Artificial Intelligence1 min read

AI can make art in seconds – how are artists in Singapore fighting to keep their craft alive?

By · Published by Everything Blog

In short

Creative professionals in Singapore are navigating mixed feelings toward generative platforms that synthesize book covers, menus, and billboards in mere seconds. Veteran graphic designer Pann Lim observes that responses range from fierce rejection to practical adoption, even as many voice serious copyright worries. Digital creators and animators emphasize that models scrape their portfolios without consent, occasionally yielding near-exact duplicates of existing work. Muralist Terence Tan further cautions that synthesizing art from vast datasets fundamentally undermines the personal voice central to human artistic expression.

Key points

  • Singaporean artists are split between outright refusing automation and adopting it out of…: Singaporean artists are split between outright refusing automation and adopting it out of sheer professional necessity.
  • Creators emphasize that machine synthesis relies on unauthorized data harvesting rather t…: Creators emphasize that machine synthesis relies on unauthorized data harvesting rather than transformative personal experience and judgment.
  • Local practitioners are actively pursuing methods to defend their portfolios and maintain…: Local practitioners are actively pursuing methods to defend their portfolios and maintain distinct human individuality in their work.

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From illustrators protecting their work from AI training to designers navigating commercial pressures, Singapore’s creative community is finding ways to respond to generative AI while preserving the human touch in their art.

Restaurant menus, commercials, event posters, billboards, microdramas, book covers. These are just some of the visual works that normally take artists hours, days or even months to create. Now, they can be generated in seconds with a few prompts using a generative artificial intelligence (AI) tool.

The creative community has responded with a mix of curiosity, frustration and even disgust, alongside concerns about copyright, consent and the value of human creativity.

CNA Lifestyle spoke with illustrators, animators, graphic designers, painters and arts educators to understand how generative AI is changing their work.

Associate Professor Bernhard Schmitt from Nanyang Technological University's (NTU) School of Art, Design and Media pointed out that AI itself is hardly new. Machine learning and other forms of automation have been used in animation for decades.

What has become particularly disruptive is generative AI, which is trained on vast amounts of existing data to produce…

Artificial Intelligence