I’m going to take advantage of blogger privilege to announce a Facebook group I’m starting for Latter-day Saint AI artists creating gospel-themed content to coordinate, showcase their work, and collaborate. I follow a number of AI art groups on Facebook that serious artists and graphic designers frequent, and people with an artist’s training and eye, combined with AI, have the potential to produce genuinely good art at scale that makes my amateur hour pieces I sometimes drop here pale in comparison. Of course, as these are secular groups, a lot of the subject-matter revolves around superheroes and other silliness (no offense), and some of them are outright softcore porn, but the same skills and technology have the potential to revolutionize the creation of moving, gospel-oriented pieces.
Because it democratizes and expedites the art production process, AI has the potential to drastically expand the variety and volume of quality gospel art. Whereas before we had the same several dozen or so scenes, themes, and styles; now, in the right hands we can produce exponentially more variation across virtually any Church history, gospel, doctrinal, or scriptural theme. In my experience as a lurker in this world, the people that have the artistic know-how to know the difference between, say, a 1970s camera style and a 1980s camera style, or what an alcoholic paint looks like, for example, are typically the ones who, combined with some promptology, can produce masterpieces. Of course, beginners like me who want to develop their promptology skills are also welcome.
As you’ve observed AI art groups, have you noticed any particular platform they’re coalescing around (for LDS art, or in general)?
The hard core creators use Midjourney, which is much better for photorealistic shots, but it’s getting expensive at $30 a month for unlimited. DALL-E 3 is free through Bing, and it’s actually better at iterating images and tweaking them.