Before last year, when I wrote the book "Metaverse: The Road to Infinite Games", I had researched the significance of AI in the metaverse in general, but not to the level of "soul perception", just a shallow encounter to deliver to the readers. It was not until 2022 that I was fortunate enough to be involved in a venture related to digital art and the new age creator economy, and became a deep researcher in digital art, but also a deep participant and creator.
At the beginning, even though I had countless ideas and creativity for digital art creation, I was unable to do anything about it, because I didn't know how to draw, didn't know PS, and didn't know any professional expression of art that refused to be seen. Is it possible that in this Web 3.0 era, where everyone is equal and everyone creates, there is no creative expression for us "white people"?
I think there is a supreme right above the ownership of artworks, and that is the right of all people to create. The creation of new worlds, the digital definition of new worlds, is the "natural human right" of the indigenous people of Web3. This power is still monopolized by the professional "class", or by the old productivity, while the majority of people are still just spectators, or just to pay for them? This is also the dilemma of the current digital collection market. With the progress of productivity, in this context productivity is artificial intelligence, there is always a wave of people awakening to the challenge of traditional production relations by new technological innovation: no longer pay for the old era of producer-consumer relationship. And so a trend around the democratization of creative rights began to spread in the booming Web 3.0 process, the so-called "Web3 Creator Economy Era"!
Perhaps the success of CryptoPunk and BAYC (Bored Ape) is a sign that the new artists from the masses have completed their challenge to the traditional masters and large IPs, and then a large cry from the bottom will resonate throughout the meta-universe of digital art. Take Bored Ape for example, its explosion can be attributed to co-creation. Those who bought it, and even those who did not buy it (simply because it is the leader of NFT and can lead other NFT projects to share the glory and shame), are no longer just consumers, but also co-creators. From this step onwards, it is clear that everyone's participation in co-creation is the most distinctive slogan of this new era of Web3. People's desire for co-creation became more and more fissionable and uncontrollable, and as long as there are creative ideas, they will always find tools to realize and spread them. Thus, AI art began to shock the audience, an unprecedented visual sensory stimulation!
The progress of AI is also breathing with the times. Since GPT-3 started to implement the mega-language model with hundreds of billions of parameters, AI seems to have started to awaken its consciousness. From assisted driving to digital art today, it is as if mankind has found an all-knowing "Aladdin's lamp": if you speak to it with any image you want, it can give you an output that far exceeds your cognition and imagination. It is said that in the near future (in half a year), trillions of language models will be available, and what kind of output AI can create at that time is beyond anyone's guess, it is an "infinite game"!
With the rapid evolution of top AI, some small and medium-sized "wisdom" level AI art models can be open-sourced and can be used by all, which is in line with the spirit of blockchain inclusive finance and Web3 inclusive Internet. The most famous of these is DD (Disco Diffusion), which millions of people around the world are competing to deploy, starting a wonderful decentralized fighting competition. Many people were overwhelmed by the colors of AI and even more by its imagination. The open productivity of DD has greatly boosted the enthusiasm of art creation of all people, and countless high-quality paintings have appeared in some professional digital collections, digital art, digital copyright platforms, and have been seen by more and more people. seen, marveled at and purchased by more people, and then further drive this group of consumers into the circle of creation and become the next wave of new new creators. Yes, this is the legacy of universal creative rights, a never-ending relay game of infinite creation!
All about DD
The creators of the previous wave were no longer satisfied with DD's expression or wisdom level, and started the next "voyage", seeking the top AI realm of great success, looking for the "One Piece"! As a result, another wave of new productivity has emerged, with Midjourney being the most well-known for its successful commercialization and the top AI art platform with the most significant user payment behavior. It has built a complete business model with the power of community (Discord) to try, pull in new people, community, user system, payment system, secondary creation, work out of the circle, etc. It would be great if it could accept Crypto payment. So the logic of the work it produces is stronger and more refined. Especially when it comes to producing sci-fi themes, character themes, IP-related themes, MJ's output can even reach commercial level.
The criticism is that because of this monopoly level of productivity, it is not open source and requires payment, even inheriting the "cat cake" of many traditional monopoly giants - various payment thresholds. The only way to get commercial-grade work is to keep paying. In a similar vein is DALL-E 2, an even stronger (perhaps up to 13 years old) top AI art tool, and what can it come up with? As the OpenAI folks tweeted: If you see a bunch of pandas wearing red printed scarves riding motorcycles across the desert, that's us, come say hello!
The DALL-E 2 is better known for its ability to catch the aesthetic eye of top fashion magazines. "Wide angle shot from below, a female astronaut with a fit female body, strutting towards the camera on Mars and in the infinite cosmic background, in synthwave style", and the following graphic image appeared on the cover of the top international marketing magazine COSMO. As the insider exclaims, "The adoption of AI will indeed have a profound impact on all industries, causing many people to lose their jobs, but at the same time, there will be an explosion of creativity and new types of jobs will be created that we can't imagine today".
DALL-E 2, with its more top-notch intelligence, has recently been launched as a paid system. Not long ago, a million trial slots were opened and sold out, and now many commercial users are also competing to pay for the unique creative images. A shining new era seems to be in sight. What is worth looking forward to is that due to the rapid development of AI and the spirit of open source, a lot of hundreds of billions of large models with high level wisdom (comparable to MJ and DALL-E 2) are expected to be open source in the near future (second half of the year), which will be inherited and used by developers and entrepreneurs all over the world, and the paid MJ will eventually compromise on this, and no one can stop Web3.
The introduction of various AI art tools is not the focus of this article, but I hope readers can feel the author's vision of the future and the call for a new era of universal creative power. possibility is hope, the source of creativity, the first principle of building a new world!