Ink & AI: Tattoo Artists Tackle Tech’s Creative Curveballs

Artificial intelligence, or AI, is becoming more common in the tattoo industry, and it is changing the way artists and customers create tattoo designs. Kerry Gilbert, who owns Tattoo Morningstar in Weymouth, says that AI has both positive and negative effects on her work. On the positive side, AI can help artists save time by quickly generating new tattoo ideas. However, there are also challenges. Kerry explains that AI sometimes adds extra details, like extra fingers or toes, or leaves them out completely. This means that artists have to spend extra time fixing the designs before they can be used on a customer. Every AI-generated design is carefully checked to make sure it looks right and does not have any mistakes.

One regular customer, Sacha, enjoys using AI to help design her tattoos. She has so many tattoos that she has lost count, and many of them were created with the help of AI programs. Sacha says that the tattoos on her legs and thighs are little characters designed by AI. She likes to get small tattoos quickly, sometimes during her lunch break. Kerry started her tattoo studio in 2019 and has noticed that more and more customers are bringing in AI-generated designs. However, these designs are often too large for the area of skin where the customer wants the tattoo. Kerry has to explain to customers that the design needs to be resized, because if a tattoo is too small, the ink can spread over time and the lines can become blurry.

Another issue is that AI is not very good at creating tattoos with words or dates. Kerry says it is important to double-check that everything is spelled correctly before making the tattoo permanent. Ben Gorman, a computer science expert at Bournemouth University, explains that AI does not think like humans. When you ask an artist to draw a dog, they use their own experience and creativity. But AI is trained on thousands of images and tries to guess what you want based on your instructions. The more specific you are with your instructions, the better the AI design will be. Kerry says that using AI can help artists fit more appointments into their day and create more detailed tattoos. At her studio, they have a board of small tattoo designs that cost £20, and £1 from each tattoo goes to charity. These designs are made with AI, but it usually takes several tries to get the design just right. Ben Gorman believes that teaching more people how to use AI will help artists make the most of this new technology. He says that the artist's skill is still very important, because the real art is in putting the tattoo on the skin. AI can help with the design, but the tattoo artist brings it to life.