If you were to enter “AI images” into Google right now, you’d get tons of results. There’s image generators that you can use for free and for a fee, lists of the best programs to use right now, vast collections of AI art, and so much more. 

You can prompt the AI on what you want, the style you want it in, and there is a good chance that the AI may nail what you want. Of course, you may need to give a few nudges in the right direction, press “restart” 17 times because of the overloaded servers, but the creation may be eerily close to what you imagined it would be.

Although AI art has only exploded in popularity in the past few years, there have been forays into successful attempts at generating computer-drawn pictures as early as the 1970s.

A notable example of this work is Harold Cohen’s computer program named AARON. The first images generated by AARON were abstract and became progressively more complex as Harold added more code. 

Harold would then use various devices called “turtles” to then transfer AARON’s drawings to paper.

A testament of how far we have come with AI is a poignant quote from Harold. “It’s taken me 20 years to teach AARON to draw. How can I possibly teach it to color before I die?”

For this article, Bored Panda got in touch with Sofia Crespo. She is an artist and a diver, who has used AI capabilities to create various depictions of biological life. She states that AI is biased by organic life, as it is created by humanity and therefore inseparable from us. She strives to find patterns and parallels between AI generation and human expression. Read on to see what she thinks about AI and what she is working on currently.

Asked about how AI generators of visuals will change society, Sofia had this to say: “There's naturally a lot of disruption that will occur in the short term. The current hype has led to a lot of interest in implementing these kinds of technologies wherever it seems possible to use them.”

However, it’s important not to forget that these are only tools with limited capabilities. Their continuously improved abilities do not resolve such issues as dataset sources and diversity (both cultural and visual).

These tools will likely augment our work, but the role of these tools is up to us and our goals as a society in relation to culture, content and work. “Many of the issues we face are not the technology itself, but how it has been implemented,” Sofia adds.

Sofia’s work is inspired by her lifelong fascination with technology, for example, the microscope, which allows us to see more of the natural world, and with its help, we can gain more fundamental understandings and connections to it. “I find it super-inspiring to find ways of exploring how we can work with technology to connect and nurture nature rather than distance ourselves from it.”

Sofia is currently working on a few series of projects exploring how we could unveil the interconnectedness of things, how even we, experiencing ourselves as separate from nature, are still entangled in the more-than-human. To this end, she is exploring quantum computing as part of a series of works that explore this topic.

You can find more of her stunning and engaging work on her website. We especially recommend going to “This Jellyfish Does Not Exist,” where you can generate jellyfish to your heart’s content and even pet them!

Let’s not forget the incident a couple of years ago, when the Wombo app dropped, allowing people to make pictures start moving and singing their favorite songs. Of course this led to what you expect - no one was safe from spontaneously bursting out into song, from Kim Kardashian to Barack Obama.

Speaking of which, you can still try it out for yourself, if you download the app. And although a little weebly-wobbly, you’ll probably still appreciate this video of Mona Lisa (yes, that one, Da Vinci’s Mona Lisa) performing Billie Eilish’s Bad Guy.

And if that wasn’t enough power for you, remember that there are also AI-generated text-to-speech robots, which will give you the power to make people say what you tell them to. It wasn’t so long ago that some peeps on the internet decided to use the voice generators to make funny TikToks of American presidents playing Minecraft together.

If you’ve wondered what Joe Biden would say if he wanted to grief Trump’s house in Minecraft - wonder no longer. We have the technology.

And finally we’ve arrived at where we are now. As you may have heard, the pictures of the Pope were made by Midjourney. It’s an AI program which can generate pictures from various text prompts and is getting better - fast. 

The latest versions can generate hands now, which is a big thing, because only recently that was one of the distinguishing features of AI. The newest version is much more stylistically diverse, with images up to twice the resolution than in the previous version.

It’s unsure where these advancements may take us, but one thing is certain - we must remain ever more vigilant, lest we be fooled that pictures of a dripped-out Pope are real.