- cross-posted to:
- [email protected]
- [email protected]
- cross-posted to:
- [email protected]
- [email protected]
You must log in or # to comment.
I feel like some promises were broken 😂
I feel like some promises were broken 😂
You’re absolutely right!
There are difficult ‘AI’ tools.
Look up controlnet workflows or VACE, just to start, much less little niches in vapoursynth pipelines or image editing layers. You could spend days training them, messing with the implementation, then doing the manual work of carefully and deliberately applying them. This has, in fact, has been happening in film production for awhile, just in disguise.
Same with, say, LLMs used in game mods where appropriate, like the Rimworld mod. That’s careful creative expression.
…As usual, it’s tech bros fucking everything up by dumbing it down to zero-option prompt box and then shoving that in front of as many people as possible to try and monopolize their attention.
In other words, I agree with the author that what I hate about ‘AI art’ is the low effort ‘sloppiness.’ It’s gross, like rotten fast food. It makes me sad. And that’s 99.999% of all AI art.
…But it doesn’t have to be like that.
It’s like saying the concept of the the fediverse sucks because Twitter/Facebook suck, even if 99.999% of what folks see is the slop of the later. It’s not fair to the techniques, and it’s not holding the jerks behind mass slop proliferation accountable.
Precisely. AI art is bad because the users making “art” with it essentially have such bad taste they’ll publish anything the AI shits out.
There exist artistic ways to use AI as a tool, but none of them are easy. In fact they might be harder than just painting the damn picture yourself.
based and real-pilled, the both of you.
i’m excited for the future of art. we have the potential for a new age of renaissance men who master the arts, humanities, and sciences all at once.
i think a lot of people shitting on genAI don’t see engineering itself as art… and i think that’s a piss-poor, deathly sad view of this world. it’s like 2/3 of westerners weirdly resent anything “math or science coded” as they might call it. a shame. a damn shame.
tl;dr - “art” generated by LLMs is ultimately lame and uninspiring. It’s probably never going to inspire people very much. It’s a parlor trick and everyone intrinsically recognizes it. Don’t expect to be taken seriously as a creator if this is your primary tool.
It’s generative AI though, not creative. It can literally only create what it’s seen before. It’s incapable of being original. Not that there’s anything wrong with that. Andy Warhol painted soup cans. But anyone who expects inspiration and creativity from generative AI doesn’t understand the technology as it’s applied…
It generates new content based on what is trained on. not just what is trained on
Where is the new part coming from? The new part can only come from combining things it already knows.
And even that is the part that is already provided by the human as part if the prompt.
Just like it can Hallucinate text, it also hallucinates content. That’s a core part of the generative feature
It hallucinates from incorrectly putting other info in its network together. It is all just stochastics.
That is not original or new its is the core of what slop is.
The problem is that it does not have a goal or even just understands why it is doing what it is doing.
If you know what a ice sculpture of a human looks like and you know what an ice sculputre of a swan looks like you can maybe infer what an “ice sculpture of a flying crocodile with wings” might look like too, by combining what you already know. It’s as much incorrect as your imagination, no?
I am skeptical about “never”, but right now I agree that’s true. I expect it to be true for many years to come. That being said, we have seen a lot of improvement (over even the last few months) in AI image quality, composition, and prompt adherence.
In order for an art piece to exist, an artist have to have something to say by said art. Fancy autocomplete is not an entity, it’s an algorithm to generate something looking like something else, and even if it crawls out of the uncanny valley at some point (which I’m not sure is possible), the best case scenario is that it will generate something that looks like some people did at some point. It’s not what art is, and it’s not what people look for in art. This will never change, this is the never in said never.
AGI will create art, but at this point we’re further away from it than we were 10 years ago, or even 50 years ago (and I would argue it’s a goos thing)That’s not what I’m saying. What I’m saying is that it’s going to be increasingly difficult (for the layperson) to tell if a work is by a human or computer. You and I may think there’s some sort of moral superiority in human art, but the average TikTok user doesn’t give a fuck… and they outnumber us greatly.
Your opinion of an average person is overly negative.
Generated shit is the new Muzak, the new Alegria clipart, but done very badly. When a person who doesn’t care about music and doesn’t understand music hears Muzak they don’t think about it at all, that’s kind of almost the point of it. It’s an amalgamation of a corporate default sequence of sounds invented to be approved by a committee. And that’s the best that generators can wish to do, and I suspect there is a fundamental quality to it that will prevent it from being that ever.
That’s the thing about art, intentionality, it’s not that “human art” is somehow superiour, it’s that only human art exists, copying algorithms are doing copies, and even if sometimes it works, you don’t get art without an artist saying you something.
