"We not only have great artists, but also important assistants – AI artists and AI painting machines." Zhou Qi, co-founder of Yajin Group, said. At the beginning of its establishment, the company only set up an art studio in Dafen Oil Painting Village, and accumulated the first pot of gold by exporting oil paintings in batches to all over the world, and gradually grew with the expansion of soft decoration art business at home and abroad. Today, Yajin Group has more than 150 employees, with an annual revenue of about 80 million yuan in 2023, and is committed to the development of the whole industry chain integrating culture, art and technology.

The "AI artist" and "AI intelligent painting machine" in Zhou Qi's mouth are an innovative practice of the group to reshape the industrial chain with the combination of new content,new materials,new processes and digitalization.Zhou Qi admits that the mature use of AI technology is the general trend of art industry optimization,on the one hand,it can save design time,accelerate content production,improve economic efficiency,and on the other hand,it can liberate employees from repetitive labor and fully release creativity."Some ordinary artists may be greatly impacted, but AI oil painting and artificial creation are not a 'life and death' relationship, and artists can use AI to carry out auxiliary work, provide them with information and inspiration, and broaden their thinking. It also lowers the barrier to entry for painting and allows more interested people to participate in it."

Reasonable and effective human intervention is essential in the production process.Zhou Qi explained that although the ideology and expressiveness of AI artists are no longer inferior to those of humans,who will give instructions to AI?How to"feed"and manipulate the AI with demand?These are all technical jobs.

At first,AI artists were only able to create simple and direct works based on a limited database,like a junior painter who imitated according to an algorithm.Over the years,more and more high-quality data and human experience have been learned."At different times, if you give it repeated instructions and type in the same keywords, the content it produces will not be exactly the same every time. This uncontrollability is the charm of artistic creation. "Today's AI is like a huge "eye in the sky", which can transform into a world-class artist with a core of thought and creative temperature through massive learning and exponential progress.

At the scene, the author witnessed the AI intelligent painting machine built by Yajin Group. This product, independently developed and manufactured by the group, provides a 3D digital solution for texture oil painting. When the operator enters the instructions according to the prompts, the machine can search for relevant content from its own huge database, and create a fusion in real time, and the resulting painting only needs to be slightly adjusted and retouched, and a "human-machine" work can be freshly baked. Touching the surface of the painting reveals the unevenness. Zhou Qi said: "It is artistic, not just a substitute for technology. Only by seeing its essence and knowing how to use and intervene in it can we gain a firm foothold in the tide of industry development."

"World Oil Painting, China Dafen" is a miracle created by Dafen Oil Painting Village after more than 30 years of development. In the 90s of the last century, young artists with dreams from all over the country came to Dafen Oil Painting Village, looking forward to starting an artistic life of "gold panning" with dreams, and Zhou Qi was also one of them. At that time, Dafen Oil Painting Village was the largest commercial oil painting production and trading base in the country, and it was also a famous oil painting factory, and its world-famous paintings occupied more than half of the commercial oil painting market in Europe and the United States.

Zhou Qi clearly remembers that from 2003 to 2008, the portal established by the company could receive more than 3,000 batch orders from all over the world every month, and one order even reached 100,000 oil paintings at the most popular time. In recent years, a maximum of a few thousand paintings have been ordered in a batch order. In this era of more emphasis on personalization and tailor-made, Dafen Oil Painting Village, which once relied on the wholesale of oil paintings to gain the upper hand in the market, is actively moving towards the road of "breaking the game".

"Dafen has a very rich artistic soil, with more than 1,200 industrial stores involving oil painting, calligraphy, pottery, embroidery, carving and other arts, and has a strong radiation driving ability to the surrounding areas." In Zhou Qi's view,Dafen Oil Painting Village has built a complete closed loop of the art industry,which can benefit from the dual drive of technological renewal and cultural operation in real time,so as to continue to promote the prosperity and development of its art industry.

Walking into Dafen Oil Painting Village,you can see a lot of new changes.In the field of equipment,Dafen Oil Painting Village has accelerated the introduction of AI intelligent products,widely promoted digital copyright in the industry,ensured the legitimate rights and interests of creators,and further regulated the release and use of works;At the industrial level,we will actively develop the e-commerce economy,promote the large-scale and industrialized operation of the oil painting industry,expand sales channels by building online platforms,break geographical restrictions,and realize the wide dissemination and circulation of oil painting works.In terms of business model,it focuses on giving customers the value of empathy,and on the basis of providing a single painting experience course,it is upgraded to an art therapy course that combines personalized customization and audio-visual,touch,taste and smell......To a large extent,such explorations can continue to inject strong momentum into the optimization and upgrading of the industry and the reversal of the market situation into Dafen Oil Painting Village.

As one of the first batch of national cultural industry demonstration bases in 2004,Dafen Oil Painting Village successfully passed the review and evaluation this year.Nowadays,a large number of cultural enterprises represented by Yajin Group are deeply rooted in Dafen,through in-depth excavation of traditional culture,exploration of modern art innovation,and diversified and new forms of science and technology,creating a large number of cultural products with profound connotation and distinctive personality,which not only meets the growing spiritual and cultural needs of the people,but also greatly enhances the overall strength and competitiveness of the cultural industry.

Source:Yangcheng Evening News Yangcheng Pie