As an artist I am concerned about AI image generation • Hacker News Board

Re: As an artist I am concerned about AI image generation

#41

Post by hgomersall » Sun, Aug 14, 2022, 7:42 PM UTC

cercatrova wrote: post #33

adamhi wrote: post #28

I won't pretend that this isn't a troubling development for digital artists, maybe even existentially so. I hope not. One thing that makes me a little hopeful is that every image I've generated with DALL-E 2, even the best ones, would require non-trivial work to make them "good". There's always something wrong, and you can't tell the model "the hat should be tilted about 5 about degrees", or "the hands should not loo…

Have you seen Stable Diffusion, the AI in question in the tweet? The images are astoundingly good, much better than DALL-E 2 even. https://twitter.com/StableDiffusion/

The shadow was wrong in the man-tree-beach-sea image. I guess it might be artistically wrong, but I'm sceptical of what that even means in this context.

Re: As an artist I am concerned about AI image generation

#42

Post by [deleted] » Sun, Aug 14, 2022, 7:43 PM UTC

madelyn wrote: post #40

I think my heuristic is Magic: the Gathering card artwork. Can DALL-E make set defining breathtaking high res promo art, with fantastic composition, style and proportion? Maybe, but probably not as well as ex. Raymond Swanland right now. Can DALL-E crank out the 50x lands and commons needed for the set? Almost certainly. Superstar artists will be fine but I fear the bottom will fall out of the craft.

[deleted]

Re: As an artist I am concerned about AI image generation

#43

Post by exitb » Sun, Aug 14, 2022, 7:43 PM UTC

cercatrova wrote: post #33

adamhi wrote: post #28

I won't pretend that this isn't a troubling development for digital artists, maybe even existentially so. I hope not. One thing that makes me a little hopeful is that every image I've generated with DALL-E 2, even the best ones, would require non-trivial work to make them "good". There's always something wrong, and you can't tell the model "the hat should be tilted about 5 about degrees", or "the hands should not loo…

Have you seen Stable Diffusion, the AI in question in the tweet? The images are astoundingly good, much better than DALL-E 2 even. https://twitter.com/StableDiffusion/

Oh, that just drives the point home. Any flaw you can find in these models to build your hope on will just get corrected in the next iteration, only a couple months down the line.

Re: As an artist I am concerned about AI image generation

#44

Post by hbosch » Sun, Aug 14, 2022, 7:43 PM UTC

adamhi wrote: post #28

I won't pretend that this isn't a troubling development for digital artists, maybe even existentially so. I hope not. One thing that makes me a little hopeful is that every image I've generated with DALL-E 2, even the best ones, would require non-trivial work to make them "good". There's always something wrong, and you can't tell the model "the hat should be tilted about 5 about degrees", or "the hands should not loo…

> and you can't tell the model "the hat should be tilted about 5 about degrees"

Actually, I think you can.

Re: As an artist I am concerned about AI image generation

#45

Post by kiernanmcgowan » Sun, Aug 14, 2022, 7:45 PM UTC

madelyn wrote: post #40

I think my heuristic is Magic: the Gathering card artwork. Can DALL-E make set defining breathtaking high res promo art, with fantastic composition, style and proportion? Maybe, but probably not as well as ex. Raymond Swanland right now. Can DALL-E crank out the 50x lands and commons needed for the set? Almost certainly. Superstar artists will be fine but I fear the bottom will fall out of the craft.

A friend and I experimented with using it to generate images for DnD items. It’s a quick way to get a visual for something that doesn’t exist, and therefore, does not need to be totally accurate.

Re: As an artist I am concerned about AI image generation

#46

Post by xg15 » Sun, Aug 14, 2022, 7:45 PM UTC

adamhi wrote: post #28

I won't pretend that this isn't a troubling development for digital artists, maybe even existentially so. I hope not. One thing that makes me a little hopeful is that every image I've generated with DALL-E 2, even the best ones, would require non-trivial work to make them "good". There's always something wrong, and you can't tell the model "the hat should be tilted about 5 about degrees", or "the hands should not loo…

> It's like the model gets you the first 90%, and then you need a trained painter to get the second 90%.

