- cross-posted to:
- technology@lemmy.world
- cross-posted to:
- technology@lemmy.world
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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
I feel like some promises were broken 😂
I feel like some promises were broken 😂
You’re absolutely right!
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.
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.
Pregnant Mario lactating Jamba juice all over Blanka from street fighter, indeed.
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?
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.
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.”
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 FridaySteve@lemmy.world’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
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”
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.
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”
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.I find this li’l guy hilarious for some reason.
To me, thins kinda screams of “I suffered so you should too”. There are good arguments against AI art, but this one doesn’t resonate with me in any capacity.
It is good that AI has made art more accessible. Art is meant for everyone, and anything that makes it more democratic is great.
Its not really about the suffering, its about the journey that is unique to you that you cannot possibly share with others since you’ve never taken it, and so it reflects in the art you bring.
The thing about ai is that if it was perfect to make the image in your head appear on a screen, is that youd notice actually that the image in your head would be shit (its ok). Youd experience this if you did any art, and it takes both an artistic mind with good artistic skills to come up with an effective “medium” or “tool” “image” to transfer your idea to another human being’s mind. It takes a fluency that can’t be grasped unless you pick up one of the tools you’d use to make any art.
And the suffering part comes if you are forcing yourself do get the result you want. You can learn art without suffering, without feeling ashamed at your lack of skill if you arm yourself with patience, something that ai confirms to the audience and other people you don’t have, and so can’t possibly make any contribution to what we understand as art.
The suffering is brought on by this lack of patience about thinking HOW every stroke has to be measured and precise in like a Van Gogh’s painting (pointillism) to the pov and line art of that famous dio vs jonathan confrontation in jojo’s bizarre adventure, each form of art taking inspiration of art before it that an art enjoyer might be familiar with. But it doesn’t have to be, but it is since time in this world time is money, and less is afforded to us for every waste.
I am not shaming btw, I only learned to communicate in an adversarial way soz.
There have been painters who are blind who made great paintings. People without hands who learned how to paint with their feet.
Art was already accessable to everyone, ai drones say that it wasn’t to feel better.
There are different kinds of accessibility. While I admire people with disabilities who were so dedicated in the pursuit of art, there’s more to it than pure desire.
Art takes gift. It takes a lot of time to make it into talent, skill. It commonly takes a lot of money for the courses, materials, etc. And in the modern world, not everyone can realistically have or afford all that.
When I talk of accessibility, I don’t mean “with a ton of effort, every person can technically become at least a bad artist”. I mean “everyone needs to create, yet not everyone can dedicate their life to it”.
AI art allows us to communicate our visions and ideas, which is to me the most important parts of art overall, without having to grind through art classes. This, in turn, means we can hear and see new voices, ones that previously were never heard.
Art does not take gift. The myth of the naturally talented artist needs to die because that’s never been true. It takes effort, like you said, but it does NOT take courses and classes, especially in the modern world. There’s everything you need to learn right there on the Internet and in books. You just have to try.
And that’s the thing, you used to try and know that it was fun to make stuff, but at some point you wanted to make something that looked good and didn’t have the skill for it, so you gave up instead of having fun with it anyway.
But here’s the thing you forgot: the process. When you draw, you make choices. Where to put sister and brother, there to put the sun, how many windows are in your house, etc. The choices being made while making art are where you actually get creative. That’s where the happy accidents happen or the changes you decide on. It’s where the actual express happens, between wanting the picture and having the picture.
AI eliminates that crucial step. It eliminates choice. It makes those choices for you, cribbing notes off of other people’s choices, not yours.
So no, it doesn’t communicate anyone’s voice. Ai repeats static based off of other people’s voices and choices, not yours.
It’s very sad and somewhat indicative of our society that you only care about the finished product, and not the part that actually nourishes you.
It’s absolutely true. All you have to do is spend any amount of time around someone that has never drawn before that has the talent and you’ll be just devastated at how good they are on their first attempt. Meanwhile, there are plenty of people that have been drawing for a couple decades that never have been able to make it past crude representations.
There are various levels of talent and it’s possible to maybe become a bad artist by grinding, but you cannot become a good artist with a complete lack of visual art talent. I’m not sure why visual artists are unable to see this until you tell them okay so everyone can sing and then they quickly admit. “Okay, not everybody can sing.”
Everyone can sing. Even if they sing badly that’s at least their own voice, and no one is fooled into thinking they are singing when they hit play on their phone, so why think someone’s an artist when they get a computer to make an image?
I’m telling you that “artist talent” is literally just when someone likes drawing enough they keep going even when they aren’t at the level they want to be and they practice it. Anyone can be an artist, and anyone can be a good artist, if they put in the effort to try. Even you.
Absolutely untrue If you don’t have the spark your ceiling is quite low
I have it for other arenas so I’m not making excuses, I know there are people that will never match me on those arts because they don’t have it. People are different and that’s okay but let’s not pretend everyone can do everything because that’s not really true.
If you have the ability to hold a pencil you can do art. I’m not saying everyone can do everything but art is a thing ask humans are capable of making and should be encouraged to do so with their own hands. Or feet or mouths or whatever.
That’s a well thought out response, and I appreciate it. There is certainly something important between what you want and what you end up creating, but any kind of AI art that is harder than “make an image by a simple text prompt” still has that step.
