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To say most of the discussion surrounding artificial intelligence in the last six months has centered around AI art tools is no injustice to the technology\u2019s broader context. While programs like ChatGPT have done much to showcase AI\u2019s disruptive capabilities in the public\u2019s eye, its advancements in AI art tools that have stirred up the most uncomfortable thoughts, feelings, and conversations about what it means to be human in an age where human exceptionalism finds increasingly fewer places to hide.\u00a0<\/p>\n
It\u2019s not that artists using machine intelligence is anything new \u2014 creatives have been exploring the potential of AI<\/a> to help them in their craft for decades. But never before has the field been so scrutinized and controversial. One of the earliest platforms to help bring AI art into the spotlight was BrainDrops<\/a>, which launched in 2021 and has since become one of the premier AI art destinations in Web3.\u00a0<\/p>\n To get a better sense of the trajectory of the AI art movement and why it matters, we sat down with BrainDrops<\/a> co-founder and Stability AI investor and advisor Justin Trimble<\/a> to talk about the platform\u2019s origins, the impact of AI on the future of media and entertainment, and why the proliferation of AI art was inevitable.\u00a0<\/p>\n A long-time lover of the intersection of technology and art, Trimble stumbled onto the idea of digital provenance via blockchain tech when he discovered the well-known and seminal NFT project CryptoPunks<\/a> in 2017. He developed a keen interest in generative art after meeting Erick Calderon, the founder and CEO of the generative art platform Art Blocks<\/a> in the CryptoPunks Discord, something he credits with igniting an interest in AI\u2019s ability to influence the creative sphere.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cThat [interaction] started me down the rabbit hole of generative art,\u201d Trimble said while speaking to nft now. \u201cI was really fascinated by the mechanics of not only the art but also the drop process and the minting experience. It was just exciting.\u201d<\/p>\n It quickly became apparent to Trimble that the writing was on the wall regarding the potential for AI art to flourish in a big way. Inspired to help produce a unique drop for the AI art space in a way that hadn\u2019t been done before, he reached out to artist and roboticist Pindar Van Arman in the summer of 2021 to collaborate on a release.\u00a0<\/p>\n At this point, the AI art movement still had roughly a year to go before reaching a tipping point and spilling out onto the world\u2019s radar. Helping to move that timeline along was the platform\u2019s launch<\/a> in November 2021, in which Trimble and co-founders Gene Kogan<\/a> and Punk2153 <\/a>simultaneously dropped three of the most seminal AI art collections in the movement\u2019s history: Claire Silver<\/a>\u2019s Genesis, Pindar Van Arman\u2019s podGANs, and Kogan\u2019s own Brain Loops.\u00a0<\/p>\n Combined, the three projects have done over 5,000 ETH in trading volume since their release, establishing BrainDrops as a force to be reckoned with in the process. Time has since proven the BrainDrops team prescient; the NFTs in those collections are some of the most sought-after pieces of early AI art in existence.<\/p>\n While BrainDrops put up some impressive sales numbers in the months following its launch, the platform saw a relative lull in activity until January 2023, when both floor prices for its collections and weekly trading volume began to skyrocket<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n Trimble attributes this in part to the increased popularization and continued improvement of text-to-image AI art tools like Midjourney, DALL-E, and Stable Diffusion. While early versions of those programs\u2019 outputs were comparatively grainy and rough-looking, they\u2019ve come a long way in a short amount of time in being able to produce more aesthetically coherent and pleasing images.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cI think now when you look at what\u2019s being produced, it\u2019s just gotten exponentially better, output-wise, at least in terms of realism and being able to reflect what somebody types in as a text prompt,\u201d Trimble elaborated.\u00a0<\/p>\n Trimble is no stranger to thinking about the effects AI art might have on the future of media from both a creator and consumer point of view. Just as tools like Midjourney democratized imagistic creative expression on a global scale, so do further technological advancements seem poised to do the same for audio<\/a>, video<\/a>, and more.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cYou\u2019re going to see a lot more personalized content really soon, a lot sooner than people anticipate.\u201d<\/p>\n Justin Trimble<\/cite><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<\/figure>\n \u201cIt\u2019s not just imagery,\u201d Trimble said. \u201cWith ChatGPT and GPT4, you\u2019re looking at one person, if they\u2019re super creative, soon being able to create feature films by themselves. The sky is the limit in terms of content. You\u2019re going to see a lot more personalized content really soon, a lot sooner than people anticipate.\u201d<\/p>\n This kind of revolutionary content production is something Trimble says he\u2019s long been interested in as a potential direction to take BrainDrops.\u00a0<\/p>\n But the BrainDrops co-founder isn\u2019t naive to the disruptive nature of AI technology in the entertainment industry, acknowledging that it could have a serious effect on the job market for large-scale media productions.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cThe people who are the best at what they do will use the tools to continue to be the best,\u201d Trimble offered as a prediction. \u201cBut there won\u2019t be the big teams that have always been necessary to create things. So, instead of a team of 50 to 100 developers needed to create a triple-A game or a movie, that\u2019ll be really pared down a lot. That could be a negative for the support staff [of those projects]. It\u2019s hard for me to say that, but I wouldn\u2019t be involved in [AI art] if I felt like it was like an overall negative.\u201d<\/p>\n The platform continues to host some of the AI art movement\u2019s most inventive minds. In February 2023, it released AI collaborative artist Roope Rainisto<\/a>\u2019s iconic Life In West America, a collection of 500 Western-themed scenes that have come to define the genre of post-photography.\u00a0<\/p>\nBuilding BrainDrops<\/h2>\n
How AI is transforming the entertainment landscape<\/h2>\n
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BrainDrops\u2019 future<\/h2>\n