To say that most of the artificial intelligence discussion over the past six months has centered on AI art tools is not an injustice to the broader context of the technology. While programs like ChatGPT have done much to bring AI’s disruptive capabilities to the public’s attention, advances in AI art tools have sparked the most uncomfortable thoughts, feelings, and conversations about what it means to be human in the world. a time when human exceptionalism is found. fewer and fewer places to hide.
It’s not that artists using machine intelligence is anything new – creatives have been exploring the potential of AI to help them in their craft for decades. But never before has the field been so scrutinized and controversial. One of the first platforms to showcase AI art was BrainDrops, which launched in 2021 and has since become one of the premier AI art destinations in Web3.
To get a better idea of the trajectory of the AI art movement and why it matters, we sat down with Brain drops co-founder and Stability AI investor and advisor Justin Trimble to talk about the origins of the platform, the impact of AI on the future of media and entertainment, and why the proliferation of AI art was inevitable.
Building Brain Drops
A longtime enthusiast of the intersection of technology and art, Trimble stumbled upon the idea of digital provenance via blockchain technology when he discovered the well-known and groundbreaking NFT project CryptoPunks 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 in the CryptoPunks Discord, something he says sparked interest in AI’s ability to influence the creative sphere.
“That [interaction] started me down the rabbit hole of generative art,” Trimble said, speaking to nft now. “I was really fascinated by the mechanics of not just the art, but the drip process and coin experience. It was just exciting.”
It quickly became apparent to Trimble that the writing was on the wall about the potential for AI art to flourish at scale. Inspired to help produce a unique drop for the AI art space in a way that hadn’t been done before, he contacted artist and roboticist Pindar Van Arman in the summer of 2021 to collaborate on a release.
At that point, the AI art movement had about a year to go before reaching a tipping point and landing on the world’s radar. Helping to move that timeline was the launch of the platform in November 2021, in which Trimble and co-founders Gene Kogan And Punk2153 simultaneously dropped three of the most groundbreaking AI art collections in the movement’s history: Claire Silver’s Genesis, Pindar Van Arman’s podGANs, and Kogan’s very own Brain Loops.
Combined, the three projects have done over 5,000 ETH in trading volume since their release, making BrainDrops a force to be reckoned with in the process. Since then, time has proven that the BrainDrops team is prescient; the NFTs in those collections are among the most sought-after pieces of early AI art in existence.
While BrainDrops racked up some impressive sales in the months following its launch, the platform saw a relative lull in activity until January 2023, when both rock bottom prices for its collections and weekly trading volume skyrocketed.
Trimble attributes this in part to the increased popularity and continued improvement of text-to-image AI art tools such as Midjourney, DALL-E and Stable Diffusion. While early versions of those programs’ outputs looked relatively grainy and rough, they’ve come a long way in a short time in producing more aesthetically coherent and pleasing images.
“I think now when you look at what’s being produced, it’s gotten exponentially better, output-wise, at least in terms of realism and being able to display what someone is typing as a text prompt,” Trimble explained.
How AI is transforming the entertainment landscape
Trimble is no stranger to thinking about the effects AI art could have on the future of media, from both the creator’s and the consumer’s point of view. Just as tools like Midjourney democratized the creative expression of the imagination on a global scale, further technological developments seem poised to do the same for sound, videoand more.
“You’re going to see a lot more personalized content very soon, much sooner than people expect.”
Justin Trimble
“It’s not just images,” Trimble said. “With ChatGPT and GPT4, you’re looking at one person, if they’re super creative, who could soon be making feature films of their own. The sky is the limit in terms of content. You are going to see a lot more personalized content very quickly, much sooner than people expect.”
This kind of revolutionary content production is something Trimble says has long been interested in as a possible direction to take BrainDrops in.
But the BrainDrops co-founder is not naive about the disruptive nature of AI technology in the entertainment industry, acknowledging that it could have a serious impact on the job market for large-scale media productions.
“The people who are the best at what they do will use the tools to stay the best,” Trimble predicted. “But there won’t be the big teams that have always been needed to create things. So instead of it taking a team of 50 to 100 developers to make a triple-A game or a movie, that’s going to be a lot less. That can be a disadvantage for the support staff [of those projects]. It’s hard for me to say that, but I wouldn’t be involved [AI art] if I felt like it was like an overall negative.
The future of BrainDrops
The platform continues to host some of the most inventive minds of the AI art movement. In February 2023, AI artist Roope Rainisto released iconic Life In West America, a collection of 500 Western-themed scenes that have come to define the genre of post photography.
Trimble noted that the platform has anywhere from six months to a year of projects in the works to further BrainDrops’ mission, including metals, the latest release from visual artist Daniel Greenwood. The platform’s plans for the future are extensive, but Trimble is keeping details close to its chest for now.
“There are a lot of names coming up that people are familiar with and some really interesting new ideas that people have come up with,” Trimble teased. “What I find most exciting is that I want to leave as much of an impact as possible so that my son can look back and say, ‘That was really cool that you were a part of this AI art movement from the beginning. .’ Leaving a legacy my child will be proud of.”
With a track record of being one of the earliest supporters and advocates of the most influential and innovative AI artists around, Trimble’s legacy is the last thing he needs to worry about.