Obviously, people who don’t enjoy art don’t care. But that doesn’t really matter.
I have never seen particular humans expressing themselves in ai art or music, all i see is the tech company model behind it; be it sora, stable diffusion or mid journey, ai is not a tool for the prompters; the prompters are the tool for the AI model.
I like this take. It sums up the reality of AI quite well.
I find this li’l guy hilarious for some reason.
To me, a big part of it is that I’m tired of commodity art. I don’t care about your pretty pixel soup. I’ve seen other pixel soups before that were similarly pretty.
And I’ve been tired for many years, long before every middle-manager under the sun could cook up their own pretty pixel soup.
Back then, it was humans trying to make a living off of their passion and then settling for commodity art to make ends meet. I was cheering them on, because they were passionate humans.Now that generative AI has destroyed that branch of humanity, there’s no one to cheer on anymore.
Even if generative AI never existed in the first place, I’d like to see commodity art being relegated to the sidelines and expressive art coming into the limelight instead.Tell me a story with your art. About your struggles or a brainfart you had, or really anything. This comic is great, for example. There’s emotions there and I can see the human through the art. I would’ve chosen a very different illustration for whatever, for example, which tells me a lot about the artist, but also about myself.
I have never had that kind of introspection with pretty pixel soups.Pregnant Mario lactating Jamba juice all over Blanka from street fighter, indeed.
The Oatmeal! 😍😍 I haven’t been to that site in so long, I’m so glad they’re still around! Thanks for sharing!
Art is beautiful not because economic value has been captured and skewered into aesthetics. It is a part of being human.
Yea, I agree. It is like the anti-ai art luddites don’t understand this… The people making the promps are still making art, just by the nature of it being humans making human decisions. Skill isn’t a gate to art in the same way anymore, despite what the gatekeepers want everyone to believe.
Are you the type of person who pretends you made a cheeseburger when you got it from a drive though window? Because that’s what you sound like.
Prompters don’t make decisions in the piece, the algorithm generated stuff and if the prompter doesn’t like it, then they prompt again. No choices made.
It’s like how you all use the same words when someone disagrees with you, “luddite” and “gatekeeping”. You can’t really think for yourself so your regurgitate what someone else wrote.
deleted by creator
People using prompts are not “making” art. They are hallucinating theft from actual artists. There never was any skill or materials gate. Pen or pencil and a scrap of paper, pick it up and start. There is no defense for AI “art” or the shills that push it.
There is nothing new under the sun, even artists who draw their own stuff learn from other artists and use it in their art. AI training isn’t theft as long as the art is free to look at, that is just sour grapes. Torrenting anything and using it either as inspiration for your own work, or for training AI is theft and shouldn’t be done by anybody, but especially not corporations. Either way, it isn’t the training that is theft.
Disney has assembled a very good case against one generative AI company, showing that the stuff “learned” from shared art is essentially infringing on copyright and failing to assemble its own ideas. They asked it for “A man in a metal suit” and it would consistently give them Iron Man, down to the fine details.
We’ve moved away from the simple Copy and Paste tools in image editors, but I would say not nearly far enough for technology to evade the principles of trademark and copyright infringements. The “model” is in many ways just a database of other people’s stolen artwork, ready to be rearranged.
Even so, if you commission a picture of Iron Man or if you generate a picture of Iron Man… both are going to be covered under trademark without any need to differentiate the two.
If you use summary tools on google to make you a list or a paragraph you’re ripping off actual writers and stealing their collective style. (Language models don’t just come from nowhere after all) Spell check is ok, but if you write like you’re borderline illiterate, well, pick up a grammar book and a notepad and get cracking. Hire a professional editor to plan your next set of PowerPoint slides.
Sheesh.
Okay, I’m willing to accept that we generally shouldn’t decide that our personal lines in the sand can serve as meaningful differentiators between art and not-art. By the same token, don’t expect me to be particularly impressed by a (mostly) photorealistic composition just because you spent 30 minutes fine-tuning your prompt. If I’m not appreciating your skill and the time you committed to your vision, the bar for the impact you need to make is that much higher. For me, most AI art falls flat on that front as well.
Maybe someone will be the breakthrough artist that shows the rest of us luddites what a genuinely beautiful interplay between drafting a prompt and massaging an engine will look like, but (1) even that person is something other than a painter or a photographer, and (2) I don’t think we’re there yet and may never be.
That is at least reasonable. I really don’t expect you to be impressed by anybody’s efforts in AI prompting. Calling it not-art is subjectively wrong, but not being impressed is right in most cases.
art - the expression or application of human creative skill and imagination
Not-art is subjectively right. AI “art” is made by taking imagery and reassembling it according to an algorithm. There’s no thought, no imagination, no anything creative behind it. Can it be aesthetically pleasing? Sure, like a sunset can be. But neither are art because there’s no intention behind it.
