AI images are fast and easy to generate, everyone can do it – without any artistic skills. While many artists believe AI art isn’t actually art, it is scary to see your work getting buried under the wave of artificial creations. It seems like AI is the end of artists, but it is not. Here’s how you can promote your art and make it stand out against the machine-made mass production!
Are you worried about your creative future with artificial intelligence seemingly taking over the art world?
Admittedly, with the explosion of awe-inspiring AI-generated art that we are currently seeing, one can easily get the feeling that AI is the end of artists. In 2022, several image generators have come into the market, among others Midjourney, DALL-E, Stable Diffusion, and Lensa. In August the same year, an AI-generated piece even won a fine arts competition, and carrying away his prize, the winner declared: “Art is dead, dude!”
Art-making has become accessible to everyone, and the speed of the impressive-looking machine output makes people gaze in awe – and artists pause for a moment. If anyone with no artistic skills can so quickly produce dazzling pieces of art, then how do I promote myself as an artist?
Worry not, despite contrary predictions, AI art is not the death of artists. While the sheer masses of artificial images might make it more difficult to get your art noticed, there are ways to create value around your hand-crafted work.
Here are 5 hands-on tips for you to promote your art when AI is supposedly the end of artists:
No one knows the impact of artificial intelligence on the art industry in the long run. But one thing is for sure: the genie is out of the bottle and it’s not going to go back in.
Artificial image generation is already affecting both traditional and digital artists, and we will have to deal with it. The sooner we learn to gear ourselves up to the new tech, the better!
Is AI art actually art?
I’m sure you’ve already heard people say that AI art is not really art – or maybe you’ve come to the same conclusion yourself.
All image generation tools work in the same way. The user enters some text and the AI generator returns a set of images based on that text input. Depending on whether or not you like the results, you can refine the images or make modifications.
The method is fairly simple and anyone can generate impressive and complex looking artworks in a matter of minutes. Anything is possible, from photorealistic renders to paintings in the style of Picasso or van Gogh. Alone this ease of creation makes many people think that AI art cannot be considered real art.
But there is more about artificial image generation that make people say that AI art is no real art.
All image synthesis models (ISMs) like Stable Diffusion, Midjourney, etc. have been trained using millions and millions of human-made images. Those image were taken from all over the web, including websites like ArtStation, DeviantArt, Getty Images, Pinterest, and so on.
If the neural networks hadn’t been fed with artworks of both living and passed artists, they wouldn’t be able to replicate images in specific artistic styles. In fact, they wouldn’t be able to create any image at all. That’s why many alleged that AI is stealing from artists.
Is AI a threat to artists?
AI image generators are not the first technological advancement to change the way we create and understand art. Just think back to the invention of the camera. A century ago, people believed the camera would mean the end of painting. But it didn’t. On the contrary, photography emerged as its own form of art.
Some decades ago, when camera phones entered the market and everyone was able to take photos on the go, people thought it was the end of photography. But it wasn’t. Smart phones didn’t replace photographers, and both forms of photography now co-exist peacefully.
Though many artists perceive AI art as a threat, it is very unlikely that people will stop creating art just because a machine can now do it for them.
Photography actually led to a resurgence of painting. Likewise, AI art could inspire a resurgence of real, human-made artwork. The way Cansu Canca, founder and director of the AI Ethics Lab, sees the future of human art is that “it could even become more valuable. You could imagine human art being this artifact that is hard to find and even highly priced, whereas computer-generated art would be not so highly valued.”
Now that we learned the prospects of being a human artist are not that bad at all, the question is how do you promote your art and make it stand out among the flood of AI-generated pieces?
How do I promote myself as an artist –
at the dawn of AI overtaking the art world?
The good news is that there are lots of free opportunities to promote your art – you don’t need to spend a dime!
Do you still feel a bit uncomfortable marketing your art online? If that’s the case I have two articles for you to help you get started:
Are you particularly interested in selling art prints? Here are a few resources you should check out before offering prints:
• Where can I promote my art?
Nowadays, the possibilities of promoting your art on the web are endless. For example, you can upload your artwork to social media and art sharing sites, but you can also sell your work on online marketplaces or offer digital art commissions.
