Dark Angel drummer Gene Hoglan has forcefully set the record straight regarding the creation of the artwork for their comeback album, Extinction Level Event, flatly denying that it was “solely” an A.I. creation and revealing the immense “human work” that went into it.
Speaking on the “Disturbing The Priest With Brandon Battick” podcast, Hoglan addressed the “vocal backlash” from critics of A.I. art, arguing they misunderstand the process.
“I will say one thing: if anybody thinks our artist, Cain [Gillis], just typed in a sentence into an A.I. generator and out popped this perfect piece of artwork, that is absolutely not anywhere near the case,” Hoglan stated. “It took tons of work — actual human work. Cain told me he spent over — I think it was 2,000 hours on the artwork for this record. Have an artist charge you by the hour, [and] then keep that in mind.”
While Hoglan admitted: “We utilize some A.I. on our stuff,” he was blunt about his personal stance on the controversy.
“I don’t care,” he said. “I understand the new A.I. generation is very anti-A.I. I don’t care. I like kicka*s art… Kicka*s art is kicka*s art.”
Hoglan compared the current anti-AI sentiment to previous moral panics over technology in art and music. “When people started putting art on computers, doing computer-generated art 40 years ago, I’m sure the artists who were paint brushing… were, like, ‘Why are doing this on a computer? This isn’t an artist. This is a travesty.'”
He drew the same parallel to the disruption of the music industry: “Just like 25 years ago when people stopped buying albums… and started downloading and ripping songs off the Internet. Same sort of thing.”
Hoglan insisted that the final art for Extinction Level Event—which he said was based on his own concepts—was a hybrid of multiple human-led techniques.
“I think the general public, they aren’t quite aware of all the actual computer art that we did put on to our A.I. stuff,” he explained. “There’s photography in our new artwork. Cain [Gillis] is out there taking pictures of things and blending them into that. And Cain is doing tons of computer stuff.”
He concluded that while he respects others’ opinions, he stands by the album’s art and will not apologize for using new tools.
“If you wanna deny yourself the pleasure of the Dark Angel music because you have your viewpoints… fair enough. I’m gonna have a different opinion, but I know exactly all the work that went into this,” he said. “We are not the first, we are definitely not gonna be the last. So you can fight it… I love our artwork… I know a lot of my friends have reached out to me and said, ‘I love the new album. It sounds great. I love the artwork. This is killer.’ So I hear differently.”
