AI, ART & NFTs — Recap
Recap of the latest Astar Network NFT space
GM Astar AI and art enthusiasts,
If you missed the last space hosted by Astar covering all the above, you can listen to the recording here or read about all the important things we covered in this post.
Thanks to everyone tuning in, and of course, to all the speakers! It was a pleasure.
On-stage:
- Merzmensch (Artist, Data Journalist, OpenAI Community Ambassador)
- Leo (Neuro-psychologist, Master Student of AI, CEO Neurolaunche)
- Starpause (Co-founder Huddlr IO, Tenk DAO, Codame. AI Artist)
Getting into NFTs
Merzmensch: “I got into NFTs in 2021, and what attracted me at first was the possibility of registering and authenticating your art. Eventually, I learned a lot about the negative environmental impact of Ethereum. Through some of the artists I followed back then, I learned about Tezos. It was green, and many artists into experimentation went there. I was probably one of the earliest users of Hic et Nun (Tezos NFT marketplace). There is a big diversity of ideas and objects in that ecosystem.”
Starpause: “My web3 experience mostly comes from running the Codame art festival. When Covid hit, we tried figuring out how to weather that and explored NFTs. We had a lot of success selling artists’ works initially on Ethereum. After getting complaints about Ethereum’s complexity, I explored other chains and eventually ended up on NEAR.
Leo: “ When studying AI, we experiment a lot with it, and visual art AI is definitely one of them. I am not using it much on NFTs but on videos. I’ve come across Astar Network and started exploring NFTs. Soon I’ll be launching a NFT collection as well on Astar.”
Thoughts on Generative AI and its impact
- Human creativity will not be replaced by AI — if anything, AI expands human creative and imaginative capabilities
- AI is our reflection — it was trained on humans data
- AI as co-author to create new works, collages, and more
- Letting AI create its own vision of an artwork can be very inspiring
- It can create a world of post-scarcity, and curation will become more important as everyone can be a creator.
- Hunting the Glitch: An AI art telegram group where the artist is generated by someone, and everyone runs their prompts in it. Eventually, artists might be able to earn from training models with their styles.
- The urge to create is innately human, and many people, unfortunately, decide for themselves that they aren’t creative. Great to see AI empower these people to re-discover their creativity.
- Huge opportunity for gaming, film, and other visual industries to speed up production processes.
Creating with AI, tools, and websites
- RunwayML: text-to-image, image-to-image, and even video. Offers various features for more advanced users, up to the ability to train your own model. You’ll have to pay to use servers, but there is a free trial.
- Midjourney: text-to-image generation, runs through Discord. You get a few free trials, then a subscription model.
- HuggingFace (this is potentially for more advanced users) because it requires running models yourself.
- Niji Journey: Midjourney but trained on anime and manga.
- Night Cafe: will even enable you to make it an NFT
- Wombo AI: offers a variety of styles to pick from making it easier to get started.
- Starry AI: create 5 images per day for free, great for night landscapes as the name suggests 🌠
You can also go to the Astar Network Discord, enter the ask-astari channel, and run /imagine to generate images with Midjourney.
Tips for writing Prompts
- Add the main subject early on
- Try non-descriptive text, AI can interpret concepts and will visualize them in interesting ways
- Try a lot, with small variations to see what happens
- Can even try to get prompts from another AI (ChatGPT)
- Find a Prompt Generator and give it a go
- Have fun, AI can make you laugh and how it interprets your prompts can lead to unexpected results.
Standing out as a project in times where creation is so easy
“Embrace it.“
Starpause
NEARchan is an example of a character managed by a DAO that anyone can use, recreate, and make her come to life. Izumo is another example created by someone who had success previously with VTubers, now bringing some of that to web3.
The way to stand out is to be open.
AI x NFTs
AI can be great for adding more utility to your NFTs, enabling people to use them in ways beyond just profile pictures.
Metaverse avatars, gaming items, and much more.
“Instead of FOMO, YOLO! Let’s create together”
Merzmensch
New life motto sorted.
If you enjoyed the discussion, give the speakers a follow, they’re doing some amazing things at the intersection of AI, Art, and NFTs.
Watch out for the next space 👀
And don’t forget, you still have time to submit your artwork to the Art Zero x Subwallet x Astar Art contest!
