But people were bad at assessing whether images were made by artificial intelligence or an artist.
You mean when you strip away people’s knee-jerk negative bias to AI art, people really just like art that looks good? Shocking. It’s almost as if the push against AI art is futile as, despite people’s complaints, it can pretty consistently produce good outputs.
I dislike AI art because of the process of its creation, rather than its visual quality. Everyone faking art with AI can fuck right off.
So let me ask you something. Like with the people in this article, if you see an image and it captures your attention, inspires you, makes you go “wow that’s stunning & thought provoking!”, then after the fact you learn it was made by AI, do all those previous feelings become invalid?
It just seems like you’re having to convince yourself that it’s bad. Like suddenly deciding a cake tastes bad because you learned the badder was mixed in a pink mixing bowl, despite previously saying how much you liked it. As if your enjoyment of the final product is somehow meaningless compared to how it got there.
All those feelings become invalid because the thought that was provoked by the image will be some generic and unoriginal thing picked up by the GenAI during training rather than new, original ideas by the author. If that thought was intended by the author of the GenAI image that’d be cool with me, but there’s frankly no way of knowing for sure and it’s very unlikely, so I just reject all GenAI art.
I see we have a fundamental disagreement on what ultimately matters in a piece of art. You believe it is the artist’s thoughts and intentions that are important, while I believe that it is the thoughts and emotions each individual feels when experiencing the final product.
Personally, I try to learn as little about the artist as possible before judging a work. It doesn’t matter to me if the artist was an accomplished French artisan with decades of experience, or if they were a 7 year old Chinese girl. I don’t really care if the artist was channeling their feelings of loneliness in a chaotic world by depicting a lone rowboat in a lake, or if they just passingly thought a rowboat would be a good addition to their pretty lake painting. I prefer interpreting a work from an unbiased perspective, I suppose that’s why it doesn’t matter to me if a work of art was made by a human or AI, because it doesn’t fundamentally change the final product or my experience of it.
People had the same complaints about photography many years ago. Times change.
People putting boundaries on what is and isn’t art has probably existed for as long as art has.
Photography takes skill. Punching a sentence into a computer takes no skill. AI does not create art. It creates pictures.
Humans create art.
Photography is just pointing a camera and pressing a button. It takes no skill.
See, it’s easy to be reductive.
How do you define art? Is it dependent on the amount of “skill” required to create it? What even is artistic skill? Is one allowed to use auto-focus for a photograph to be considered art? Do you have to develop your own film?
These are all irrelevant thresholds on the inputs for something to be considered art. What determines whether or not something is art is the output of a creative process.
Ahhh, the whole photography bit.
Well, let’s see. I’d agree with you if:
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it didn’t take a human to find a subject or location worthy of shooting, know what angle to shoot from, what time of day to shoot….
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it didn’t take a human to know how to adjust the lighting and color vibrancy to bring life to the picture.
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it didn’t take a human to know what camera to use, what zoom level, what aperture….
There are TONS of legendary photographs taken that a computer would never have been able to do.
Stop with the photography argument. It’s bad.
Everything you just listed can be human inputs to AI generated art. Humans still drive/manipulate the inputs, it’s just in a different way. A human can still come up with an artistic vision or idea and manipulate the tools (prompt) to that end.
Obviously you can use minimal creativity to get unremarkable AI art, but you can do the same in photography with a point and shoot camera. It’s about the creativity and artistic vision, not the tool.
I agree, there are tons of photographs a computer can’t generate. Because it’s a different artform. Just as there are tons of paintings a photographer could never create.
If programming a robot to throw a football doesn’t make the programmer an athlete, then AI “art” isn’t art.
Period.
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And now humans create art by punching a sentence into a computer. Are the images nice? Can they provoke thoughts and feelings? Then they’re art. Don’t like it? Too bad, AI art is here to stay because of how easy it is. Learn to cope.
You’ve gotten art and beauty mixed up.
The natural world can be beautiful, but it isn’t a work of art. Likewise, computer generated imagery can be pretty but it doesn’t express any person’s thoughts or feelings and therefore cannot be art.
You’ve gotten the artist and art tool and art mixed up. The artist is the one that makes the art, the art tool is what they use to make it, and the art is the final product.
it doesn’t express any person’s thoughts or feelings
You don’t get to make that judgement. If I have an image in my head and I describe it in a prompt, I can look at the output and say if it represents what I’m thinking or feeling at the time. Same as if I picked up a paintbrush; I can reject the output of it doesn’t match what’s in my head and artists frequently do declare their work is “no good” even when it looks fine to others.
No one using AI image generation tools is making art. At best they are commissioning images or “art” from a computer program, to think otherwise is honestly silly and ridiculous. They are doing the exact same thing that’s been done for centuries. They are describing the type of imagery they would like created and then someone else is doing the work. For AI tools the “someone doing the work” is the programers of the AI tool which is spitting out the image. Trust me I’ve used these tools you could monkey slap the keyboard and still get a usable image, I’ve tried it. AI image generation is just a faster form of emailing, calling, or writing to an artist and asking for them to paint their town chaple, or their portrait, or whatever else they desire if they have the money to pay the artist or in this instance AI tool.
