Prateek Arora is an AI artist who brings the city alive with art that is futuristic
A sattire on Mumbai’s water logging concerns by Prateek Arora
Prateek Arora moved to Mumbai over a decade ago from Delhi and when AI came into existence, the artist couldn’t help but show us Mumbai in a different light. Much like his imaging of spaceship apartments that float along Mumbai’s skyline, which are part of his “Surreal Estate” series, and give a very Jetsons vibe.
Arora started using Midjourney in 2022, even before anyone knew about the AI tool. “When you find a new medium to experiment with, the first thing any artist does is reimagine the immediate space around him/her,” says Arora. With AI art intricately woven around the city, he doled out one series after another. We especially loved the monsoon robot raincoats, which made us feel like we were Tony Stark in Mumbai.
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Some of Arora’s images around what it takes for a common Mumbaikar to survive monsoon are popular on social media
Arora, who has been exhibiting his AI work at galleries and big-ticket events like the Mumbai Art Fair that took place early this year, says that even though AI imaging has grown by leaps and bounds in the last year alone, there is still a lot more sophisticated left to accomplish. “I am still learning but the growth we have seen in AI art in particular has been one-of-a-kind,” he says. But he doesn’t want to wield the power of AI only as a hype-man, “If you are using the tool then you must understand what effects it has on the society at large. I get trolled heavily online and my DMs always have a lot of negative messages but I don’t pay too much attention to them because I have a lot of people asking genuine questions about AI as well. I always engage with a genuine person about the future of AI,” he adds.
Prateek Arora. Pic/Satej Shinde
Arora, like most AI artists, believes that AI is not the end of art or that it has rung a doomsday bell for all artists or mediums. “It’s like how cinema went from black and white to colour or when it went from silent movies to the ‘talkies’. It did not wipe out the art of cinema-making. It was just progression,” he says.
Arora believes that AI-powered videos will be the future of the technology. Also, one of the vital ways that the current environment is changing is that pitch decks—when you pitch an idea to a studio, or OTT—have all transitioned to AI visuals. “As a result, long-ignored genres like sci-fi and horror in India are headed to never-before visuals on our cinema screens,” he adds.
What is the tech? Uses AI to create fantasy universe.
How it works? Tools like Midjourney, DALL·E to create worlds with help of prompts and commands.
Whom does it help? Will empower the animation/horror genre of cinema as well as enhance the video formats on all platforms in the coming future.
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