Where is this definition from? Somewhere official, or your own personal definition?
Is a picture of a sunset art? If the photographer chose a particularly scenic view and took several pictures before deciding on the one they felt was best, is that not art? Does the photographer have to, personally, hike to find the vantage point and take the picture for it to be art? Can they use a drone instead? How about just feeds from a camera someone set up? If the person looks through a feed and takes some high quality screenshots of a particularly vivid sunset that moves them, and decides to frame it and display it, is it disqualified from being art because they didn’t create the sunset and just selected the image from a series of images they were looking at? Is it slop if they decide to digitally remove a tree that was blocking the view?
This is the problem I have. Every argument against AI art inevitably closes the door against some other form of art that the arguer would otherwise consider acceptable. I know you’re not going to like or accept this answer, but the reason it’s so hard to have an argument that only applies to AI art and not any other forms of art is because AI art IS art.
It’s art, because art is subjective. The moment you start trying to define it or gatekeep it, the meaning will slip through your fingers like grains of sand.
Is a picture of a sunset art?
Yes, IF the photographer chose the framing, angle, lighting etc. of the picture. If it was randomly taken by a drone or if someone just thrust out a camera and started blindly taking pictures, that’s not art. UNLESS the person was trying to make some sort of statement about how randomly taken pictures look. Again, it’s all about intent more than the actual composition. There has to be some sort of underlying idea that’s being expressed. AI cannot have ideas.
I’ll answer each of the questions because I find thinking about it interesting:
If the photographer chose a particularly scenic view and took several pictures before deciding on the one they felt was best, is that not art?
Yes, explained above.
Does the photographer have to, personally, hike to find the vantage point and take the picture for it to be art?
No. They can take any picture they have specifically chosen to take the way they took it.
Can they use a drone instead?
Yes. The method used doesn’t matter, the fact that they chose the picture to look the way is does is what matters.
How about just feeds from a camera someone set up?
If they stopped it at a certain point and chose that framing for a reason, not random chance, then yes.
If the person looks through a feed and takes some high quality screenshots of a particularly vivid sunset that moves them, and decides to frame it and display it, is it disqualified from being art because they didn’t create the sunset and just selected the image from a series of images they were looking at?
This one is a really good question if the video feed is presumed to be an automated one not shot by a person and was not set up to capture the sunset or anything in particular. There was no intent behind the images being captured, it’s just a recording of what things looked like in a specific place at a specific time. Yet a person could choose one of these random images and decide they liked the composition. Would the aesthetically pleasing image being hung on a wall be art? Well, would a seashell chosen from a beach for its appearance and put on display be art? I would say no, the picture or seashell themselves both qualify as decorations, not art. However, their chosen placement in a space is a form of art. So AI generated images (or anything at all, really) could be made into a component of art even if the individual parts are not themselves art.
Is it slop if they decide to digitally remove a tree that was blocking the view?
Totally depends on how extensive the change is if AI is creating the image where the tree used to be.
deleted by creator
Prompting does not make anything, it is like saying you cooked a meal because you picked it in a vending machine.
It is more like writing a recipee down and giving it to a chef who uses their skill to interpret the recipe and make a new dish. The dish doesn’t belong wholly to the chef, despite the skill nearly wholly residing with the chef. The person who wrote the recipee isn’t a chef, but they are involved in making the dish that was their idea.
Yeah but we don’t say “I made these cookies” when all we did was hand someone the recipe, now do we?
No, because telling someone or something to make something doesn’t mean we get to say we made it.
So you are saying that the person who made the recipe had no input to the process of cooking the resultant food? Nobody claims they “drew” something when they design an AI prompt. When you see a Frank Lloyd Write building do you say, "Nah he didn’t build that, he just made some plans. A contractor built it. Frank Lloyd Write isn’t an artist, he is just a prompt writer. "
Don’t break your arm patting yourself on the back for putting an order in at the restaurant. That chef would make something with or without you.
Lmao about you trying to compare ai prompters to Frank Lloyd Write, when he actually did the design work and you can’t.
Oh, sorry, you’re right, prompters never say they drew something, they just claim to be artists when they clearly aren’t. Should’ve figured you’d nitpick word choices it’s about the only think you’re capable of.
deleted by creator
Found the tool!
deleted by creator
I don’t like ai-art, most of the time it is a pursuit of the economic value of an aesthetic without a genuine engagement with the human part.
Further, AI is part of a broad process of dehumanization that diminishes the value of humans and the human condition in favor of an imagined intelligence that all artists have always instinctually understood was a threat.