Here are some resources to help you get an idea of the many possibilities:
• How can I promote art on social media?
Social media are still a great way to grow an audience and network with other artists. The secrets of success are more or less the same for all social platforms: post consistently, use the right hashtags, follow and connect with like-minded people.
The most popular social media networks for artists to promote their art are Instagram, Facebook, and Pinterest. For more tips on using these platforms as an artist, check out my posts below:
• How can I promote my art without social media?
I recommend not only using social media to promote your art. We’ve seen in the past that social networks may become obsolete overnight or change their algorithms, restricting your reach and allowing your posts to only be seen by a small percentage of your total following.
To not only rely on social media, here’s what you can do in the real world:
- Attend art exhibitions and art fairs
- Exhibit your art in a gallery
- Organize a group show
- Showcase your art in community centers, hotel lobbies, restaurants, etc.
But more importantly, you should consider building your own artist website, if you haven’t yet. Your artist website only belongs to you, and even when social media platforms disappear, you still have your own little space on the web.
Basically, there is nothing you can not do with your website. Here are some examples how you can use your website to promote your art:
- Create an online art portfolio
- Start an online blog
- Grow your email list
- Sell art prints and high-resolution images
How to promote your art
when AI is the end of artists... (supposedly)
AI-generated images are currently popping up everywhere you look. Users do not only upload their computer-generated creations to social media, but also create profiles on art sharing sites to pack their galleries with dozens of newly generated pieces every day.
The good news is that AI is not the end of artists and that human art is much more valuable than any machine-made art.
Ultimately, the question is: how to make your work stand out in the flood of artificial mass-production?
Here are 5 effective ways to promote your art in a time where AI seems to be the end of artists!
TIP #1: Make it clear what kind of art you create.
Clearly label your art as what it is: digital painting, photo manipulation, photography, drawing, etc. People want to know what kind of art they are looking at. If you are using parts of AI-generated images in your work, mention that too. Be clear about it right away and don’t leave room for misunderstandings.
In a recent experiment, art researchers wanted to find out whether people could distinguish artworks created by humans from works made by a machine. They exhibited abstract expressionist paintings, contemporary pieces, and AI-generated works in a gallery – but without telling people that some works were made by a computer.
The experiment succeeded: the audience couldn’t tell which artworks came from humans and which from artificial intelligence. In fact, many gallery visitors were attracted to the artificial pieces. However, when being told that the pieces they admired were machine-generated, the viewers got pissed…
To not let that happen to you, make it immediately clear what you are creating. Otherwise, you’ll only risk losing fans and followers.
TIP #2: Talk about the tools you use to create your art.
Yes, people might suddenly be able to create impressive images without knowing anything about the tools you would need to create them. But there is more to creating art than just entering a couple of prompts.
Speak about your favorite tools of the trade. Tell people what software you used to create the piece, what hardware, what kind of pen, etc.
When you post your work on Instagram, you can also tag the companies who produce the tools you are using. Tag Wacom if you are working with a Wacom tablet. Tag Photoshop if that’s the software you are using to create your art.
TIP #3: Give insights into your creative process.
Someone who generates AI images doesn’t have any creative process to show. They could share the prompts they used to create a certain image, but the creative process is completely in the hands of artificial intelligence, and the user doesn’t even know how a specific piece is put together.
This is where you have a huge edge as a real artist. People are always keen to get a glimpse behind the scenes. They want to know what techniques you used and what steps you followed to achieve the result.
So give your audience insights into your creative process. Share work in progress shots and explain what exactly you were doing in that particular step. Timelapse videos are a good way to show the entire creation process of a piece from beginning to end.
Show the effort that went into creating the piece, let people know how many hours it took you to create, speak about what was hard to make and what was especially fun. How satisfied are you with the final result? Where do you want to improve?
As comic artist and animator Mervin Malonzo so eloquently said: “For me, the point of art-making isn’t just the final artwork, but it’s also the process itself. That’s what I enjoy about it, so I doubt that AI art generation is for me.”
In other words, true art-making is more about the creative process than the visual end product. The background information is the stuff people are interested in the most.
So use this to promote your art – because in the end, AI will never be able to replicate the creative process of a real artist!