The challenge is deciding if image generation tools are creating art or not and the answer is no they aren’t. Art generation takes human hands because, as you’ve said, art is many things but one you mentioned was it’s to be thought provoking. To create something thought provoking there must be themes, purpose, etc. and right now AI is not capable of injecting themes or purpose into it’s work. Maybe in the future AI can do that but until then it’s just image generation and it’s totally fine to like it but it’s not art. There are even plenty of people who are artists who aren’t in museums, wanna know why? It’s because they are just generating images they aren’t creating art. Their work is not thought provoking, it doesn’t have a theme, or purpose etc.
It’s insanely obvious with these discussions who actually has and has not either studied art themselves or even just been to an art museum where they actually absorbed any information. Invoking emotion is like the bare minimum, barely even scratching the surface, of what constitutes art. And if you haven’t studied art or spoken with someone who has that’s totally okay! No shame in that, lots of people haven’t but maybe nows a great time to jump into art it’s really enjoyable and there’s lots of incredible museums to visit that will have lots of information to provide visitors with context to the works so you have a better understanding of why whats in the museum is art.
Im not trying to argue with you here, I’m just giving you information so you are better informed and don’t sound like a douche nozzle in public anymore.
I’m just giving you information so you are better informed and don’t sound like a douche nozzle in public anymore.
You think I’m the one that sounds like a douche nozzle, spewing this pompous self-righteous up-your-own-arse armchair bullshit?
Let me ask you this: if art has to be injected with meaning by its creator then why do people like you so often find meaning in art contrary to the intended message as stated by the artist? Could it be that people can find their own meaning in art, without any intention by the artist? How do you explain “found art”? Now, I admit I think “found art” is a load of bollocks but then I think Pollock is a hack too, neither of which changes the fact that there are large numbers of people who do consider both “found art” and Pollock’s work to be actual real art. Additionally, neither of those opinions of mine invalidate those of anyone else, nor am I so narcissistic as to think they do.
You’re one of those people who tells a researcher they’re wrong and they really should read their own fucking work on the subject, and now you’re getting blocked because fuck you, you suck.
If a robot throwing a football isn’t an athlete, then a sentence punched into a computer isn’t art.
a sentence punched into a computer isn’t art
I’ll be sure to inform all the writers I know. Also that art is very much like athletics, I’m sure that’ll get a chuckle too.
Sorry my opinion upset you. But I’m keeping it.
That’s fine, you are perfectly free to believe that an apple is a cucumber. And the rest of the world is perfectly free to disagree and dismiss you.
You’re wrong.
See how that works?
Your “opinion” that something isn’t art, is as idiotic as faschists complaining about free speech. You really think who makes art is your judgement to make? At least own your fucking “opinion” instead of pretending it’s not aggressive. A valid non offensive opinion would be: “I don’t care for AI art and it’s cheap to me”. Planet fucking earth moved on from your kind of rhetoric where you get to be both moral judeand then skeeter back to a defensive fetal position when challenged. Grow up.
ROFL!
“You’re a fASciSt because I disagree with you!!!”
?
StableDiffusion is more than just throwing a prompt in lmao. You clearly have not spent any time learning what it is and decided to hate it based on people putting in minimum effort and posting their raw gens.
Sorry to upset you, but in my opinion- it’s not art. You can keep being bothered by this, or you can move on.
I’m allowed to have this opinion
I don’t care whether or not you call it art, but calling it ‘just throwing some text in a computer’ is just factually incorrect.
It’s exactly what it is to me. It’s an unskilled effort for a barely mediocre result. If programming a robot to throw a football doesn’t make someone an athlete, than it’s not artistry to type a sentence.
It’s not subjective, there is more to the process than just writing prompts. Are 3d modelers unskilled because all they do is move a mouse and occasionally type on a keyboard? 2d digital artists are just moving around a fake pen on a plastic tablet. Programmers type words into a text file. You’re horribly oversimplifying. Of course someone could just do a basic prompt and post their raw gens, but that also happens all the time with sketches, story ideas, and just newer artists in general. There is a lot of pre and post processing that goes into making something worth looking at.
not everything you don’t like is knee-jerk reaction…
a lot of people have minds with or without your ability to imagine other perspectivesTrue but irrelevant as the sudden general hatred for generative art truly is the definition of a knee jerk reaction.
for some, i suppose… but by and large, these individuals do have actual reasons…
you can pretend like everyone that hates it is just following a trend, but it’s not useful and just a strawman.it may seem like a “sudden general hatred” but generative images are relatively only suddenly good… so any reaction would be likewise sudden.
