Over the course of last week, many of my friends were trying out an app called Lensa which can create magical avatars created by AI (Artificial Intelligence). I wanted to try it out because I was definitely curious what the AI would produce. So I downloaded the app and tried out the free trial and paid $1.99 to create the AI avatars. It was fun to see the results but when you look closer at each piece of art that was created, a lot of it was really poor quality. Eyes looked really weird and out of place with hands twisted with more fingers than one usually has. These were soulless pieces of art. When I had the avatars created I wasn’t ever planning on using them for my own album covers, merchandise, or any form of a product at all. The sole purpose for me was to just use them for fun. Make a post and a tweet online and that’s about it.
Then as more and more people starting using the app I saw many artists start voicing their fear of Ai art replacing them. This same fear was expressed from fellow music artists and musicians when vocaloids were becoming more of a thing. Vocaloid is a software that enables users to synthesize singing. You would think I would have had that same fear when vocaloids arrived to the US but instead of fear I decided to work with one of the most famous vocaloids ever to come out of Japan Hatsune Miku. I didn’t let the fear of the new technology take over and actually created an original song called “Ultimate Miku World” that would be a duet of both a real human voice with a synthesized software. This song was released in 2011 for an anime avatar game called TinierMe and still to this day it is one of my most popular songs.
I wanted to end this article talking about one of my favorite artist friends, Chibi Heart Moon aka Loona Primrose. I actually met them back when I was creating music and an online character for TinierMe. Yes, that same anime avatar game where I worked with the vocaloid Hatsune Miku. Loona’s art is so warm and always makes me happy. Only something a human like Chibi Heart Moon could do and since TinierMe I have collaborated and worked with them to come up with beautiful conceptual art ideas for my album covers that only they could create. AI art can be fun if the app actually doesn’t steal from artists. I would really encourage you all to go and find amazing artists to work with like them. I’m so glad I have known them for all these years now. Working with them has been very personal and pure which is something an AI art app can never do. Please support Chibi Heart Moon here: https://linktr.ee/chibiheartmoon
『JAPANESE POP CULTURE NEWS THAT YOU MUST KNOW!!!』
Writer: Stephanie Yanez
Instagram @stephachu
Website https://direct.me/stephachu
(12/7/2022)
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