Study shows artists & designers embrace AI despite fears

New research released today indicates that while 8 in 10 professional artists and designers are worried about losing out on work to AI, perceptions of the technology are starting to shift, with many ready to embrace its potential benefits and believing it to be an inevitable part of their role in the future.

The research, conducted by exactly.ai, a generative AI platform designed for and by artists, showed that 62% of artists and designers believe using AI in their work will be essential for future generations of creatives, and 60% agree that AI is just the latest evolution in the way artists and designers create work.

Although there was concern expressed about the impact of AI technology on their careers—29% of respondents stated that AI's potential to be used to replace artists and designers was the greatest challenge they currently faced in their role—the majority also recognised the significant benefits it could bring.

Less than one in ten (9%) of those surveyed said they didn't think AI tools would benefit artists and designers. Key potential benefits they identified included supporting them to be more creative and experimental with their work (53%), helping them to attract more clients (43%), and enabling them to save time and be more productive (40%).

Tonia Samsonova, founder and CEO of exactly.ai, commented, "AI's role in the creative industries has been hotly debated for a long time now, and understandably, many professional artists have concerns over how its growing influence will impact their creativity and their livelihoods. But we are firm believers that there is a world in which the two not only exist but work together to produce outstanding results."

Samsonova continued, "Our research findings show that many artists and creators agree with this vision and are in fact open to learning about how AI can help them to be more creative, more commercial and more competitive. Alongside meaningful regulation and legislation to protect the IP and incomes of artists, we also need a greater focus on training and tools that empower the creative community to utilise AI technology to help them thrive."

A lack of training in how to use AI tools was a notable barrier identified in the research, with 61% of creative professionals saying they had never received any training on using AI for their work. Just 13% weren’t interested in receiving any training at all, and almost two-thirds (63%) were actively concerned that they didn’t yet have the skills or knowledge to benefit from AI in their careers.

This skills gap could be causing many artists and designers to lose out on commercial opportunities presented by AI, something that exactly.ai is aiming to address by providing a unique, simple-to-use platform that allows creatives to train their own AI model to produce and monetise designs that accurately reflect their personal artistic style while retaining legal ownership over their art.

Over 40,000 artists globally have registered with exactly.ai since its launch in 2023, many of which are already using the platform to help them produce high-quality work at speed and experiment with new styles.

Liza Perelman, an illustrator, shared her experience: "I have never used AI in my work before, so this is a completely new experience for me. It was important for me to make the first acquaintance with the program as simple and not time-consuming as possible. Exactly.ai does a great job with this task. During my first introduction to the platform, I quickly understood how it worked, learned how to write quality prompts, and generated a set of illustrations within the first hour. I am now using the model to develop my visual style: I look for new shapes, composition options and story ideas in illustrations."

Nancy Oliveri, a photographer, commented, "I was initially offended by the hyperreal aesthetic of artificial intelligence-generated imagery, but after a three-decade career as a psychotherapist and artist, I knew to follow my discomfort and took an AI workshop to understand what I was hating. I tried several platforms and found them incomprehensible to use and was uncomfortable with ethical copyright infringement until I found exactly.ai, which allows artists to train exclusively on their own work, which for me includes decades of photographic archives. It has pushed my practice shaped by the past 100 years of photographic history into the future and I have recently had a solo exhibition of my AI series 'Self-Portrait on a Life Raft' at PH21 Gallery in Budapest.”

Maxim Pogrebnyak, a designer, added, "My studio does a variety of commissions, using a variety of neural networks, including exactly.ai. For example, we made a series of posters for a well-known logistics company, illustrations for Boris Akunin and several other books, and developed cover designs using the platform."

With the global generative AI market set to be worth USD $668 billion by 2030, exactly.ai aims to be at the forefront of its wider adoption amongst creative communities.