy
 * Privacy & Terms
 * Accessibility Statement
 * Do Not Sell or Share My Info

© 2023 VICE MEDIA GROUP



HERE’S HOW ART SCHOOLS ARE DEALING WITH THE RISE OF AI GENERATORS


Automated tools like DALL-E and Stable Diffusion are changing how instructors
teach their students, but many won't ban them outright.
ED
by Emily Driehaus
January 24, 2023, 2:00pm
 * Share
 * Tweet
 * Snap

Image by Janus Rose, generated with Stable Diffusion

To prepare for the 2023 spring semester, New York University professor Winnie
Song did something she’s never had to do before: she created AI art guidelines
for her students.

Song, an assistant arts professor in the Game Center at NYU’s Tisch School of
the Arts, is not the only art instructor thinking about this. With the rapid
rise of automated systems like Stable Diffusion, Midjourney, and DALL-E 2 within
the past year, instructors at post-secondary art institutions are trying to
figure out how to broach the topic with their students while still learning the
intricacies of AI art themselves. 

Advertisement


“My worry was that they would use the AI generators to come up with mood boards
and references of things that don’t exist in real life. So I just set a policy
where, within the bounds of this class, it’s discouraged to use the generators,”
Song told Motherboard. “I really didn’t ever imagine that it would get to this
point where people would be, like, trying to legitimize it as a craft.”

AI-generated art has flooded the internet since users began generating elaborate
images with just a written phrase or highly stylized portraits by uploading a
selfie. The tools have been met with fierce backlash from many artists, who note
that the AI systems produce derivative images after ingesting millions of
original artworks without permission from their creators. 

But while the growing sophistication of AI generators is raising profound
questions about the nature of art and the creative process, it is also creating
very tangible dilemmas for art educators who want their students to develop
skills that go beyond typing a phrase into a text prompt and turning it in as
their own work.

“I think we endeavor to teach them to become independent of tools and also make
sure that they remain sort of agnostic, not reverent and dependent on one thing
to get presentable work,” Song said. “You can learn this, and you can think
about it, but that can’t be your one main thing to get to where you need to be.”

Advertisement



The ways professors have been introducing AI art in the classroom varies between
classes and disciplines. Song said she’s teaching a drawing class in which
students are supposed to derive inspiration from nature and the physical world,
hence her AI art policy. On the other hand, Kurt Ralske, a digital media
professor and department chair of media arts at Tufts University’s School of the
Museum of Fine Arts, is taking a different approach. 

“Personally, I’ve been encouraging students to explore this. I think they should
know what the tools are, what they’re capable of and maybe develop a personal
vocabulary of how to use them,” Ralske told Motherboard. “But we really are
overdue for actually maybe having a larger discussion within the university of
how we should handle these things.”

Doug Rosman, a lecturer in the Art and Technology Studies department at the
School of the Art Institute of Chicago, is also having students explore the
generators in his machine learning class. But, in his professional practice
class, a more career-focused course, AI art and its impact on working artists is
a different discussion.

“In that context, the outputs of DALL-E and Stable Diffusion feel more
threatening,” Rosman told Motherboard. 

Instructors aren’t the only ones thinking about the products of AI art
generators. Art students are also dealing with the effects of AI art saturating
the market for artists and what that could mean for their careers.

Advertisement


“The way that artists are embracing crazy capitalist, hyper-technology culture
is just really disheartening,” said Marla Chinbat, an art student at the
University of Illinois-Chicago. “I wouldn’t be surprised if AI art actually
begins to hold merit because of a side of the art world that I don’t align
myself with.”

None of the instructors or students at the institutions interviewed by
Motherboard said their department or school had issued AI art guidelines or a
policy for using AI art generators for projects. Charlotte Belland, a professor
and chair of the animation program at the Columbus College of Art & Design, said
setting parameters is left to individual instructors depending on the topics and
concepts being taught in class.

“As long as they establish what their parameters are, then that’s an open forum
to be able to either use or not use AI technology,” Belland told Motherboard.

However, learning how these programs work and how to help students use them
takes time and effort on behalf of the instructor. If an instructor is not
already familiar with machine learning or computer science, navigating the ways
AI-art generators are shaking up the art world and understanding the algorithms
could take extra work. 

“Teaching is hard. It’s so much work and it’s not well compensated,” Rosman
said. “It’s not fair that a small demographic of people in Silicon Valley can
just throw this thing out into the world, and we’ve got to just run around
picking up the pieces.”

Advertisement


Susan Behrends Valenzuela, an art student at NYU Steinhardt. Photo courtesy of
the artist

Even if their instructors have not brought up AI art in classes, students are
still thinking about how AI art generators are affecting the art world. Susan
Behrends Valenzuela, an art student at NYU Steinhardt, said the subject has only
come up once in just one of her classes, but would be interested in further
discussions in other classes.

“I do wish we had talked about it a little bit more,” she told Motherboard. “But
at the same time, I think in order for that to happen, my professors would need
to kind of know a little bit more about that type of technology, and I just
think it’s not something they’re really focused on.”

Students are also thinking about how they could use these tools as part of their
processes. Rhode Island School of Design painting student Julia Hames said they
played around with AI generator Wombo for inspiration.

“For a while, I didn’t have any ideas of what to paint, so I’d just put in
random prompts into Wombo to see what it created,” Hames told Motherboard. “I
didn’t really like anything, but maybe it could be used for that because the
images are so absurd and it just lets you into this uncanny valley that honestly
humans can’t even get to sometimes.” 