No artists with any wisdom at all thinks skill is a gatekeeper for human artists, skill is rather the inveitable result of a sustained intimacy between an artist and their art and what you mistake for a worship of skill is a love of that relationship framed in the context of skill. In so far as the obsession with artistic skill acts as a gatekeeper to anybody, it is in large part because capitalism demands things be abstracted and reduced to pure economic value. Artists rarely gatekeep art themselves, the gatekeeping has NOTHING to do with artists nor does it originate from their desire to create art it is a peripheral process imposed upon art by distorting forces attempting to control art (such as AI).
Also, people need to stop lazily using the example of Luddites without knowing their history. They aren’t who you think they were, stop dropping the reference like you know what it means if you don’t know what it means.
TL;DR If skill is a gatekeeper to art it is because capitalism demands scarcity be imposed upon the pursuit of making art, it has nothing to do with art itself. Hailing AI as a gift to would-be artists totally misses the point, I am not against using new tools to make art, I am against the rise in dehumanization dominating societies around the world at the moment of which AI is a central actor.
I think that there is AI “art” that goes beyond typing a few words into chat gpt and waiting for a result.
I don’t know how popular this is today but about two years ago I watched lots of people go wild with stable diffusion workflows. It was a whole palette of tools: Control net, Inpainting, sketches with img2img for the composition, corrections in Photoshop and so on. It took hours or days of manual work until people “generated” the image that they initially imagined. I would say that this would count as art… Writing one prompt into your favourite llm and take what you get: not so much.
One example for reference: https://youtu.be/K0ldxCh3cnI
It’s still used a lot. ComfyUI is the software of choice for the people you’re thinking about, and there’s some pretty advanced workflows that blow my mind how anyone even came up with that stuff. The end results are worth it though.
AI slop that we are used to seeing are people just throwing prompts at chatGPT or Gemini, maybe ask it to change a detail or another if they are feeling less lazy than usual, and then share it on the web
Gotta say, he lost me at the talent-skill thing. Being good at any arts requires something fundamental. Practise is absolutely an important part of it, but art, music, storytelling, anything creative, either you got it or you dont.
Edit : is the down arrows because talent isnt real, or because I said he and mistakenly did a misgendering?
Some of the best artists I know are people who started out without a single iota of talent, but they practiced for long enough that they got good. I reckon that talent probably does exist, but it’s a far smaller component than many believe. Hard word beats talent when talent doesn’t work hard.
People who are most likely to emphasise talent in art tend to be people who wish they were good at art, but aren’t willing (or able) to put the time into improving; it feels oddly reassuring to tell oneself that it’s pointless to try if you don’t start out with talent, rather than being realistic and saying “I wish I were good at art, but I am choosing not to invest in that skill because it’s not one of my priorities”
Maybe, but i feel the amount of effort I put in before giving up should have yielded a lot more results than it did. I dont want to come across as bitter, because its just art, but i really do think some people just cant.
If Mozart can be writing unrivalled symphonies at 8 years old you know. Most people will play a single instrument for longer than he was alive and come nowhere close, and its frustrating to learn that the general consensus is that this is simply because everyone else just needs to try harder.
don’t listen to others, “everyone can do X” is one of those technically true unfalsifiable statements people tell themselves to soothe their bad feelings about their own mediocrity.
you’re right that it isn’t just a matter of will or effort, some people are born into incorrigibly better positions to become the next Mozart or Einstein. the truth is that in this world the majority of your fate is not written by you and it never will be - and that’s okay.
maybe one day people will get off their weird “personal responsibility” high-horse, but until then…
That’s not the general consensus, you just need to stop comparing yourself to literal prodigies. In fact, stop comparing yourself to anyone. If you don’t have expectations for your art, you’ll never fail to meet them.
I wasn’t literally comparing myself, it wasnt “wahhh im not a subject-defining god what’s the point”, it was more “if an 8 year old child can be that good, then there has to be some factor beyond effort”
I think it’s more nuanced, like unless of a particular handicap pratice will make you good. But being exceptional requires something that is a closely guarded secret by the gods. So yeah, like the succesful actor on a talk show talking about working hard to get at your dreams sorts of diminish the hard work of anyone who doesn’t reach the top. So yeah, talent is honed but exceptional talent is not.
I don’t think this is worth a downvote, but I do think you are fundamentally wrong.
either you got it or you don’t
People who are born with natural talents, that others can’t hope to match with practice, are definitely real, but they are VERY rare. Think people like Mozart or Picasso. People who just start out naturally understanding an art or skill in ways that others have to LEARN to achieve.