personally, i’m on both sides. i’ve seen some cool stuff, and see it as a great tool for artists to build off of, and for enabling non-artists to create cool pictures for whatever reason…
however, the fact that the data set is mostly copyrighted works and the artists who actually trained the ai aren’t being compensated… and never gave permission…
as well as a shit load of poseur artists pretending like they made something, or pretending like tweaking prompts makes them an artist…there’s a whole thing in studying art with understanding the background of the artist… the context and environment, and the meaning of the work…
there is no perspective in ai generated images… (until AGI, i suppose)
it might be the same to the average person, but that doesn’t really matter. the average person wouldn’t appreciate most contemporary artwork…As someone been in the field a long time before tha AI boom, just trust me. It’s knee jerk. They have no good reason to hate generative art, even the idiotic way they fed copyrighted work into some models does not explain in the least why anyone should hate an entire way of making art
i pretty much explained it so, ok…
No you did not and have a very limited view of what generative art is.
Do you realise that in the eighties when the first generative artists arrived it was without this knee jerk shit, and studied just as much as the other art
In whatever case you may not decide what is art and not, nor pretend that it only seems sudden. It is sudden. Hatred for no good reason, just because it’s popular opinion. It will very soon feel really foolish to have such a stance because some of the big companies are disrespectful. It is just an art form. Nothing worth hate about it
yeah, you’re not making art if you tell AI to draw you a pretty picture… neither is the ai…
get over it
yOu JuSt DoN’t LiKe iT is almost never an honest argument.
Is it futile because of how easy to use and usually used by creatively bankrupt annoying tech bro, or is it futile because they have multibillion company backing them?
Idk, i can’t tell.
people really just like art that looks good?
This is simply false, and completely misses the point of art.
I’ll say it again because I always do. I’ve never seen AI art that I couldn’t tell was AI generated . It’s always wrong. The light source is always wrong, like the lighting is painted on subjects instead of cast onto them. And it lacks imperfections caused by human hand. Maybe it’s the photographer in me, but I’ve never seen believable lighting in AI art
You’ve never knowingly seen AI art you couldn’t tell was AI art.
You haven’t taken the time to train your own stable diffusion model on an artist’s work who is good at lighting. Shadow length and skew drawn by a suggested light source is pretty easy for SD models to start getting right, especially if they’re working from a gallery of one art style/type of composition. The article is stating what should be obvious to everyone at this point: this existed before the AI boom and you didn’t recognize it until the layman had access to the technology and didn’t refine the model or prompts to get these things right.
Oh I don’t work with the stuff, it’s just from what I’ve seen. I don’t really find any AI art I’ve seen to be this big impressive thing. I’m more interested in it from a data standpoint. I feel like not actually making your own art feels kind of depressing. Like what’s the point? Unless it’s for commercial use? Like if I feel creative, I’m going to make something.
Like I used to write, and I feel like if I wanted to write, I’d write. I don’t see the point in “writing” a prompt that pulls from other people’s work. Like what would I get out of it?
Yeah, commercial applications for it are great. It Makes life easier, lowers the barrier to entry, and hopefully will result in less work.
But for purely creative and cultural reasons, I just don’t see the point. Like I know nothing is original and we all pull from somewhere, but part of the enjoyment —to me— is the process of learning, of researching, reading other’s work to hone my craft.
And art without that is soulless and not an act of expression that comes from the deep reaches of ourselves.
It’s as empty as somebody buying a race car and a team to manage it, versus someone building their own and knowing every inch of it.
Survivorship bias
In other news, people like soup when they don’t know a waiter spat in it
Great. Now soulless megacorps can profit off of the concept of art even more. Amazing.
This whole discussion on wherever AI can create art or not is a bit dull IMO.
To me it is clear, only humans can create art, because art is part of a human expression of an novel (to them) inner process and thought. Not everything humans do is art, much of it is repetitive. Humans can use any tools to create stuff, art or no art, including AI. Humans can suck at the actual creation process, but still produce art.
So if someone enters 3 words into a AI generation model, and chooses an image, or something, they are not producing art, they are shopping. If they spend time tweaking and adapting models and prompts to help them realize what they want to express, then they are doing art.
I agree, it’s all about the artist’s control of the art. Drawing, writing, programming, etc takes magnitudes more time and effort than asking a GenAI model, and therefore provides much more control.
Without control, the rest of the art is made up of whatever the GenAI extrapolated from the prompt, and that’s not interesting.
I am not so sure about control or effort, there is art, made by humans, that let a leaky bucket of paint swing over a canvas. It is simple to do, not much effort involved, without much control, but since it is done in a novel process, it still is art IMO.
Now if someone reads about this, and replicates it once, it might still art be, because it is new to them. But if anyone repeats it over and over, it is no longer art, but practice. Because the novel approach is missing. Generative AI do not produce art by themselves, because they just generate more of the same.
It is not possible to decide wherever it is art or not by just looking at the product. But you can like or dislike it anyway.
Art is also partly in the eye of the beholder, because it might be novel to them, even if it isn’t novel to the creator.
I for one welcome our new AI overlords.
All hail the eternal machine!
