Most Referenced Artists in AI Prompts: An Infographic

Highlights

• Generative AI tools: These tools allow users to create visuals based on their imagination and existing artworks.
• Derivative nature: Generative AI can only replicate existing images, making it not entirely original.
• Artist references: Many users reference well-known artists to influence the style of AI-generated images.
• Popular artists: Kapwing’s analysis highlighted the most replicated artists in AI prompts from nearly 5 million entries.

The latest generative AI tools enable you to create whatever visuals may come into your head, with custom variations of fantastical scenes, things that you’ve imagined, that complement your stories, or that you just really want to see for whatever reason.

Yet, generative AI tools are also derivative, in that they can only replicate existing artworks and images to create something new. So it’s not really new, and at the same time, most people have visions in mind that relate to artworks that they’ve already seen, like a modern city, in the style of Monet.

As such, many users prompt AI tools using references to existing artists, in order to customize the look of their generations.

But which artists are the most replicated by AI, based on prompts from users?

To find out, the team from Kapwing analyzed the Midjourney Discord to see how many times popular artists, architects, and directors were named. Across nearly 5 million prompts, this listing (from Visual Capitalist) shows the most replicated artists within AI generations.

Note that many artists (or their families) are looking to restrict their names from AI prompts, so this might not even be possible in future, but at present, these are the artists and styles that get the most AI attention.