I Asked A.I. To Steal My Images: Here Are the Results

The recent advancements in artificial intelligence technology have inspired discussions and debates, elicited excitement, and evoked the ire of many in the art world.

While AI technology is not new, its recent rise due to advancements in technological innovation and processing capabilities and power have made it exponentially more ubiquitous in nearly every facet of our creative endeavors.

Artists and creators of all sorts, including writers, musicians, and photographers are increasingly being bombarded with images, sounds, and even detailed and nuanced written works that look and sound more like humans every day.

Some artists insist that we must embrace this new technology as we have with other new advances throughout the ages, while others see no merit in something created by a machine, and believe that the humanity of art is what makes it art.

While this argument can be made effectively and passionately on both sides, it’s not exactly the subject of this piece; at least it’s not the main subject, anyway.

Like so many other artists, I’ve had mixed feelings while I’ve also played in amazement with pictures and prompts to create some amazing, interesting, and sometimes glitchy images with AI.

Hotpot, Wonder, and Lensa are some of the AI engines I explored, but there are a ton of them out there, so find one you like, and let your imagination go wild in the prompt box!

Simply put, they use your wishes (in the form of written prompts) to create the words, sounds, or images you want to read, hear, or see.

However, in “creating” the outcome of a desired image, for example, AI is actually searching through millions of images and sort of organizing a mashup of information into a single file designed to appeal to the human user. So, in a way, it’s stealing intellectual property, but not typically from a single artist or entity. I like to consider it a hive mind tool that shows the collective work of the art community as a whole. That, in my opinion, is a huge advancement in art and technology.

This sense of wonder and exploration inspired me to ask Wonder AI to steal its inspiration from me specifically.

I used very few prompts, no images, and my own name and website identifying keywords to “steer” the prompts to a pretty shallow pool to dive into. I can only imagine that it crawled my websites, my social media accounts, and vast image credit results to glean the information gathered.

“Landscape, portrait, scene, and image” were some general prompts I used to make results vary from search to search. I made sure to use “in the style of JP Thompson” in every one.

The results were immediately recognizable and fun and seemed to get more accurate as I progressed.

Without further ado, here are the results of stealing my own work with AI prompts.

They’re sometimes funny, sometimes pretty impressive, and sometimes unimpressive, but I must admit, they’re all pretty interesting.

Compare them to my images here on this site as well as my Facebook and Instagram pages, and you'll see the similarities are compelling and undeniable!

Note: No artificial intelligence was used in the text of this article.