AI Art Sucks. What If It Didn't?

Sloppy image generation is synonymous with AI art, often to the detriment of artists wanting more control, flexibility, and originality. To put it bluntly, diffusion-based image generation sucks for artists who enjoy the creative process from learning and stumbling to a realized finished product. Today's most popular models can't allow for a given image to be carefully edited or built on. It's disposable, closed-box content. As a result, it's seen by many as a direct divergence from being an art medium.

But there's a version of AI-assisted art that doesn't fall into that trap. One where the AI gives you raw material instead of a finished product. Instead of static images, what if you could generate live, editable, breakable, fixable, and endlessly expandable web projects in seconds? Webapps have traditionally taken days to create, or even longer for the majority of people who don't have a prior understanding of HTML, CSS and JavaScript, not to mention hosting and dependencies. As the time to create has significantly decreased without compromising quality, it has allowed for novel forms of usage to evolve in the form of joke software, purpose-made tools, fun toys such as Satisfying Pops, and more.

Satisfying Pops simulates the relaxing and fun process of absent-mindedly popping bubble wrap

Rather than using AI to paint for you, Websim helps you use AI as just one of your many paintbrushes, unlocking a fast new skill for you to use as an artist, one that is more akin to a partner in creation. AI coding helps but also gives you full control over your vision. Software can be host to images, videos, music, games, tools to create art and tools to create tools. If you feel up to it, you can combine these different tools and skills into a complete art piece for the viewer to experience. You can also charge an entry fee using our in-site generative credits like this user's art gallery. Newly created Websim accounts are gifted enough credits to enter, if you're curious!

What about making a touch-sensitive app for playing with pottery without a kiln, or a retro-styled tool for synthesizing and sequencing piano? Building your own tools personalized for your vision can be a huge boost to helping you to become a better musician, game designer, or creative.

New Ways to Express Your Creativity

Saving time is more than just a convenience. AI code generation allows you to achieve your artistic vision quicker. That means more finished projects, more time to work on other projects, and more time to relax and avoid burnout. In addition, Websim's community and discovery algorithms work to make sure that more people see your art, and you reach the people most likely to be interested in your art. And it goes both ways! You'll also be more likely to see projects that you find interesting, keeping you creatively inspired and always finding your people.

It's easier than ever to make something small just to create a memorable moment for you and your community. We've seen our users make tons of software so they can do more connecting with people on and offline, hype up their fellow creators, or even make people laugh with an intentionally frustrating drawing simulator. Check out this video of us trying out a mock drawing simulator with a pencil that keeps breaking, a messy eraser, and more.

Totally Realistic Art Simulator was submitted to one of our contests by user @Dullish

Unlike many art media, software is never forced to be static. Today's connectivity allows for a software creator to update their work anytime they desire, allowing for a development process at the individual creator's pace and the ability to make changes whenever they feel like it. For a creator, that means your art can evolve with you, and you can pick up scrapped pieces anytime to re-work them.

What Is Creative Coding?

Creative coding is a decades old medium where the art is composed of any creative work produced through code. With AI that can build apps, you're generating behavior such as movement, reactions, interactions, physics, color changes, patterns, mathematics and more. Because everything is controlled by code, that means the logic behind the project is fully tweakable and can be updated at any time.

With Websim, you can create unique artistic worlds, create digital canvases for drawing animated art, self-generating mazes based on physics, or complex, tweakable shaders.

Shaders are programs designed to give color, shadow and visual effects to on-screen images using often complex mathematical algorithms. Being able to generate a starting point helps beginners to enjoy learning while still being able to make their creative visions real. Plenty of room can be left for experimentation, take a look at this shader made without any manual coding and try tweaking some of the sliders.

All visuals in this shader are generated by code and mathematics, play around with the sliders to see how different numbers change the art!

Why Use Websim for Art?

The biggest advantages of creating art with code on Websim come down to the aforementioned control and flexibility, but also just how easy it is to actually start. Websim makes coding art accessible by generating functional web projects from natural language prompts. You describe what you want to build, and Websim produces a starting point complete with rendering setup, animation loops, UI elements, or whatever your concept requires.

You're not locked into whatever the AI spits out. Every Websim project lets you continue iterating through prompting, or directly view its code so you take full control of the final vision. Whether it's animation speed, interactions, colors, physics, or whatever else, it's editable however you like. Non-coders can learn by nudging values and seeing what happens, or just by prompting and continuing to iterate. More experienced coders can dive into the logic and extend it as far as they want.

You also get to avoid the usual code-maintenance death spiral. There's no setup, no build tools, no dependencies and no hassle. Everything runs in the browser, so the code stays small and you're always focused on the creative part instead of infrastructure, freeing up more of your time to keep growing and refining your creativity.

And because Websim projects live online, sharing is instant. Anyone can open your piece, see it in motion, or remix it and turn it into something new. A visual experiment can become a game mechanic, inspiration for other creators, or even a small multiplayer world without leaving the platform.

Start Creating Interactive Art

If you're looking for an artist's alternative to traditional AI art like diffusion based image generation or you want to explore a more hands-on, customizable form of AI-assisted creativity, coding art is a powerful option that Websim ensures everyone has the skills for.

Try building your first coding art project on Websim and explore what's possible with AI-assisted, not AI-generated creativity.