But “talent” for most people is more akin to “liking” a pursuit, rather than being naturally good at it. They GET good at it by DOING it constantly, because it’s what they like doing. In this context of “talent”, “talented” people can absolutely be matched by “untalented” people, who put in the same work and effort, but driven by other motivations. This is what people mean when they say “You can do anything you set your mind to.”
And yes, this includes creativity. Creativity is a skill that most creative people had to WORK on to get good at.
Skilled people are not born that way. You can be predisposed towards certain skills, and you can even argue that only some people can be the best at something, but all those can do is decrease the amount of time it takes to become skilled. No matter what, you can learn to do something. You can learn to draw. You can learn to write. You can learn to tell stories. You can learn to be creative. You can become skilled at most things. You may not be able to be the best, but practice will always get you closer to best than predisposition. You are literally not just born with it.
When I mentioned this in the last posting i was thoroughly downvoted, my downs were mostly artists adamant that anyone can be great at art if they just put in the effort. Many claimed to have full aphantasia and more or less tried to pin it on my inability to draw to work ethic or being too hard on my great art that I never presented to anyone.
I think it’s a general condition that most artists project their abilities and believe that anyone can do what they’re doing.
Like right there with [email protected]’s downvote on this comment, something that actually happened as was clearly reported to me in a previous post.
At least you’re not bitter about it 🙄🙄🙄
;) not even once
I don’t think this is worth a downvote, but I do think you are fundamentally wrong.
either you got it or you don’t
Please who are born with natural talents, that others can’t hope to match with practice, are definitely real, but they are VERY rare. Think people like Mozart or Picasso. People who just start out naturally understanding an art or skill in ways that others have to LEARN to achieve.
But “talent” for most people is more akin to “liking” a pursuit, rather than being naturally good at it. They GET good at it by DOING it constantly, because it’s what they like doing. In this context of “talent”, “talented” people can absolutely be matched by “untalented” people, who put in the same work and effort, but driven by other motivations. This is what people mean when they say “You can do anything you set your mind to.”
You are absolutely correct. I have spent a lot of time around adults that can just pick up a brush without any training or whatsoever and do a legitimately good piece of art. Artist mistakenly feel that because they kept grinding that their output is a result of their work alone. However if they are missing that core piece of talent, it doesn’t matter how much they practice. You will never be able to create visual art at the level of someone with the spark.
It’s weird how all visual artists believe that this is true for singers, but never believe it’s true for themselves.
Walther Benjamin examines this point extensively in The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction, which should be required reading for everyone, but especially anyone who thinks that AI art is the same as human art. The crux is that an authentic work (you can think of it as the “original”) has some… thing , some Je ne sais quoi that he calls the Aura. It’s a feeling you get from the real authentic thing. It’s the reason people line up at the Louvre to see the tiny Mona Lisa behind thick plate glass instead of just looking at a poster. Or why NFTs tried to be a thing and basically failed after the meme of it all died out.
I think the “Je ne sais quoa” is the human element: art is fundamentally about human communication and interaction.
We can (usually) infer the meaning and emotion an artist is trying to convey – particularly if given context. Even if we don’t “get” what the artist is trying to say, we can come up with something an equally valid. Real art only “works” because of empathy.
AI generated “art” fails for that reason: you can’t infer the thought process of a machine that doesn’t think, or emphasize with emotions it doesn’t have. As a tool it can assist with creating art, but the more heavily it’s involved in the creative process the less meaningful the resultant “art” becomes.
I always found this such a silly argument. Imagine eating a pizza and thoroughly enjoying it but changing your perception of taste willingly depending on how it was made. It’s admitting you are judging art based on everything except the actual piece, which sounds the opposite of what art is about.
It’s like in olden times when they judged a piece depending on the artists birth and status.
Not to say there isn’t a lot of slop out there that definitely belongs in the dumpster, but it’s hard to take someone seriously when they judge all of it broadly on this kind of basis.
Pizza tastes better, even retroactively, if you find out someone you love made it for you.
I went over this in an other comment a bit.
Real painting > digital painting > AI
I associate more value depending on skill level. All I’m saying is: if the pizza only taste like shit once you hear the opposite, the bad taste is in your head.
I do get that having the feeling one way leaves place to having the same type of feeling the other way. I guess it feels different though, hard to explain. It’s a valid sentiment in the end, it just feels a bit petty from my viewpoint.
Well, as a human I’ve got plenty of biases, some of them petty I suppose.
Maybe it’s a the curtains are blue situation? Like we attribute all this meaning to art, and we get to guess at whether we’re right, or whether the artist wanted us to be drawn to specific components. We understand that art often has symbolism and that it’s meant to be evocative.
