As someone who loves to make art, I marvel at the creative gifting God has given humanity. It’s a gifting as vast and varied as the rest of His creation.
In particular, I have an admiration for the historical paintings that became popular during the Renaissance. Those paintings often depicted the grand events recorded in the Bible. Some examples include “Christ in the Storm on the Sea of Galilee” by Rembrandt or da Vinci’s “Last Supper.”
When I consider the craftsmanship of such pieces, it calls to mind Proverbs 22:29: “Do you see a man skillful in his work? He will stand before kings; he will not stand before obscure men.” These paintings display a remarkable level of skill that often requires a lifetime of effort.
But what if I told you it didn’t have to be that way? What if there was a way to create art like the examples above—or, at least, something close to it—with little more than a brief text prompt and a few clicks?
Welcome to the world of artificial intelligence image generators. They’re powerful and easily accessible to anyone with an internet connection—kids included.
How Do AI Image Generators Work?
According to Harvard University, generative AI is “a type of artificial intelligence that can learn from and mimic large amounts of data to create content such as text, images, music, videos, code and more, based on inputs or prompts.”
Like other generative AI tools, image generators work from a library of data. In this case, they use a collection of images to mimic certain styles.
Generative AI & Art
I entered the following prompt into DALL-E 3, an image generator built into ChatGPT: “Create an image of men on a boat in the middle of a storm, Renaissance painting style.”
This image is what I received.
When you look at the image closely, some odd details start to emerge. Some of the characters in the image have melted-looking faces, like wax figures left out in the sun. Where are the boat’s sails? And the hands (a persistent AI image bugaboo) holding the oars just don’t look right.
And the errors really start to add up in this next image. It was created with a similar prompt as the first …
One oarsman (bottom-left corner) doesn’t seem to realize he’s no longer in the boat. Again, most hands in the image look wrong. And in the distance, we are treated to the majestically nonsensical sight of what appears to be a whale soaring above the stormy seas.
It’s easy to poke fun at images like these, where the AI gets confused or randomly includes a gravity-defying cetacean. But at the same time, it’s hard not to be impressed by the other aspects of the image. The style, lighting and composition are akin to most other Renaissance-style paintings. And consider this as well: It took less than a minute to make. You could create thousands of images like these in the span of time it would take even the fastest painter to create something comparable.
The Popularity of AI Image Generators
Thinking in those terms, and with the constant updates and improvements being made to AI image generators, you can begin to understand why scores of people (including kids) are drawn to these new tools.
In fact, as recently as December 2023, it’s estimated that an average of 34 million AI-generated images are created every day. And more than 15 billion AI-generated images have been created since 2022.
Considering this explosion in popularity, what do parents need to know?
Kids & AI Image Generators
As mentioned in a previous blog, Common Sense Media has reported that approximately 70% of teens have used generative AI tools—and most have done so without their parents’ knowledge.
AI image generators like DALL-E and Midjourney are extremely powerful tools. It’s important for parents to know if their children are using them. The more parents can be intentionally involved in their own child’s exploration of AI, the better, because AI image generators come with some potential benefits and concerns.
Pros
As we’ve discussed, AI generators can render images in literal seconds. One positive to that expediency is that it can allow for children to experiment with a variety of styles that they find interesting.
Is your child a fan of anime or manga? They can use an AI generator to create images in that style. Do they like to draw or paint? They can see tons of images that might inspire them to create their own art using those methods. Maybe they enjoy writing—well, guess what? Now their stories can be illustrated in just a few clicks!
In fact, the sometimes dreamlike quality of AI generated images (see above: flying whale) could stoke your child’s imagination and lead to all sorts of creative outcomes.
Cons
Along with those potential benefits, however, comes the possibility of some serious drawbacks. Research into how AI affects a kid’s creative process is still ongoing, but one concern is that generative tools might deemphasize the importance of experience in the creative equation.
Why is that important?
One of the reasons why AI image generators struggle to render hands is because AI doesn’t understand a hand’s function. It knows what a hand looks like—at least from the images it has to reference in its digital library. But it doesn’t understand how a hand works, how it moves, what is or isn’t possible for that hand to accomplish. It doesn’t have that experience. And this issue goes beyond hands: AI doesn’t understand how sports are played or how buildings are constructed, either. Ultimately, we want our kids to experience things that will feed their creativity. We shouldn’t rely on AI to give them an approximation of an experience.
Parents should also note that, like other AI tools, image generators can (and have been) misused to create explicit content, including exploitative images of children. Many of the popular AI image generators have safeguards in place to protect against this sort of thing. Unfortunately, these safety filters haven’t been robust enough, which opens up the possibility of children using the tool to be exposed to harmful images.
What Can Parents Do?
With all of this in mind, how should parents approach AI image generators, particularly if their kids are interested in using the software? Similar to our recommendation with AI music generators, we’d encourage you to approach your child and ask them if they’ve been using AI as a creative tool.
If they haven’t used an AI image generator, gauge their interest. If it’s something they’re intrigued by, offer to explore a few of the image generators together. Talk about the pros and cons and decide what’s right for your child.
If your child has already been using generative AI for images, express an interest in seeing what they’ve created. Come alongside them in their process and ask questions about how they’re using the tool. That way, you can help guide the process and set appropriate boundaries based on what you’ve seen.
At the end of the day, AI is a tool. And like any tool, it can used properly or improperly. As a parent, you have a crucial part to play in setting your child up for safety and success when it comes to artificial intelligence.
