I remember when AI generated images started to become more prevalent, and at this point I really wasn’t bothered; the quality of the images produced was pretty weak in my opinion, they screamed AI with additional fingers in places where they shouldn’t be, they felt alien, and so I didn’t feel threatened. However, over time as the capability of AI has gradually increased, and I have to admit I’m now often impressed with the images that AI can produce. Sure they still lack that incredibly important hand-made and human feeling which I feel AI will never truly be able to reproduce, but they remove a heck of a lot of time and effort from creating images that perhaps don’t necessarily need that human touch.
As this threatening feeling towards the future of my career as a digital illustrator started to approach, I have had to question myself (and of course have been asked by friends and family) on what I’m going to do to tackle it. For a good while, I used my usual technique of trying to ignore it and hope for the best, but that only got me so far and I feel at this point it’s inevitable that more and more people will go to the ease and low cost of using generative AI rather than commissioning an illustrator, (depending of the complexity and reason for the images of course). So this is why I decided, if you can’t beat them, join them, and I’ve partnered with exactly ai, an ethical approach to AI that’s changing the rules of how AI interacts with artists.
Exactly ai trains bespoke AI models on your own assets to generate brand-ready visuals at scale. It’s designed to be secure, fast, ethical, and built for professional creatives. Obviously I was reluctant at first, as this is a huge change that’s happening right now in the industry I’ve based my livelihood on… but I’m hoping engaging with it in this way, using it as a tool to work with me, rather than against me, will save me being left behind in a technology driven world that is constantly evolving.
I’m working hard behind the scenes with members of the exactly ai team to ensure my model is the most accurate representative of my illustration style that it can be, as it still needs a few tweaks when it comes to depicting certain themes, however after experimenting a lot with the model, I was able to produce some images that I absolutely love and feel look remarkably similar to how I would draw them myself!