Do you need some inspiration for how to speak about your art? Feel free to check out some of my Making Ofs where I speak about my creative process and the meaning behind my surreal artwork.
TIP #4: Tell your story.
Now, this is a big one. We humans use art as a means of self-expression. For us, it’s a way of relating with each other and the world around us. It is a reflection of our identity and personality as an artist.
Since the beginning of times, humans have used art to tell what’s going on in their lives. It is a proven fact that storytelling can improve art. So tell your story through the art you create!
Let people know of your motivation to create a particular piece of art. Explain the symbolism you used to convey your message. Speak about your emotions, feelings, and experiences that went into the work.
This is another big deficit that AI will never be able to overcome. Artificial intelligence might be able to imitate art reflecting the human condition, but it doesn’t have any real life experiences and emotions that it could translate into the artwork.
However, this is what determines the true value of your art. It’s exactly those feelings, emotions, and experiences that attract people to a particular work of art.
Despite working with AI herself, conceptual artist Anna Ridler finds that AI lacks the innate characteristics of art. “AI can’t handle concepts: collapsing moments in time, memory, thoughts, emotions – all of that is a real human skill, that makes a piece of art rather than something that visually looks pretty.”
Above, I already told you about the experiment that art researchers carried out at a gallery. There is another interesting thing that happened around the AI-generated exhibits. People kept asking to speak to the artist who created the works. Unfortunately, there was nobody there to fill the role.
This is a good example to show that people always look for the artist behind the artwork to tell their story. Originality in art comes from the human creator making choices and expressing their unique story.
TIP #5: Create an online art portfolio to display your body of work.
My last tip for you to promote yourself as a ‘real’ artist is to create a portfolio to display your body of work. While individual AI images become increasingly harder to distinguish from the works of human artists, an entire body of work will immediately tell.
Every artist goes through a developmental process, and your body of work reflects this. Usually, we start with something, then discover something else that we like more, and eventually we do more of that. Your portfolio will testify to your artistic evolvement.
AI art is just that. When you look at AI art galleries, you will notice that all pieces are more or less at the same level. Even if you work on your prompts, there won’t be too much development visible in the generated images.
Alone the number of images in your body of work will let people know if you are making AI art or real art. AI users may upload 200 images or more within two months. When seeing such incredible masses of pictures supposedly created by one person, you know it must be AI. No human artist is able to ‘produce’ those quantities.
There are many options to create an online art portfolio. You can use social media like Instagram or art sharing sites, such as DeviantArt or Behance. (More about the best sites to upload art here.)
But the absolutely best way is to display your body of work is on your own artist website.
Your art website gives you the greatest freedom to show your artwork in exactly the way you want. You can decide how many galleries you create, you choose the gallery layout, the size of the images, and so on.
Apart from that, your art websites opens up a lot more opportunities for you to generate traffic and grow your audience. For example, you can start an online blog, create a mailing list, speak about your creative process, recommend tools you are using, offer tutorials – to just name a few.
Making a website for your art isn’t difficult. You don’t need to be a techy person with coding skills to build a beautiful website. There are many easy-to-use website builders for artists, and Squarespace is one of the best among them.
If you are willing to get a bit more into the techy stuff, then WordPress is a great option to build your artist website. WordPress is the most flexible and scalable platform, but it comes with a learning curve.
Nevertheless, it is absolutely doable. WordPress is definitely a good choice for artists and here is how you can make an artist website with WordPress in 5 easy steps!
This was packed with so many actionable tips! I’m looking forward to implementing some of the strategies you mentioned. Great advice!
Hi Amelia, thanks for leaving a comment. So glad to hear that the article was helpful!
Thanks for these tips, Angie!
I always feel disheartend when I see how many AI images people post on social media on a daily basis. You just cannot keep up with that as a “human artist”. But the problem is that algorithms favor high posting frequency. So they get the exposure and artists who put hours of work into their art are not getting seen… That’s unfortunately how things are right now..
One can only hope that it’s going to change in the future. In the meantime I’m going to try some of your tips so ppl understand that it’s really me creating all the art! 😆
Hi Mary!
Social media is definitely not an easy game to play at the moment. I’ve noticed myself.
But don’t let that deter you from doing what you love to do. Just keep creating art and everything else will fall into place! 💖