Art Overview (Aug 2025)

1. AI Art tools can produce wonderful images. The image below is made by Midjourney using a prompt something like this:

"a whimsical, dream-like painting of an enchanted forest with vibrant colors and fantastical creatures like mythical birds or mystical flowers. In the center stand two figures, a young woman in a blue dress standing next to a tree, while an older lady wearing a red shirt is walking away from her. The background features lush greenery, towering trees, and exotic plants. This scene blends elements of fantasy and nature in its magical atmosphere, in the style of John Bauer."

2. What is it like using a good AI Art tool?

Imagine a very bright art student who has visited every art gallery and studied every image ever made. They understand every style and every technique. They know the artist names and what makes each one special. They don't remember each artwork in detail but they do learn from everything they see.

3. Once their training is complete the student can produce any art you request of them, in any style. Though their art draws on all of the images they have seen, it is unique. The best of our modern AI Art tools are like the student, and the art they produce can be of very high quality. The images produced are not being retrieved from anywhere, just created almost instantly. Below we examine how this is achieved.

4. This very simplified diagram shows how one type of AI Model is created. Essentially the AI tool first learns how to create existing images from the combination of a detailed description and a very degraded noisy version of the original. Although it starts by making lots of mistakes, the feedback tunes its many millions of parameters until it becomes accurate.

5. When you give a prompt repeatedly to an AI Art tool it will give you a different result each time. Many supply two or four by default for every prompt. This is because each time a different 'seed' is used which produces a different starting pattern of noise from which the image is developed.

In the sequence below, the lefthand side is simply random noise but it guides how the AI Art tool interprets the prompt of 'squirrel fishing'.

6. Reasons for using AI Art

7. Finding images for websites has in the past been difficult. Few could afford to pay an artist. With AI Art this problem is solved. This image acts as a banner in a website about a famous Chinese war story. It was produced by Midjourney. NOTE. The ethical issues involved are covered elsewhere on the course.

8. AI Tools used in demonstrations

9. Starting with FREE apps and websites

10. An example project - the old fashioned teacher

The next stage is to look at how some AI Art tools handle some basic challenges.
[1] Midjourney AI Art in 2025
[2] Google Gemini AI Art in 2025
[3] Grok AI Art in 2025
[4] Ideogram AI Art in 2025
[5] ChatGPT AI Art in 2025
[6] Microsoft Copilot AI Art in 2025