Have you ever wondered what Queen Elizabeth II would look like if she was in a Wes Anderson movie? Or would the Eiffel Tower look different if the River Seine suddenly ran dry? Thanks to AI image generators, now you don’t have to imagine.
Sure, you can use the AI art generators to see what Bill Gates or Mark Zuckerberg would look like working at Subway. But other creators are more interested in manipulating the vast art databases to conjure up something even more intriguing. Such is the If Only AI project.
Its creator and owner Vincent Smadja agreed to have a short chat with Bored Panda. He told us more about what inspired his AI art project, what tools he uses to create the images you see in this list, and his two cents on whether AI art is just “an illusion of art.”
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Image credits: ifonly.ai
We previously covered Vincent’s other project, Superwrong Magazine. While Superwrong features works from other artists and creators as well, If Only is strictly a personal project. It’s a page for digital visual art created with the help of artificial intelligence. The artist describes it as a “merge between art and AI.”
Vincent has already garnered some attention from the press for his project If Only. He started the account only in June 2023, but already has over 60k followers. The artist told Parametric Architecture that he uses the program Midjourney, and that working with AI helped him to express his vision.
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Image credits: ifonly.ai
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Image credits: ifonly.ai
Most of the stuff on If Only AI features architectural wonders as well as satirical portraits of famous people. There’s one question that the creator is itching to answer. “What is absent from our reality that I would love to see come to life?”
Based on this thought experiment, he imagines innovative scenarios and audacious architecture and pushes the boundaries of what we understand as art.
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Image credits: designmidjourney
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Image credits: ifonly.ai
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Image credits: ifonly.ai
We asked Vincent to tell us more about the inception of If Only Ai. “I launched my artistic alias ‘If Only’ in early July 2023 after months of self-taught training,” the creator says. “The idea behind this project was to share with others the extent of my ideas and concepts that I had accumulated over many years.”
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Image credits: mylittleparis
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Image credits: earthshotprize
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Image credits: ifonly.ai
The person behind If Only AI looks for creative incentives everywhere. “My inspirations are diverse: my desires, dreams and nightmares, architecture, travels.” Interestingly, he also gets inspired by brands and advertising. “With a background in marketing, I love imagining and visualizing what brands could do in terms of scenography, events, textiles, etc.,” the creator adds.
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Image credits: ambre_ai
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Image credits: ifonly.ai
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Image credits: ifonly.ai
As we already mentioned, the main tool in Smadja’s arsenal is the generative AI program Midjourney. “I work exclusively on Midjourney and, more recently, on Magnific AI to upscale my images,” the page’s curator says. “In reality, there is no ‘recipe’ process. Similar to design, there are many different paths to achieve a satisfactory result.”
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Image credits: ifonly.ai
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Image credits: ifonly.ai
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Image credits: ifonly.ai
The creator takes us behind the scenes of his process. “Before starting to prompt, I idealize in my mind what the expected result would be,” he begins. “Once imagined, I dive into production with perseverance to achieve what I envisioned at the beginning.” Vincent emphasizes that perseverance is key to his creative process.
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Image credits: elcorteingles
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Image credits: ifonly.ai
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Image credits: ifonly.ai
Naturally, the ability to input good prompts doesn’t come overnight. The image-creating process therefore can be arduous. “The biggest challenge on Midjourney is adding fantasy to an existing place, product or subject. To be honest, it doesn’t always work,” the creator is honest. “I have developed techniques to get as close as possible to reality with my creativity as makeup.”
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Image credits: sydney
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Image credits: ifonly.ai
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Image credits: essence_cosmetics
Overcoming these challenges is what Vincent finds the most rewarding throughout his journey as the curator of If Only AI. “What I love most about my creative process [is] battling with Midjourney,” he claims.
“Many things do not (yet) work on Midjourney. But when I manipulate my different techniques to do what is basically not possible and achieve the expected result, it’s a joy.”
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Image credits: ifonly.ai
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Image credits: ifonly.ai
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Image credits: secret_nyc
And here we find ourselves pondering the most burning question: what do we as a society think of AI art? Is AI-generated creativity legit? Is it an art and design killer? We asked Vincent’s opinion on the topic. And he has a very open-ended answer.
He says he simply doesn’t engage in such conversations with critics and doesn’t have a formal answer. “Art, in my opinion, is a very personal perception. AI is, for me, a liberating tool for creativity – but is a creative person a creator? I leave you to ponder on that.”
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Image credits: ifonly.ai
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Image credits: ifonly.ai
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Image credits: ifonly.ai
Some artists have nothing against AI-generated art. They think it will only propel old-school artists to greater heights by making physical art more special, unique and desirable. Others believe that the pressure of existing AI-generated images might improve the personal style in their art.
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Image credits: ifonly.ai
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Image credits: ifonly.ai
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Image credits: ifonly.ai
However, some artists have a more bleak outlook. Artist and critic Eric Wayne likens this moment in time to when Microsoft’s Deep Blue defeated Chess master Gary Kasparov.
“I still hold onto the notion that someone could certainly use AI in a very individual and creative way, but that just trains the AI, in which case the AI then shares that same capacity to use against humans, so to speak.”
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Image credits: ifonly.ai
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Image credits: ifonly.ai
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Image credits: iva_ai_popsurreal
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Image credits: ifonly.ai
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Image credits: ifonly.ai
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Image credits: ifonly.ai
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Image credits: ifonly.ai
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Image credits: ifonly.ai
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Image credits: ifonly.ai
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Image credits: ifonly.ai
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Image credits: ifonly.ai
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Image credits: ifonly.ai
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Image credits: ifonly.ai
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Image credits: ifonly.ai
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Image credits: ifonly.ai
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Image credits: ifonly.ai
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Image credits: ifonly.ai
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Image credits: ifonly.ai
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Image credits: ifonly.ai
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Image credits: ambre_ai
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Image credits: ifonly.ai
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Image credits: ifonly.ai
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Image credits: ifonly.ai
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Image credits: ifonly.ai
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Image credits: ifonly.ai
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Image credits: ifonly.ai
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Image credits: ifonly.ai
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Image credits: ifonly.ai
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Image credits: ifonly.ai
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Image credits: ifonly.ai
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Image credits: ifonly.ai
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Image credits: ifonly.ai
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Image credits: ifonly.ai
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Image credits: ifonly.ai
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Image credits: ifonly.ai
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Image credits: ifonly.ai
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Image credits: ifonly.ai
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Image credits: ifonly.ai
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Image credits: ifonly.ai
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Image credits: ifonly.ai
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Image credits: ifonly.ai
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Image credits: ifonly.ai
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Image credits: ifonly.ai
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Image credits: ifonly.ai
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Image credits: superwrongmagazine
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Image credits: ifonly.ai
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Image credits: ifonly.ai
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Image credits: ifonly.ai
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Image credits: ifonly.ai