Julia Hames, a painting student at Rhode Island School of Design. Photo courtesy
of the artist

Song, Ralske, Rosman, and Belland all said they have not had students use AI-art
generators for projects without their knowledge. If a student did use AI for a
project, the way they used it was clear to the instructor. Belland said that if
a student did try to use AI without consent from an instructor, being in a
community with diverse perspectives and skills would help catch it.

“The nice thing about an educational community is you have so many eyes on a
project,” she said. “Even when a student makes an unfortunate decision to copy
something in just a very traditional method, plagiarism, it’s pretty easy to
spot.”

As for Song, she is also not too concerned with her students passing off
AI-generated images as their own because she is already familiar with their
work. She’s more worried about the students she hasn’t even had in class yet.

“In admissions, these new students are coming in from high school, from another
life that we don’t know,” she said. “I think it could be possible for them to
have created a portfolio out of thin air overnight using these generators,
depending on how good they become.”

Tagged:machine learninglarge language modelsDALL-Estable diffusionMidjourneyArt
School


ORIGINAL REPORTING ON EVERYTHING THAT MATTERS IN YOUR INBOX.

Your Email:
Subscribe

By signing up, you agree to the Terms of Use and Privacy Policy & to receive
electronic communications from Vice Media Group, which may include marketing
promotions, advertisements and sponsored content.




MORE


LIKE THIS

 * Tech
   
   
   THIS TOOL LETS ANYONE SEE THE BIAS IN AI IMAGE GENERATORS
   
   The Stable Diffusion Explorer shows how words like "assertive" and "gentle"
   are mapped to sexist stereotypes.
   
   Janus Rose
   11.03.22
   
 * Tech
   
   
   AI ISN’T ARTIFICIAL OR INTELLIGENT
   
   How AI innovation is powered by underpaid workers in foreign countries.
   
   Chloe Xiang
   12.06.22
   
 * Life
   
   
   WHY IS AI ART SO CRINGE?
   
   A classic case of “just because it can be done, doesn’t mean it should be
   done”. 
   
   Laura Pitcher
   01.20.23
   
 * Tech
   
   
   ‘MY AI IS SEXUALLY HARASSING ME’: REPLIKA USERS SAY THE CHATBOT HAS GOTTEN
   WAY TOO HORNY 
   
   For some longtime users of the chatbot, the app has gone from helpful
   companion to unbearably sexually aggressive.
   
   Samantha Cole
   01.12.23
   
 * Tech
   
   
   CHATGPT CAN DO A CORPORATE LOBBYIST'S JOB, STUDY DETERMINES
   
   OpenAI’s chatbot could help automate the murky business of corporate
   political influence, but that wouldn't necessarily be a good thing.
   
   Chloe Xiang
   01.05.23
   

Advertisement





YOUMAY LIKE
Three scenarios for how war in Ukraine could play out Advertisement: The
Economist
Kaufen Sie keinen neuen PC. Erst lesen. (Jetzt) Dieser einfache Trick wird Ihren
Computer sofort beschleunigen. Advertisement: Sicherheitstechnische Tipps
Doctors Baffled: This Is What Detoxification Through The Feet Really Brings
Advertisement: tech4-you.com
We Will Guess Your Education Level in 20 Questions Advertisement:
https://themoneytime.com/
Hydrogen hype is rising again—will this time be different? Advertisement: The
Economist
Kaufen Sie keine Hörgeräte bevor Sie das gelesen haben Advertisement: Hear Clear
Ferienhäuser in Dänemark am See mit Motorboot Ferienhäuser in Dänemark suchen
Advertisement: Ferienhaus | Suchanzeigen
Two Gummies Before Bed Can Treat Years of Joint Pain & Arthritis Advertisement:
healthyedibles4-you.com



MORE


FROM VICE

 * Tech
   
   
   OPENAI’S NEW CHATBOT WILL TELL YOU HOW TO SHOPLIFT AND MAKE EXPLOSIVES
   
   ChatGPT is yet another reminder that all AI systems are prone to bias and
   misuse.
   
   Janus Rose
   12.01.22
   
 * Tech
   
   
   SCIENTISTS FOUND A WAY TO DEFEAT A 'NEAR-SUPERHUMAN' GO-PLAYING AI
   
   Researchers developed a rival adversarial AI to trick the fearsome KataGo
   model into losing games.
   
   Tatyana Woodall
   11.10.22
   
 * Tech
   
   
   FACEBOOK PULLS ITS NEW ‘AI FOR SCIENCE’ BECAUSE IT’S BROKEN AND TERRIBLE
   
   The demo of Galactica generated fake research and filtered out searches for
   ‘racism’ and ‘AIDS.’
   
   Janus Rose
   11.18.22
   
 * Tech
   
   
   STACK OVERFLOW BANS CHATGPT FOR CONSTANTLY GIVING WRONG ANSWERS
   
   One of the internet’s largest coding resources has temporarily banned the AI
   chatbot after users answered programming questions with its responses.
   
   Janus Rose
   12.05.22
   
 * Tech
   
   
   ROBOT LANDLORDS ARE BUYING UP HOUSES
   
   Companies with deep resources are outsourcing management to apps and
   algorithms, putting home ownership further out of reach.
   
   Nick Keppler
   11.28.22
   
 * Tech
   
   
   A COMPSCI STUDENT BUILT AN APP THAT CAN DETECT CHATGPT-GENERATED TEXT
   
   “Human writing can be so beautiful. There is beauty in the human prose that
   computers can never and should never co-opt."
   
   Chloe Xiang
   01.06.23
   

Advertisement





 * About
 * Jobs
 * Partner
 * VICE Voices
 * Content Funding on VICE
 * Security Policy
 * Privacy & Terms
 * Accessibility Statement
 * Do Not Sell or Share My Info

© 2023 VICE MEDIA GROUP