But with AI art, there’s none of that. Whatever meaning I attribute is purely projection - which is often true in regular art too, except that I have a social contract with the artist that we both agree we want me to look at this art and have feelings, whatever they may be. A social contact with a computer isn’t real and feels disingenuous.
I think petty is the wrong word to use in this case and it doesn’t really apply. It’s a bit harsh.
I think it’s your last paragraph that I struggle with. It’s like if someone was saying the same about Photoshop, how in the end, it’s a computer that is doing all the work and the software can’t convey any messages.
This is true for a lot of AI work. 90% of it is slop with little though behind composition or anything of the kind. The last 10% does have someone behind it trying to convey a message, but most are ignoring him and listening solely to the medium.
I also think it’s fine to have bias, and it’s a part of the process, but a lot of people are trying to redefine what art is to fit that bias.
It would be fine if people were saying “this is art I don’t like because of the ethics of it” but most are saying things like “this is bad Art” or even worse, “this isn’t art at all” in broad strokes without actually trying to understand it.
Listening to music and finding out it was made by ai ruins my experience because i imagine the greasy lazy thief behind the grift. I want my music by real musicians with a personal connection to their craft, not a good for nothing trying to make a quick mindless buck, but in any case i have never heard ai music i personally liked it is usually all incredibly bland and lacking personality.
For me, art is in the eye of the beholder (so like his initial emotional reaction, and like what I understand your point to be).
But there are also aspects that are a bit more innate to the art itself. It’s sort of like a conversation, for me; if I see a piece of art I think is beautiful, and I’ve felt something emotional in response to it, I start to try and understand what the artist was trying to say through the work, what story they might be trying to tell, who they might be. It’s a connection. They might be expressing their emotions, thoughts, or experiences, and I might be empathising with another human going through that. There’s a level of trust from my side that they’ve put in effort and are being genuine.
If I find out it’s AI art… Well, there’s no conversation there, is there? Nobody made that picture. Nobody is communicating anything. Nobody is considering how a viewer might feel. Nobody has created anything. A machine has, unfeelingly, mashed a bunch of actual art together, and now the result is in front of me. If I know beforehand, I won’t bother looking. If I’ve felt emotions, I’ve been lied to and will look away.
You can feel differently, of course. I’m just explaining how I feel about art. I don’t enjoy being lied to.
It’s a fair point. When I think about it, I come to the conclusion that at first I both consume them the same way, as pictures on a screen. So they start at both the same baseline (my immediate enjoyment) and learning something was done in a more complicated method or has a deeper meaning just adds to that baseline, but it to never will go down for the opposite.
I attribute more value to human made art, just like how I attribute more value to hand painted pieces compared to digital ones. I just don’t change my opinion towards the negative.
I also think there’s an error when assuming something can’t communicate because it was made partly or completely with AI. The GoP uses it to communicate hate for instance, that part mostly transcends the medium imo (even if again, the medium can add to it at times). I see AI as a tool, I don’t see it as the AI creating the piece.
Obviously, 3/4 of the scene is smut so it’s not like much high level communication is going on most times though lol. I’m selective in what I actually consider art, I wouldn’t call most outputs art just to be clear (or what the GOP is doing for that matter).
Interesting! I understand your first point, about not devaluing the art from your baseline of enjoyment just because it’s not human-made – I don’t agree, but that’s just a personal opinion of mine, and I can totally see what you’re saying.
Your point about the American Republican party using AI images to communicate (or create) anger is really interesting to me. I was thinking after writing my reply that, despite my feelings about generative AI, I ultimately don’t care if AI imagery is used in advertising because adverts are not genuine conversations anyway.
I feel similarly about the Republican party, or any political party from any country, using AI imagery as propaganda.
Propaganda, to me, is an intentionally dishonest and manipulative communication. That’s not a criticism of propaganda; advertising is dishonest and manipulative too. A prosecutor’s closing arguments may “spin” the truth and intend to manipulate a jury. Dishonesty and manipulation aren’t “bad” to me, per se, on their own - it’s what the intention behind the dishonesty and manipulation is that makes those things bad, or neutral, or good.
When I see adverts, or political propaganda, I don’t even begin to establish that “trust” or “connection” I mentioned in my first reply, because I know it’s not a genuine communication. Similarly to if I open a spam email and it contains a sob story about a family that needs money - I know it’s bullshit, so I don’t feel bad for them.
I think you hit the nail on the head when you called it a tool. Part of me feels that for something to be “art”, the kind we’re (I’m) talking about at the moment, it can’t have a utility like a tool would. I’m not sure if I really believe that but it’s certainly a distinction that feels natural to me without thinking.
Sorry mate, this was mega rambly 😂
Alright let me make an analog for this - Because context does absolutely matter.
