Tik Tok has been played over 10 billion times, and the second one is “sheep lost”, how did it become the new traffic code?

Artificial intelligence has been sweeping the Internet recently. After the popularity of AI painting and ChatGPT, there has been a wave of imitations on social platforms, and everyone is eager to try it. This article will analyze the development of AI painting and how it has become a traffic code. Let's discuss it together.

A few days ago, many people posted "amazing" screenshots of AI Q&A on their Moments. These were all from an AI robot called "ChatGPT" released by the American company OpenAI. They made everyone feel the power of artificial intelligence, and some even thought it was powerful enough to challenge Google, the Internet search giant.

But when it comes to AI, there is actually an even more popular application that is becoming increasingly popular and has been caught up in the controversial vortex of “black and red are also red”.

01 Is the AI ​​painting that has gone viral in social circles artificial intelligence or artificial stupidity?

While Jam Girl is still trying to complete the outdated game "Sheep, Sheep", a new thing is making its presence felt on various platforms and even becoming a "traffic code". The popularity is comparable to the peak period of "Sheep, Sheep", namely "AI painting".

What many netizens did not expect was that although AI paintings carry the prefix of artificial intelligence, the actual products are so amazing that people can't help but call them "Li Li Yuan Shang Pu".

A beautiful lady with two cute puppies wanted a picture with an autumn love atmosphere, but it ended up with a family portrait of three dogs. It's purely a case of "starting with a picture and the rest is all made up".

Image source: Xiaohongshu@Wanwan

Another handsome guy who has also been tragically "dogified" is this one. His muscles are in place, but his face is so ugly that even his own mother wouldn't be able to recognize it.

Image source: Xiaohongshu@谢宇川川

But a pair of feet can be easily transformed into a human shape, which makes people can't help but sigh that AI treats all species equally, it all depends on its mood.

Image source: Xiaohongshu@拉宏桑

Not only can AI not distinguish species, but gender is also completely random. A cute girl can turn into a rough guy with twin ponytails in a matter of minutes.

Image source: Xiaohongshu@拉宏桑

Of course, there are humans who have successfully tamed AI.

The sloppy background of the sisters' gathering was replaced with a European-style garden, giving the feeling of a wealthy and famous family.

Image source: Xiaohongshu@小胡小福

It only takes one step for a handsome guy to grow from a puppy to a wolfhound. Even the confused cat will act cute.

Image source: Xiaohongshu@想见库里

There are also couple photos that have been deified, and AI has also softened its heart for this beautiful love.

Image source: Internet

All of the above products, whether successful or unsuccessful, come from the recently popular AI painting mini-programs or Douyin special effects.

The trend was initially started by a WeChat applet called "Yijian AI Painting". The drawing interface includes settings such as rendering style and image ratio. You can upload a picture and select the setting parameters to draw it with one click.

Jam Girl tried it briefly, and her painting style became gradually more abstract, until it no longer looked like a human being.

The different images generated by changing the parameters of the same reference image have almost nothing to do with each other except for the color scheme.

During the use of Jam Girl, the number of people in the regular channel was shown as 99+. According to the screenshots circulated online, the estimated number of people in the peak period was more than 80,000.

Image source: Internet

Its associated official account "Yijian AI Painting" tweeted on November 21 that from the launch of the mini program on September 30, 2022 to November 12, 2022, the number of users increased from 0 to 1.17 million, of which the number of users increased by 657,000 on November 11 alone, which was a real hit.

Image source: "Yijian AI Painting"

After the "AI painting" became popular, Douyin quickly launched similar special effects to catch up with the trend, which was very popular. As of press time, the number of users of AI painting special effects has reached 24.036 million, and the number of views of related topics has reached hundreds of millions, with the highest reaching 6.43 billion times.

Jam girl practiced with the little yellow duck, and it turned out that it was the same world and the same AI, but it was hard to predict for humans and animals.

There is no doubt that AI painting has become extremely popular.

02 How does AI painting become the password for traffic?

The popularity of AI painting has been driven by more than one person.

The most fundamental reason is the maturity of technology.

According to public information, the public account "Yijian AI Painting" was certified with this name on September 25, 2022, and then launched on the WeChat mini program.

This date is interesting, as it happens to be the time when AI painting first became a hot topic. If you search for the keyword "AI painting", you will find that most of the recent discussion articles were published three months ago and in the past few days.

Just three months ago, on August 31, an AI painting titled "Space Opera" won the highest award in the "Digital Art/Digitally Retouched Photo" category at the Colorado State Fair Art Competition in the United States, but it was questioned and boycotted by many painters.

Space Opera

The focus of discussion at that time was on technology and art, and it is still difficult to reach a conclusion today, but this has not prevented AI painting from becoming popular among the public, and the layout of many companies in AI has gradually surfaced.

According to the interviews of entrepreneurs in the field of AI painting by "Tech Planet", it can be learned that the foreshadowing of this wave of popularity has already been laid:

At the beginning of the year, AI painting gradually became popular on social platforms, but at that time the cost was relatively high and AI painting was a niche activity. In the middle of the year, the open source of the foreign company stable diffusion promoted the development of the entire industry, and many excellent SD-based models were released after the open source.

Mature technology makes science fiction a reality, but what really makes it popular is the communication power of social media.

WeChat mini-programs and TikTok special effects have played an indispensable role in the popularity of AI painting.

