Can AI help artists?

Many artists fear AI could endanger their livelihoods, and that’s a legitimate concern. But does AI also have the potential to help artists save time with marketing-related writing tasks, so they can spend more time painting? I thought I’d have a little fun playing around with an AI tool named Theobot that claims to help artists craft painting titles or descriptions of their paintings. I’ll be the first to admit I could use a little help with naming paintings, as I find it challenging sometimes to come up with creative titles, since I frequently revisit a few subjects I absolutely love: autumn birch trees, poppies, full moons, and lakes. One of my gallerists once commented that she had so many paintings of mine with the word lake or birches in the title that it was hard to keep them straight.

So why not have some fun trying out a bot to help name a painting and write a description of it for my web site? I decided to challenge Theobot to come up with some creative title suggestions for my autumn encaustic painting Beautiful Dream. (I had named this one after a song by Vermont singer songwriter Todd Thibaud. I’m still very happy with the title and don’t plan to change it, but thought it was a good painting to use as a test case.)

Beautiful Dream, 36" x 24," encaustic on panel

An AI-crafted painting description

Theobot makes the whole process really easy. Just go to https://theobot.ai/ and sign up for a free trial. Unlike most free trials, you don’t have to give them a credit card. (This is usually a deal-killer for me, since I’m not going to get roped into an automatic subscription at the end of the trial period if I don’t even know that I like the product.) Once registered, you simply drag and drop an image onto the dashboard. The first step – having the bot write a description of the painting – resulted in a concise paragraph that was a quite good visual summary:

The artwork depicts a vibrant scene of five tall, stylized trees with bright yellow foliage against a clear blue sky. The trees are aligned on a gently sloping green hill, and their trunks are rendered in a rich red color. The ground is dotted with scattered yellow leaves, adding texture and contrast to the landscape. The composition showcases a bold use of color and pattern, creating a lively and engaging visual experience.

You can refine the description by inputting what you think is unique about the painting, but I wanted to see what the bot would come up with on its own, so I just moved on to the next step: coming up with a title.

Having a bot name my painting

You can ask the bot to come up with suggested titles completely on its own, or with some guidance. (You can add in key themes, desired tone, or any specific words you’d like included.) The first round of titles the bot suggested with zero guidance was on the right track, but seemed a bit awkward in their phrasing. They were also a little long-winded. Here’s round one of title suggestions:

Theobot's first pass, when asked to title my painting

For a few of these longer titles, I could see shortening them into something useful, like Canopy Dance, or Sunlit Parade, but even those didn’t seem like something I would say. Combining words from some of the suggestions could work — maybe. Golden Canopy? You then have the option of “trying something else with the titles” and can input requests or suggestions. I decided to ask Theobot for two word titles.

Here’s the result:

A second pass at generating painting names

Getting warmer!! Out of those, I’d say there was one real possibility: Golden Cascade. I could have done more iterations, but I decided I’d try the title tool out on different paintings later on, and instead play around with another intriguing feature: the artwork critique.

 AI-generated art critique

This time, the output was far lengthier. I’ve included the full critique in the screenshot below, but here are my key takeaways:

What the bot got right: There were several phrases that I thought really nailed what my art is about – “a celebration of color and form, ” “a sense of joy and optimism,” and “encouraging viewers to see familiar elements of nature through a new lens.” In terms of style, it talked about my “dynamic use of use of pattern and repetition.” All interesting observations, even if they were presented in the overly-flattering tone that spammers love to use, which I found a little off-putting.

What the bot got wrong: I’d say the biggest miss was the suggestion that I should add more texture to my work, when it’s already loaded with texture. This had me thinking that maybe the full-scale images of my work don’t adequately convey the built-up layers of paint, and that I should remember to always include detail shots showing that texture on my web site. And I had to laugh when Theobot suggested I should consider “introducing a complementary color” now and again. None of what the bot had to say had anywhere near the level of constructive feedback that would help you refine your painting that you would get from a good peer critique session, but that’s probably way too high a bar to set for a bot. And the critique definitely gave me some food for thought.

AI-generated critique of my painting

Final thoughts on Theobot 

My summary comments are related only to the above free tools offered in the trial. There are other subscription-based Theobot tools I didn’t try out, such as help with writing an artist’s statement or biography. But after using Theobot to describe and title a handful of my paintings and conduct an artwork consistency analysis (I passed with flying colors!) I had these thoughts on the usefulness of the tool.

It's a great value for the money (currently only $5 a month, but that is sure to go up). It can help get you out of the rut of always using the same descriptors for your art, generate a title possibility or two, and give you some great phrases or sentences to sprinkle into your marketing materials, or incorporate into discussions with potential collectors. Like other AI tools I’ve tested, you really need to tweak the language to something that feels more like your own voice, rather than accepting the output verbatim. (If one of the titles seems so awkward it makes you laugh out loud, you might not want to use it!) But it’s a great starting point for any art writing project, especially if writing isn’t really your thing. And as long as you don’t get so caught up in playing around with the tool itself, rather than pulling out a few good tidbits and re-writing them in your own voice, it could be a definite time-saver.

So, I recommend that you have some fun and take Theobot for a free trial run!!  I’d love to hear how it worked for you, and whether it offered up any laugh out loud titles.

Relevant links:

Watch Todd Thibaud sing Beautiful Dream: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wlUXFpAyzHc

 My painting Beautiful Dream and other encaustic works at Edgewater Gallery:

https://edgewatergallery.co/artists/marcia-crumley/

 Theobot free trial: https://theobot.ai/