Greg Rutkowski is among the artists calling for more protection from artificial intelligence tools.

The new video-generation systems could speed the work of moviemakers and other digital artists, while becoming a new and quick way to create hard-to-detect online misinformation, making it even harder to tell what's real on the internet. The systems are examples of what is known as generative A.I., which can instantly create text, images and sounds. Another example is ChatGPT, the online chatbot made by a San Francisco start-up, OpenAI, that stunned the tech industry with its abilities late last year. Google and Meta, Facebook's parent company, unveiled the first video-generation systems last year, but did not share them with the public because they were worried that the systems could eventually be used to spread disinformation with newfound speed and efficiency. But Runway's chief executive, Cristóbal Valenzuela, said he believed the technology was too important to keep in a research lab, despite its risks.

Ian Sansavera, a software architect at a New York startup called Runway AI, typed a short description of what he wanted to see in a video. "A tranquil river in the forest," he wrote. Less than two minutes later, an experimental internet service generated a short video of a tranquil river in a forest. The river's running water glistened in the sun as it cut between trees and ferns, turned a corner and splashed gently over rocks. Runway, which plans to open its service to a small group of testers this week, is one of several companies building artificial intelligence technology that will soon let people generate videos simply by typing several words into a box on a computer screen.

Adobe's suite of photo and video editing software has long leveraged the assistance of machine intelligence to help its human users do their jobs, having employed the Sensei AI system for more than a decade to power features like Neural Filters in Photoshop or Acrobat's Liquid Mode. On Tuesday, Adobe revealed its next generation of AI features, a family of generative models the company has collectively dubbed, Firefly -- the first of which will generate both images and font effects. "Generative AI is the next evolution of AI-driven creativity and productivity, transforming the conversation between creator and computer into something more natural, intuitive and powerful," said David Wadhwani, president, Adobe's Digital Media Business, said in Tuesday's release. "With Firefly, Adobe will bring generative AI-powered'creative ingredients' directly into customers' workflows, increasing productivity and creative confidence for all creators from high-end creative professionals to the long tail of the creator economy." With it, would-be digital artists are no longer limited by their sub-par dexterity or sheer lack of artistic talent -- they will be able to speak into existence professional-quality illustrations using only the power of their words.

If you've logged on to any social media app this week, you've probably seen pictures of your friends, but re-imagined as fairy princesses, animé characters, or celestial beings. It is all because of Lensa, an app which uses artificial intelligence to render digital portraits based on photos users submit. Lensa's highly stylized, eye-catching portraits have taken over the internet, but they have also been the subject of concern from privacy experts, digital artists, and users who have noticed the app making their skin paler or their bodies thinner. Here's everything you need to know about Lensa: How to get your own'magic avatar' The pictures making the rounds online are products of Lensa's "Magic Avatars" function. To try it out, you'll need to first download the Lensa app on your phone.

With machines like AI art generators getting increasingly sophisticated, the "traditional" way of doing things is looking to be left behind. This creative new trend in the art world has been met with no shortage of controversy from digital artists who are worried that they won't be able…

This year, the Colorado State Fair's annual art competition gave out prizes in all the usual categories: painting, quilting, sculpture. He created it with Midjourney, an artificial intelligence program that turns lines of text into hyper-realistic graphics. Mr. Allen's work, "Théâtre D'opéra Spatial," took home the blue ribbon in the fair's contest for emerging digital artists -- making it one of the first A.I.-generated pieces to win such a prize, and setting off a fierce backlash from artists who accused him of, essentially, cheating. Reached by phone on Wednesday, Mr. Allen defended his work. He said that he had made clear that his work -- which was submitted under the name "Jason M. Allen via Midjourney" -- was created using A.I., and that he hadn't deceived anyone about its origins.

Movies over the years showed the rise of artificial intelligence taking over and enslaving humanity, think "The Matrix" and "The Terminator," and while that has yet to happen (thankfully), recently, there has been an attention-grabbing rise of people sharing AI-generated art. Some of whom clearly stated that the pictures were made using AI, while others claimed that its theirs; which made us wonder, will AI steal the art scene from humans? It isn't out of the ordinary to see machines replacing humans. It has happened several times before, such as in car production lines or anything related to mass production, due to the machines' accuracy, effectiveness, and obvious perfect health. However, we've never seen it take over a human's post in something that needed creativity and talent on this scale before. Using AI in art isn't new in fact, there was an AI-generated portrait sold in 2018 at an auction for a whopping $432,500, but the latest two AI platforms making waves in the scene today are Midjourney and DALL·E 2. DALL·E (named as an homage to Salvador Dali) creates images based on the users' input using an intricate deep-learning method; the developers behind the platform enhanced it even more, releasing the second iteration DALL·E 2 in 2021.

The group, composed of editors from Cosmopolitan, members of artificial-intelligence research lab OpenAI, and a digital artist--Karen X. Cheng, the first "real-world" person granted access to the computer system they're all using--are working together, with this system, to try to create the world's first magazine cover designed by artificial intelligence. Sure, there have been other stabs. AI has been around since the 1950s, and many publications have experimented with AI-created images as the technology has lurched and leaped forward over the past 70 years. Just last week, The Economist used an AI bot to generate an image for its report on the state of AI technology and featured that image as an inset on its cover. This Cosmo cover is the first attempt to go the whole nine yards. "It looks like Mary Poppins," says Mallory Roynon, creative director of Cosmopolitan, who appears unruffled by the fact that she's directing an algorithm to assist with one of the more important functions of her job.

As digital art becomes commonplace, it is necessary for its digital artists to have staked a claim on the origin of their reason for being in it. Being in a camp that feigns some interest in how changing technology influences art's presence on electronic devices, overall, is a good place to start. Most artists have started to appropriate the position on art that it's anything that is perceptible and certified as their own original work. What's arguably behind every impulse to believe an art work has value is proof that what is presented is an original. So going down the digital art rabbit hole may or may not be a good reason to be in it.