Guy Parsons

@GuyP ∙ Published December 23, 2022

[AI Art Weekly] Hey Guy, what’s your background and how did you get into AI art?

I’ve been working ‘online’ since I was 19 in digital communities, social media, audience growth and marketing. In some ways I’m the perfect kind of person to embrace this new wave of AI art tools: I work with tech and creative content all the time, but I’m not quite a coder or a proper artist!

I’ve been following the industry for some time but really it was the launch of DALL·E 2 in early 2022 that captured my attention and made me feel like I _ needed _ to figure this opportunity out!

[AI Art Weekly] Do you have a specific project you’re currently working on? What is it?

I’ve just been experimenting these last few months – there are so many possibilities! – but in 2023 I’ll be relaunching my DALL-Ery GALL-Ery website with tons new content under a new platform-agnostic banner, in partnership with my newsletter prompt/response. For me, there’s a lot less emphasis now on ‘detailed prompt engineering’ so it’s more about finding ways to document the huge space of possibilities with the tools available.

[AI Art Weekly] What does your workflow look like?

I don’t have a very specific or detailed workflow – just a lot of typing prompts into different tools! I am interested in chaining AI and other tools together to create interesting effects, to make kind of Rube Goldberg-like contraptions, whether that’s something like ChatGPT to manifest concepts or D-ID’s MyHeritage to add 3D effects.

[AI Art Weekly] What is your favourite prompt when creating art?

Anything starting with Film still of... - it really feels like you’re manifesting a whole tangible ‘universe’, and I love some of the #AIcinema experiments that are out there!

The images immediately create a sense of storytelling possibilities and narrative propulsion that I don’t always get from illustration-type prompts. On top of which, I’ve noticed there’s something about this kind of output which seems less triggering for conventional artists, I guess because they’re like images of real-seeming things and places that don’t exist, rather than the type of digital art that these creators specialise in.

[AI Art Weekly] How do you imagine AI (art) will be impacting society in the near future?

It’s hard to say, which is weird to admit, because I do believe the impact is coming very soon! The pace of change this year has been intense – in some ways a lot of my expectations, based on DALL·E 2, have been met, it’s just taken six months rather than three years.

One new thing we might see is the ability of small visionary teams, or even independent storytellers, to create rich, even ‘sprawling’ creative worlds – taking a core creative concept and running with it in a lot of different directions, accelerated by AI. So we could end up with ‘Mr Beast’-style creators developing their own MCU-sized indieverses.

[AI Art Weekly] Who is your favourite artist?

I’ve just noticed I’ve always been drawn to artists that use text like Jenny Holzer and David Shrigley - maybe that’s why I’m more comfortable writing pithy little things in boxes than drawing pictures!

Two folks I like over on Instagram are neptunianglitterball and manufacturedmemory - lots of creative world-building and fauxtography! Also I admire people that can take a concept and stick with it and go deep, whereas my ADHD-addled brain is constantly leaping from one idea to another!

[AI Art Weekly] Anything else you would like to share?

Just want to encourage everyone using these tools to keep on keeping on, experimenting and making tons of amazing work! Life is too short to divert energy into a combative mode-of-being – better by far, I feel, to focus one’s efforts on creating more of what you want to see more of.