You are buying shoes. (… And have probably already made the connection)
You find a dooooope pair of sneaks. The colors, the lines, the fit. Perfect.
Then you find out your sneakers were made by Ari in a town that has no running water, people shit in ditches, and the median income of a family of 4 buys enough rice to feed 3 people. And then there’s Ari. Ari is 7 and has been working for 2 years already.
How those kicks looking? Do they envoke the same joy?
That’s an unhinged analogy soaked in emotion. Whatever point you are trying to make, it has nothing to do with the one I’m talking about in the comment.
Unhinged how? Its not far from the truth for some industries and could have been equally ugly not using child labor. The point was to highlight how one might have a different feeling about the same product when it has context. I figured that was clear enough but perhaps I was mistaken, lol.
It’s emotional exaggeration the moment you try to compare it to a child imo.
My pizza analogy was spot on, if you want, you can talk about the pizza factory using a lot of energy, then I could explain how the energy grid is at fault. I could explain how one pizza factory services millions at the same time so the impact is actually very small compared to real climate change drivers like cars, planes and shipping boats. There would be place to mention how AI is actually using energy that wasn’t necessarily expected and it’s worsening the grid which was already shit to begin with and making transition to green energy more difficult.
But you just went hardcore “think of the children” to try and frame AI as the greatest evil. Republican type tactics tbh.
What’s funny is no one gives a fuck where their shoes come from but they have been trained to care really really hard about the big bad AI.
I quickly provided a story that would effectively answer the question. It seems to have accomplished its goal: like it or not part of human condition is applying value to things based on human weights such as empathy and pride. Absolutely unhinged idea, I’m aware.
Don’t want children and a semi-fabricated story? Not a problem: let’s talk about a product - an iPhone. Its a fine product and people seem to like it. Some of those same people stopped enjoying that same product when they found out that it was, in part, made by foxcon. The company with literal nets around their roofs because their workers really loved their situation.
There are dozens of examples. I’m sorry you were set off by such a simple story… But frankly - as I already mentioned - that means the analog did it’s job. It invoked feelings which, last I checked, we use when assigning value to things.
If you want to strawman something out of the fact I used child labor in the example… Go burn that effigy elsewhere.
AI art is the Tostino’s pizza of art.
it looks like pizza, but it doesn’t really taste like pizza, and not a single human touched it
Except you can’t tell, because it taste the same (as he clearly admits by saying his enjoyment only changes once he learns it’s AI).
It’s basically willingly entertaining and reinforcing your own placebos.
If it tastes the same to you, your taste glands are dead.
The artist of the piece im commenting on said it tasted the same.
There’s a websites where you can guess if random artwork is AI or not, I invite you to test your own skill. It has become very hard to tell for a while now.
Even if the cartoonist says it; I’m not endorsing a dumb opinion.
The whole conversation is about seeing an image where you don’t notice it’s AI, and then changing your opinion after when you learn it is.
No need to lash out if you misunderstood.
Cool if the context doesn’t matter I’ll sell you a replica of the state of David for the price of the original!
Same. Art is in the eye of the beholder. I for example find Pollock just shit but there are those that pay actual money to see what a baby elephant could’ve made. All that modern art is talentless shit to me. But there are people out there who will vehemently defend it. There people out there who will pay money to go to a talentless art museum and come out feeling smug that they could recognise a piece made by some person who just had the luck to know the right people.
We all have our opinions about art, but they are just that, opinions. People will continue to throw shit at a wall or use period blood to drip onto a canvas and attach some grand message to it in order to call it art, and people will just generate a prompt and paste it into an AI art generator then share whatever looks pleasing to them.
Art is in the eye of the beholder but ai shit is not art… It is just tech corporate spam clogging up the internet.
AI art is great, because now I can make artsy pictures in my presentations. AI art can never replace real artists though, it’s just not that good. There will always be a place for real artists, AI art is only for amateurs that would never pay for real art anyways.
Enjoy making Clipart Storyteller.
Or where hiring an actual real artists - for example if you were to need dozens of graphics for, say, a TTRPG you’re running.
On the other hand, if you’re e.g. writing your own TTRPG, and getting it published, you ought to use a real artist.
IMO the best way to determine if AI is okay to use or not, is by the purpose - is it a personal project, something you won’t profit off? Then sure. Is it something you’re going to profit off of? Then use a real artist and include them in the profits.
Or where hiring an actual real artists - for example if you were to need dozens of graphics for, say, a TTRPG you’re running.
The only issue with that is that the AI was trained off the art from people who did create art for their TTRPG either paid or as a passion project.
Does that mean that new art effectively stops getting made for these scenarios? That real artists who are inspired to make cool art for their games just disappear or get assumed it was just AI?