Call me a doomer, but I think this makes the possible consequences even worse.

Remember the 80/20 rule.

A lot of modern product innovation is not really about improving quality - rather, its about introducing lower-quality versions of existing products which are significantly cheaper than the original but still "good enough".

Dalle2 and friends could fall into the same bucket. If they produce artwork that is objectively worse than a human-painted version would be, but still "good enough" for many mundane usecases - stock photos, concept art, etc - we might still see a wide adoption and displacement of human artists from those usecases - along with an overall drop in quality of artworks.

Re: As an artist I am concerned about AI image generation

#47

Post by xor99 » Sun, Aug 14, 2022, 7:45 PM UTC

Digital art is not permanently interesting. My sympathies go out to people who feel like they will lose some of their business. However, a group of developers has shown what was always true about digital art: its computational art even if you draw it because it is encoded digitally. In other words, it was always going to be reproducible and remixable.

The problem with being shocked by Dall-E, in my view, is that it shows an ignorance about the historical development of art and its incredible diversity of practice + the final productions and forms of art. OpenAI have sort of Warholised digital art in a way and that's just very standard in art history. People went crazy when Warhol productised art but in reality this was an overreaction and plenty more stuff came after that which completely different in its orientation towards art (e.g. something like Hans Haacke). Dalle-E is a system for producing digital art in the way that Warhol's practice was a system for producing visual art as a commercial product.

Re: As an artist I am concerned about AI image generation

#48

Post by saurik » Sun, Aug 14, 2022, 7:47 PM UTC

xg15 wrote: post #46

adamhi wrote: post #28

I won't pretend that this isn't a troubling development for digital artists, maybe even existentially so. I hope not. One thing that makes me a little hopeful is that every image I've generated with DALL-E 2, even the best ones, would require non-trivial work to make them "good". There's always something wrong, and you can't tell the model "the hat should be tilted about 5 about degrees", or "the hands should not loo…

> It's like the model gets you the first 90%, and then you need a trained painter to get the second 90%. Call me a doomer, but I think this makes the possible consequences even worse. Remember the 80/20 rule. A lot of modern product innovation is not really about improving quality - rather, its about introducing lower -quality versions of existing products which are significantly cheaper than the original but still "…

Ugh... I somehow hadn't yet even considered the part where we all have to tolerate almost every single image we see during the day being generated by some creepy AI model; but OF COURSE that's how this is going to play out :( :(. I mean, mant of the products I purchase on Amazon don't even spell check their product marketing images as it stands...

Re: As an artist I am concerned about AI image generation

#49

Post by t_mann » Sun, Aug 14, 2022, 7:48 PM UTC

cercatrova wrote: post #5

antiterra wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It also apparently copies the artist’s logo. In a way, the “it just does what humans do but faster” argument is starting to follow the “a number can’t be illegal” trajectory.

Either way I support AI art and AI in other fields. Just because artists are mad it's gonna take their jobs does not seem like a legitimate reason to halt human progress. It's just inevitable the way things are going.

This. People thought that photography would make artists obsolete, then Picasso came round (simplifying here, ofc). Who knows what crazy creative things humans will do in the presence of those tools?

Re: As an artist I am concerned about AI image generation

#50

Post by orangecat » Sun, Aug 14, 2022, 7:49 PM UTC

egypturnash wrote: post #36

cercatrova wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Either way I support AI art and AI in other fields. Just because artists are mad it's gonna take their jobs does not seem like a legitimate reason to halt human progress. It's just inevitable the way things are going.

Please save this comment to refer to when an iteration of Copilot starts to make you truly worried for the future of your career. Thanks in advance.

Yeah, and we should really do something about those abominations like Excel and Python that let ordinary people create programs without hiring us to do it the right way.