Artists reimagine the art world with AI PC
A cup of coffee rotating in vibrant droplets and colors against the backdrop of the Oriental TV Tower and virtual kaleidoscope-style scarves lying on the Wukang Mansion – Shanghai-based AI artist Lin Chen, also known as Tudou_man online, expresses feelings about the city through ideas and algorithms in the AI PC era.
The 32-year-old artist has left his advertising job to become a full-time AI artist, establishing his own studio on Changshou Road in Shanghai with three RTX 4090 AI PCs. He is rapidly earning fame and riches, with a loyal following on Instagram and Red, as well as ads for businesses such as Mercedes-Benz and McDonald's.
The Wukang Mansion, designed by Tudou_man, features scarves on its walls.
Full-time AI Artist Tudou_man poses with AI-generated potatoes, which mean Tudou in Chinese.
"The creative content I've generated with AI in the first three months outperforms everything I've produced in the past decade," Tudou_man said in a recent interview. "It's stunning and groundbreaking."
But Tudou_man's story goes beyond his breathtaking artwork. It demonstrates the tremendous possibilities that AI has opened up, not just for established artists but for anyone with a spark of creativity. AI enables artists, including graphic designers, architects, game developers, and even semi-professionals, to freely create, monetize works, and push the boundaries of creative visions.
A booming AI creation ecosystem
The development of AI PCs speeds up the trend by introducing mature AI models that run on the device, GPUs that can do generative AI, and retrieval-augmented generation (RAG). It uses artificial intelligence to provide a user-friendly, efficient, and secure working environment for modern artists.
Lenovo launched "AI new species" AI PCs in Shanghai.
Lenovo's chairman and CEO, Yang Yuanqing, hailed the AI PC as an "industry leap" that will bring (cloud-based) AI to millions of devices and families. Earlier this month, the world's largest PC manufacturer introduced China's first batch of AI PCs with on-device artificial intelligence in Shanghai.
NVIDIA, a global leader in AI and graphics computing, claimed that Premium AI PCs, which have 100 to 1,300 TOPS (Trillions or Tera Operations per Second) AI accelerators, are effective tools for artists.
NVIDIA calls it's "iPhone moment" of AI.
NVIDIA collaborated with Chinese partners and researchers in April to provide AI updates and reports. They contain an NVIDIA TensorRT-accelerated Stable Diffusion creation guide and GPU configuration recommendations for Stable Diffusion users.
Stable Diffusion is a prominent text-to-image model that is considered a component of the ongoing AI boom. On a desktop PC running NVIDIA's top-of-the-line RTX 4090 D, designers can produce up to eight images in one second.
ZhipuAI, a Chinese startup founded at Tsinghua University, has added their AI model ChatGLM as a new option to NVIDIA's ChatRTX tech demo. By connecting local documents to the AI big language model, users can use AI to provide rapid, context-dependent answers.
ZhipuAI's ChatGLM is a bilingual dialog model that works in the cloud and locally with acceleration frameworks like NVIDIA TensorRT-LLM to improve model inference performance and give a more seamless experience on AI PCs.
Currently, over 100 million PCs worldwide use NVIDIA's RTX GPUs, and over 500 games and apps utilize its RTX technologies, which accelerate both on-device and cloud-generative AI activities.
NVIDIA stresses a rich ecosystem that includes game developers, designers, and now AI model developers, hence enabling user acceptance and supporting productive AI workflows.
CapCut (JianYing), a video editing program with millions of users worldwide, has been optimized for generative AI capabilities and RTX acceleration.
CapCut has already introduced generative AI features, including tone cloning, video translation, digital avatars, and AI-generated text templates/stickers. Some functions now receive higher performance improvements using NVIDIA TensorRT acceleration, allowing users to develop more efficiently and intelligently.
Canalys predicts significant AI PC sales growth from 2024 to 2028.
Analysts at Canalys foresee a significant increase in AI PC adoption, with an estimated 150 million units (40 percent of global PCs) sold by 2025 and 70 percent by 2028. This will open up new opportunities for productivity, customization, and power efficiency, resulting in tremendous value for both vendors and consumers.
The rising AI Artists
While some fear that generative AI will take artists' jobs, Chinese designers are actively embracing AI to accelerate workflow, explore new prospects, create freely, and achieve commercial success.
Well-known Chinese film director Lu Chuan acknowledged being "worried" when he encountered generative AI tools such as ChatGPT and, in particular, Sora. However, his team has quickly adopted AI.
"Using AI significantly improves the speed of visualizing ideas," Lu said, demonstrating a video script created by an AI PC at a Lenovo convention in Shanghai. "The traditional approach takes two months, but this takes just two days, saving immense time and resources."
Tudou_man has collaborated with over 20 prominent brands in the car, cosmetic, and fast-moving consumer goods (FMCG) industries, which are experiencing a surge in demand for "AI Art." He creates his own process dubbed "outcome iteration" using his RTX 4090 machines as Premium AI PCs, which can fast adapt to AI-generated outcomes. He ran the scene 1,000 times using AI for the coffee cup in front of the Shanghai TV Tower.
He is proud of his transition from "a design supplier" to an "independent AI artist" working with businesses.
He told Shanghai Daily that working as an equal with businesses gives him more creative flexibility and a considerable pay boost – 4 to 5 times what he would earn as a well-paid creative director.
Yan Xiao shows how to instantly turn sketches into a garden on an AI PC.
Yan Xiao, co-founder of Airchi Design and an architecture designer, has brought a new architecture AI model that works both online and locally on AI PCs.
Yan said that a high-performance RTX AI PC is now a must-have for AI artists and the entire industry.
He drew a few strokes that almost instantly generated architectural features such as a Chinese courtyard or a modern shopping mall. This application allows architects and designers to visualize concepts for clients and generate ideas. The model, which has been downloaded over 500,000 times in only four months, generates sufficient cash for Yan's team and has enormous market potential, with an overseas launch planned in the near future.
Simon, a seasoned Blender artist, exemplifies AI's revolutionary power. "It shocks me," he confesses. The era of painstaking model construction and texturing is over. Artists can now circumvent these phases by using AI to render and generate detailed 3D artwork more quickly.
Simon demonstrates how to transform a dancing sequence in flim Pulp Fiction into a Vincent van Gogh-style painting.
During a presentation on a Lenovo RTX laptop, Simon shows how to transform a dancing male scene into a Vincent van Gogh-style and dancing Greek sculpture.
While the monetary potential is clear, both Tudou-man and Simon highlight the human aspect of AI art.
Simon and his partner are looking for AI-powered digital creations, and he believes his work will be collected in museums in the future.
"AI creation is not only to realize commercial value; it should be injected into the human soul and personal ideas," said Tudou_man. He now intends to pursue digital art in new directions, such as shows and installations.
Tudou_man's latest AI artwork.