WeChat mini programs have 1.3 billion traffic flows behind them, and sharing operations based on social interactions among acquaintances cannot be underestimated. They can easily go viral and spark the curiosity of countless people.

Douyin's special effects have fueled the popularity of AI painting, from pictures to videos, the content format and gameplay have undergone qualitative changes, thus reaching more people. At the same time, Douyin has previously launched several screen-sweeping special effects, such as super-long watermelons and ancient-style beauty heads, and is also familiar with the traffic operation of special effects. These special effects are more in line with the content consumption habits of Douyin users and can attract more people to participate in co-creation.

Image source: "Marketing Entertainment"

AI painting is different from the annoying "sheep-dropping". Although the output is unstable, the results are "interesting" whether they are good or bad. Whether it is complaints or surprises, it can trigger heated discussions and resonance.

It is impossible to tell who was the first to gain traffic through AI painting, but it is obvious to the naked eye that content related to AI painting can bring unexpected traffic, and there were countless followers for a while.

On Xiaohongshu, there are more than 400,000 notes related to "AI painting". For an amateur blogger who usually has only a few dozen or a few hundred likes, it is not a dream for him to post an article about AI painting and get more than 10,000 likes.

After some bloggers tasted the sweetness of traffic, they suddenly realized that this was the ready-made traffic code. So, AI painting products were not enough, so tutorials were added. Content related to AI painting parameters and keywords gained secondary traffic, trying to teach everyone how to tame AI.

Such lively scenes can also be seen on TikTok. Whether it is "Weiwei is super bold" with just over a million fans, or "Thurman the cat, one cup" with tens of millions of fans, the content related to AI painting has the best data in their recent videos.

It is in this content circle that everyone can feel the popularity of AI painting, contribute to its popularity, and jointly create this "traffic code".

03 Is AI painting legal?

As mentioned earlier, the award-winning AI paintings have been subject to a lot of doubts and boycotts, and the popular AI paintings have also been caught up in the same controversy.

One of the reasons why its reputation was damaged was copyright issues.

As we all know, the essence of AI painting is a computing technology that uses computer deep learning of massive amounts of painting materials and text languages ​​to generate countless paintings.

However, most of the painting materials "fed" to AI have not been authorized by the original artists. Therefore, many netizens have called for a boycott of AI painting because the technology plagiarizes the works of painters, believing that it intercepts some painters' works and splices them into new paintings, and even calls AI paintings "splicing monsters."

But in the eyes of AI painting supporters, such a statement is one-sided and unprofessional. They believe that AI painting learns painting style and further creates materials, rather than directly using them.

In the comment sections of many popular contents, we can see the two sides arguing with each other, but currently there is no specific law in our country that can clarify the ownership of such copyright.

But this is not without precedent. This year, the U.S. Copyright Office approved the copyright registration of an AI-generated artwork. Although the artist claimed that "the selection and generation of stories and images were completely dominated by her, and AI was only an auxiliary tool for the combination of images," it still caused a lot of controversy.

The first AI-generated artwork to be successfully copyrighted/Source: "wuhu animator space"

Another reason why AI painting is questioned is user privacy issues.

It is said that the terms of service of a certain AI painting app transfer user rights, and user privacy is obviously not fully protected. What's more, many netizens claimed that they received suspected fraudulent calls after authorizing.

As a result, rumors have spread that photos uploaded by users may be used for other purposes.

The "Yijian AI Painting" that triggered this wave of enthusiasm had to scroll the statement on the homepage of the mini program:

1. Regarding the original image, except for AI, it has not been leaked through any channel, and no one except AI will see it;

2. Only AI-generated images that have been published and approved will be made public, and other than the publicly generated images, user privacy data will never be leaked;

3. The rumors on the Internet about the use of the data by third parties are all false. The company's core data is confidential and will not be leaked;

4. All company content must be legal and compliant and be managed by the superior administrative department.

However, the public's attitude towards AI painting is still polarized, and the enthusiasm has cooled down a lot compared to before. The most obvious manifestation is that there are no longer long queues for mini-programs.

On the one hand, of course, it is because of the controversy that users have concerns when using it. On the other hand, it is the iron law of the development of the Internet: users are permanent, but hot spots are changing. AI painting is just one of many fun features, and the next one is even fresher and more attractive.

After the traffic ebbs, perhaps we can calm down our attitude towards AI painting.

As a new technology, AI is not only used for painting. In recent years, major companies have been working on it. Baidu has an AI painting platform "Wenxin Yige", Tencent has an AI writing robot "Dreamwriter"; ByteDance and Kuaishou, which are good at video, have launched video editing software "Jianying" and "Yunjian" that can generate videos through AI, and NetEase, which is good at music, has launched an AI composition system "NetEase Tianyin".

In terms of capital, China's interactive AI platform "Lingxin Intelligence" recently announced the completion of tens of millions of yuan in angel+ rounds of financing, and launched Turing World's first product "AI Utopia", which supports users to quickly customize AI characters and conduct conversations.

It is worth noting that no matter which AI tool is used, it is inseparable from the human participation in the creation. Even for the award-winning "Space Opera", the author claimed that "the final completion of this painting took more than 900 adjustments and nearly 300 hours."

Author: Chen Chumu

Source public account: Weiguojiang (ID: wjam123456), focusing on the forefront of new media and insights into new consumer fields.