Someone online asked a computer program that makes art to imagine what “Star Wars” would look like if it was made by a director named Wes Anderson, or how Disney characters would appear if they were made to look spooky like the style of Tim Burton. The results were shared in a TikTok video for the “Star Wars” version and in a BuzzFeed article for the Tim Burton-style Disney characters.
Tim Burton, the real director, saw the Tim Burton-style Disney characters created by the computer program, and he talked about them in an interview with The Independent. He said that the computer-made art was good, but it made him feel uneasy and like something important was missing.
The BuzzFeed article used a tool called Midjourney to make pictures of Disney characters in Tim Burton’s unique and slightly creepy art style. They did this for characters from movies like “Frozen,” “The Little Mermaid,” “Princess and the Frog,” and “Beauty and the Beast.”
Tim Burton’s comments are part of a bigger conversation about art made by computers. This has become more popular in the last couple of years with tools like Midjourney, Stable Diffusion, and Dall-E, which let people type a simple request and get a computer-generated image as a result. For example, one time, a computer-made artwork won a competition in Colorado, and this made many artists worried that computers might take their jobs.
Some artists and photographers are also worried that computer art tools might use their work from the internet to learn and make art that looks just like theirs. Some artists are even trying to sue companies like Stability AI, Midjourney, and DeviantArt, saying these companies used their copyrighted art to teach their computers.
Big entertainment companies like Marvel have started using computer art too. For example, Marvel used it to make the opening for their show “Secret Invasion.” But this made some people upset because they worry that computers might replace human artists. Marvel faced criticism on social media because of this.
In a surprising decision, a judge said that computer-made art can’t be copyrighted. This means that people might be able to use computer-made art without permission, which could be a concern for the entertainment industry.