I kind of wonder if we just stagnate from here, with very little new art being created that doesn’t come from AI. In 10 years will we still be using the long recycled art from the last human artists? (Not that humans will stop creating art, but less will and they will often be drowned out from the flood of AI output)
Very, very few TTRPG sessions have artists creating art for each of them. Mine certainly didn’t before I could run genAI models locally. At most I’d grab generic, CC-licenced ambiance art, or, if the group had an artistic veined person, they’d help out with some character sheet art and such.
AI took no jobs here. And as I said, if the art is for something you profit off of, you should use an actual artist.
I’m not talking about jobs, just people who do art for fun. Before AI there was still a lot of D&D fan art for example. Tons of people drawing their character or getting a commission done of the party after a long campaign. That kind of thing.
I think AI art has a negative impact on that sort of expression. People who might have tried it instead just generate something instead, never learning they really like to draw. People who would’ve commissioned something now can just generate a pic instead. People who had fun sharing fan art lose their motivation because for every one picture they complete, 1000s of AI images bury their art so it never gets appreciated.
One of the best minis in a game I was in that was ever used was a hydra made out of paper, and when we killed a head, the dm pulled one out of the slots and it was a bloody stump drawn at the base of the neck. Everyone at the table flipped their shit, it was awesome.
If the dm just used ai to make something, that wouldn’t have happened. It would’ve been disappointing to find out if was an ai image for the players, and he wouldn’t have made that fun memory.
AI takes away potential in more ways than one.
Wow. Way to be ignorant.
I’m not disagreeing that said mini scene isn’t epic, but AI literally doesn’t take away from such events - in fact it can help make them happen.
There’s tons of people out there (including myself) who have the mental/cerebral creativity, but lack the ability to translate it to something hand-drawn. To take my own example further, I can’t draw for shit - and this isn’t for lack of trying, mind you, I’ve spent 4 years in an architectural high school, each year having 2-4 weekly freehand drawing classes, and while I can manage more regular objects in perspective… that’s about it. On the other hand, I’m really good with CAD in general, or mechanical drawings. To me AI isn’t something that takes away my creativity, or replaces the human element, because I know what I want on-screen, and simply require an aid, a tool, to make that happen.
With my TTRPG games (which are more sci-fi oriented), I still do 90% of the prep by hand. I plan ahead for the possible paths my players will take, generate backdrops to be used on my projector, and recently even started generating background music to play.
Even if I was a “real artist”, the amount of work required to eliminate AI from the workflow is simply not doable by a single person.
But yet again, it doesn’t take away from my creativity. I still have to come up with the scenarios, the possible outcomes, how my players might react, plan the backdrops and music and battle scenes and whatnot, and have everything I’ve envisioned, translated into something my players can see.
AI isn’t providing the creativity, but a way to translate the vision to visual.
That’s really sad that you think that way and telling that you missed the point.
If you hand make something for your game, during the creation process you’ll have a hydra moment and make something different than your initial idea. If you just use AI then you stay with that initial idea and don’t explore it. So yeah, it does take away from your creativity and you don’t even realize it.
I guarantee you that if you actually made something yourself for your campaign your players would like it much more than the AI stuff.
Because the big secret of artists? Stuff never turns out as good as it was in your head. Not once. And it’s not supposed to.
With the same attitude one could campaign for ditching digital art tools, hell, even paint and paper, and going back all the way to cave paintings.
AI is a tool, period. Using it does not denigrate the process, and no, unlike your claim, does not take away from creativity, in fact it can trigger the exact same new ideas other creative processes can.
What’s truly sad is that you, in complete lack of understanding of how and why AI can be used, are dismissing not just AI but people who use it, putting your ideology of “art purism” as something superior. My recommendation is, you look back in history and see how every single technological advancement that resulted in such outcries and purist movements, has ended up. Small hint: you’re very much on the wrong side of things.
Heh, AI is about as much of a tool as a drive through window is to cooking. You aren’t making anything, you’re not part of the process, you’re having a computer copy someone else’s choices and spill it out for you. This isn’t like a camera where people make choices with lenses, lighting and framing, this is you giving up your creative agency because you want a picture and don’t care how you got it.
Ai images aren’t art, and it’s sad that you think they are.
Ah, so you’ve been debating in bad faith all along.
off you fuck then, troll.
I think this can be summarised as “fair use”, something the AI providers like OpenAi could learn a thing or two about.
Unexpected mention of Allie Brosh in the thanks at the end. Genuinely nice to be able to confirm she’s still out there, alive and kicking, doing whatever it is she’s doing now.
She wrote a book a couple years back that explains where she vanished to. It’s good.
She’s written a couple, at least. Þe two I have are boþ good.
