Participating in art challenges is often about dedication, creativity, and pushing your boundaries. But what happens when you take on the challenge of creating art using AI—specifically trying to complete an entire month’s worth of prompts in just 90 minutes? Well, that’s precisely what I did during the Botober 2024 art challenge, and here’s what I learned along the way.
1. AI is Fast, but Creativity Still Takes Time
AI tools can generate stunning visuals in seconds, but crafting the right prompts for the AI to interpret still takes time and care. While I could get results quickly, curating and refining the prompts to match each Botober theme—created by Janelle Shane—was a whole other challenge. By the way, Janelle Shane is the brilliant mind behind Botober and also the author of the hilarious and insightful book, You Look Like a Thing and I Love You, where she dives deep into the weird and wonderful world of AI. If you’re into quirky AI experiments, I highly recommend checking out her work!
2. AI Enhances, but Doesn’t Replace Creativity
Some may assume that using AI to create art is as simple as typing in a prompt and hitting “go.” But AI works best as a tool for augmenting creativity, not replacing it. I found myself experimenting with different words, combinations, and ideas to get the desired aesthetic. In fact, the results were often surprising and led to new ideas I hadn’t initially considered. AI provided fresh perspectives, but it was my role as the artist to direct and filter those ideas.
3. Constraints Fuel Creativity
Completing an entire challenge in 90 minutes may seem like a limitation, but it actually fueled my creativity. Knowing that I had limited time forced me to make quicker decisions and embrace imperfection. I couldn’t obsess over every detail or keep tweaking every image. I had to trust the process and go with the flow. Ironically, this made the experience more enjoyable and spontaneous. Sometimes, constraints are exactly what you need to push through creative blocks.
4. AI Art Challenges the Notion of Authorship
One of the biggest philosophical takeaways from this challenge was questioning what it means to “create” art when AI plays such a major role. While I was the one driving the vision, prompts, and decisions, the AI was doing the actual rendering. This raised interesting questions about authorship and ownership. How much of the final artwork is mine, and how much belongs to the machine? It’s a fascinating dialogue, especially as AI tools become more prominent in creative industries.
5. Art is Still About the Journey
Even though the Botober challenge was a rapid-fire experience, it reminded me that art is still about the journey, not just the end result. AI may have sped up the process, but it was the creative decisions I made along the way—selecting prompts, fine-tuning ideas, and interpreting the results—that made the challenge meaningful. The AI wasn’t the artist; it was a collaborator. And like any collaboration, the fun is in the process, not just the product.
6. AI Doesn’t Eliminate Human Error—It Highlights It
As much as AI helped speed things up, I quickly learned that it doesn’t eliminate mistakes—it amplifies them. The AI would generate something wildly off-mark if I were vague or lazy in crafting a prompt. Every poorly thought-out instruction resulted in unusable or bizarre results. This highlighted the importance of precision and intention. AI is like a mirror: it reflects the strengths and weaknesses of your input.
Final Thoughts: Speed Isn’t Everything
While completing an entire art challenge in 90 minutes using AI was exhilarating, it taught me that speed isn’t always the goal in art. Sure, the AI tools allowed me to rapidly create pieces I wouldn’t have been able to in such a short time, but the essence of creating still lay in thinking, experimenting, and refining. AI can be a powerful assistant, but it doesn’t replace the human spark that fuels creativity.
The next time you see an art challenge, consider integrating AI—not as a shortcut, but as a creative companion. Who knows? You might learn a lot about yourself, your process, and the future of art in the digital age.
My Favorite Outputs
Here are a few of my favorite pieces from the challenge. Each one was created within the 90-minute sprint, reflecting the quirky, surreal, and sometimes unexplainable nature of working with AI:
Cabled Sins: Dimestore Colombo stars in the movie nobody asked for, but we all secretly wanted.
Cinder Frankenstein: A classic mashup of two things no one ever thought to put together—and honestly, why not?
Deathmop: The 80s slasher/thriller that asks, “What if the Grim Reaper had a Swiffer?”
Grandma’s Spritches: Seriously though… what the heck is a spritch, and can you eat it?
Song of the Booty: Nothing says pirate irony like meticulously aligned treasure chests and chaos.
The Snawk: Come on… obviously it’s a snake-bird hybrid—why are we even discussing this?
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