What I’m saying is, AI is not just one thing. When people hear it, they think of text prompts and automatic responses - yet I think of AI being the assistant in the creative process. You provide the vision, and AI tools help illustrate it the way you wouldn’t be able to.
Personally, painting is just something that never clicked for me. I can draw a line, an exact shape, I understand perspective and shadows, but the second it moves to “let’s draw that irregular line”, everything gets messy no matter how many hours I put into this. Back in the school years painting and choreography were two only things I failed at, because it requires a lot of intuitive behavior people never care or are never able to put into algorithm. Later, as I tried again and again, I always stumbled with the same thing - circles and squares are all fine, but how am I supposed to draw THAT? For me every break out of basic geometry feels like a good old meme about drawing a horse:
And for me, AI tools are essential to make my vision into something more complex than a stickman figure. It is still a creative process - AI gets something wrong, some ideas are physically impossible and can’t fit the composition, etc. etc. Any struggle a competent artist faces is still there.
If only you were making your vision. You are simply getting a computer to do it.
I’ve said it before, AI destroys the creative process, it doesn’t enhance it. Making the mistakes and choices are essential to you expressing yourself. Even if it’s flawed.
It’s regrettable that you only care about the end result, and feel like you’re incapable of getting where you want with your art. If you genuinely wanted to learn to draw I have suggestions on what to actually do.
Again, I’m not saying you should prompt AI to draw everything for you. There are tools that allow you to enhance the quality of your work using AI as a “make this, but properly” option. The person is still there, making the drafts.
Learning to draw again is not my current priority (focusing on other aspects of self-development at the moment), but I always appreciate the resources and revisit them once I come to it. I do not abandon the idea, and if you have resources that work well with the issue of being able to produce random shapes, I’d always welcome and appreciate them.
You must have stopped reading halfway, because he makes your argument, too.
He acknowledges that it makes art more accessible, by removing the tedium so that artists can do the creative work.
If their “creative work” begins and ends with prompting the AI, the prompter is basically saying that all of the work of art making is tedium.
Does that not resonate with you ?
I did read it to the end, I just don’t believe it’s quite the same argument.
The Oatmeal seems to insist that while AI is helpful to eliminate the boring tasks, art is still a product of effort and struggle. They even later make an argument that these “boring, administrative” tasks might be an important part of creative process, that taking it away means taking something away from the art itself.
And AI art is not just text prompts and pictures. There are AI tools that allow you to draw basic lines and the AI will fill in and complete the hard parts, so you could male your vision come true without proper artistic skill. This is good, because not everyone can dedicate themselves to art classes, not everyone is talented enough (and I insist that talent is part of building a good skill, unlike The Oatmeal who seems to emphasize effort over gift), yet everyone wants and needs to create beauty.
To me, the main purpose of art is to communicate our vision, our thoughts, our ideas. Until recently, the ability to do so was limited by the talent, by that skill ceiling. Those who excelled were heard, those who did not were not. By assisting people with things they don’t know how to do well, we can amplify their voices and their visions, which can help us build a more active and inclusionary dialogue.
Until recently, the ability to do so was limited by the talent, by that skill ceiling. Those who excelled were heard, those who did not were not.
My dude, I have never seen someone shoot their argument in the foot so hard.
Have you seen The Oatmeal drawings?
You can put out creative effort and be successful without having to churn out a Sistine Chapel every time.
It’s not as easy as it looks, and I bet you $100 that most people wouldn’t be able to recreate this work. Comic art is a bit of a separate discipline: it looks extremely simplistic, yet it’s not.
You can put out creative effort and be successful without having to churn out a Sistine Chapel
I never said it was easy. You keep saying you read and then demonstrating that you haven’t.
I think you just want permission to use AI and get your voice “amplified” without having to put in the effort of learning how to do art of any kind.
It’s fine to want that. You don’t need permission to use AI. Do it.
But no one owes you amplification or even a positive reception when you do.
I read the whole thing, and no it didn’t resonate with me. I’m not a middle manager who sees himself as a story teller. Neither am I an art afficionado.
I don’t have a visceral emptiness that overwhelms me when I learn an image that was interesting was generated by AI. It didn’t come from a talented human? Who cares? Does it help to better articulate a thought or idea than the person trying to create it could do on their own? Then it’s ok with me.
There was a very reasonable web comic that made a clear point today in the Palestine community and rather than agree with the message and see that it was much better presented as a comic, it turned into “this smells like it could be slop!” People say “oh I wish it was just MS paint or shitty ppt because at least then YOU made it” but I would have to disagree and say it can detract from the message when you turn out something that looks like shit.
There’s more to the utility of AI art than minutiae. I would be willing to entertain the argument that I don’t want to see AI art in a museum, but while I find the oatmeal’s take to be a well considered perspective, a fair bit of the blanket hatred surrounding AI art applications borders on deranged.
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.
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.
The Oatmeal! 😍😍 I haven’t been to that site in so long, I’m so glad they’re still around! Thanks for sharing!
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.
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.
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.
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.
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 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.
Cool if the context doesn’t matter I’ll sell you a replica of the state of David for the price of the original!
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.
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 😂
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.
