ART VS AI

Will AI-generated art steal LI artists' jobs?

By Victor Ocasio victor.ocasio@newsday.com Updated March 24, 2023 12:26 pm

Not the first challenge

Digital artist and animator Cynthia Wells of Southold says artists have been confronted with technological challenges before and been able to adapt to them. Photo Credit: Newsday/John Paraskevas

Longtime working artists said they have been pressured to incorporate new technology in their work or face potential obsolescence for decades.

Cynthia Wells, 66, a Southold artist and digital illustrator, said she started her career animating for Walt Disney Animation Studios decades ago when the entertainment giant still did animation frame by frame using film.

A sampling of work by Cynthia Wells, a digital artist and animator who started her career as an animator for Disney. Credit: Newsday/John Paraskevas

Wells, who has worked on animated films such as “The Fox and the Hound,” “Anastasia” and “Space Jam,” said when Disney moved to digital animation in the ’80s, she made the jump to integrating computers into her workflow.

It’s the kind of rapid upskilling artists have needed to go through with each passing technological advancement.

“Artists have always been vulnerable. I look at AI warily, but it’s not a new wariness. ”

—Cynthia Wells, 66, an artist and digital illustrator living in Southold.

Credit: Newsday/ John Paraskevas

“Artists have always been vulnerable,” Wells said. “I look at AI warily, but it’s not a new wariness.”

And though she has concerns about the copyright issues that AI brings, she said the tools themselves may just end up as another arrow in the quiver of commercial artists.

“I find it a really interesting medium that obviously needs to have controls on it,” she said.