“Maybe we have opened Pandora’s box, or maybe we’re one step closer to fully automated luxury communism.” These are some thoughts from Sienna O’Rourke, who makes AI-generated art under the handle Planet Fantastique on Instagram. A hat tip to the 1973 film “Fantastic Planet,” O’Rourke’s world is a surreal mix of sci-fi and retro-futurism. Leveraging different software and AI models such as Midjourney, Stable Diffusion and Photoshop, O’Rourke’s aesthetic is pop pastels, sexy astronauts with ’60s coiffed ‘dos posing in a retro utopia.

The imagery is immediately recognizable as nostalgic, yet still feels current. To get it, this month’s PureHoney featured artist says to think of the “post-war era of the notion of a utopian future dominated by pop culture. Think: ‘The Jetsons’ and ‘Star Trek.’ We are living in an age that a lot of these pieces reference, but our society is far from utopian. We have seen plenty of amazing advancements, but very few have that magical quality captured in the retro-futuristic vision from the ‘60s.”

London-based O’Rourke works primarily in illustration and design. Her embrace of AI “has meant that a lot of the real-world concepts I’ve been dreaming of can be visualized without needing to mobilize a large team or commandeer a significant budget. I think it’s a really great avenue to do exploratory work as an artist.”

She is aware of the heated debate taking place in the art world right now concerning the mass-market use of AI. “I can totally understand the skepticism and even fear surrounding the technology,” she says, “and I think it is really important for the people utilizing it to do so in good faith. As someone who works in the creative field, this year has had a lot of scary headlines about robots replacing us, the death of art, and so on.

“So, I really wanted to engage with the technology myself and see if I could use it as a tool to further my practice, rather than view it as a threat,” O’Rourke says. “AI can’t create in a vacuum, and although anyone can make images with ease, it still takes creativity and artistic vision to produce meaningful work. I see AI as a complement to more traditional art forms and a tool for the artist to use, and within my own work I try to focus on creating something that might not be possible within traditional constraints.”

O’Rourke uses AI more as a launching-off point rather than a substitution for the artistic process. “I can start putting ideas together on my phone while I’m on the train or out walking the dog,” she says. “I tend to start little threads of inspiration, generating an image or two for each while I’m on the go, and then at the end of the week, when I have time to devote to this project I will expand on each of those.

She will also use it to render digital backgrounds that would otherwise take hours to create, she says, adding. “I know that there are artists training AI models with their own work in order to be able to pitch for commercial clients. I also think we will start to see some really interesting film projects getting greenlit, that may not have obtained funding without a strong visual component in the pitching phase.”

A film buff herself, her top five favorite films for design inspiration are: “What a Way To Go” (1964), “The Holy Mountain” (1973), “Baraka” (1992), “Suspiria” (1977) and “The Fifth Element” (1997). In terms of other artists using AI to help facilitate their visions, she said, “You absolutely don’t need a strong background in design to use AI models to create art, but as with any art form, if you don’t have a point of view or an eye for the aesthetics then you might not create anything that is particularly good, interesting, or unique.”

Planet Fantastique has 130,000 followers and growing on Instagram, and O’Rourke sells posters of the creations. “From the perspective of an artist working with the medium, it is exciting and refreshing to work with a technology that is advancing at pace,” she says, “but as a human, of course, it is concerning.”

Sienna O’Rourke is at instagram.com/planet_fantastique ~ Kelli Bodle