Ask HN: What will be the large-scale second-order consequence of AI Art?

The main use case that comes immediately to mind when using tools like Midjourney/DALL-E/Stable Diffusion is graphic design/stock photos, and most of the discussion surrounds this theme of making art more efficient(like that SD Photoshop plugin). However, somehow, these discussions give me the feeling of predicting that the main purpose of an automobile is to deliver milk(the faster horse idea).

For example, Photography, something that was only accessible to a few, became massively accessible when the iPhone came out. The large-scale second order was not simply that we had more photos we could reminisce with(the previous major use case of photos). But rather that we started sharing photos/videos with each other as a form of communication/storytelling. (with platforms like IG/Snapchat/Youtube/Tiktok)

This new generation of art tools fundamentally *expands* the set of people who can express their thoughts/feelings visually from a tiny fraction of the population to the masses. Something that used to take years of training is now achievable with a few weeks of practice. This is INSANE! And it's hard to know how this will actually change the world. (Note: I am by no means saying amateur artist + AI == professional artist, just like how iPhone didn't kill professional photographers.)

Will there be a new medium of storytelling? Will the next generation of Wattpad writers become "comic book artists"? Will we start to communicate through generated art that represents how we feel? What do you think can be the world-changing second-order consequence when everyone can express their thoughts and feelings visually?

It seems that we are already seeing that happening with people using Midjourney/Dall-E photos on their blog posts and all of them have this particular "mythical/psychedelics" vibe. In the early days of IG, all photos also had that tint filter.

However, there does seem to be a correction phase that comes after that leads us to an ultimately better place. So I am quite optimistic about what comes after with generative art.

When the reason for use goes beyond the initial novelty factor.

Not sure I'd say these machine learnings tools are capable of art.

And rather than calling the definition of art outdated, it makes more sense to call this machine learning generation stuff "artificial art" or "superficial art" or some other separate term. It doesn't make sense to mix two rather incompatible concepts.

The effect of technological innovations is always that things get cheaper and thus available to more people and often that leads to bigger changes. In this case I think you're right about this having a big impact on design; most designers won't lose their jobs but they will have new creative tools and I think they may start to use AI generated art in place of stock photograph. The average joe will be able to create stock photos for their blog posts and websites and maybe that will take away some amount of jobs, but those were probably not very good jobs anyway. Stylization using image to image techniques and inpainting are all tools that could save artists and designers time while also offering new capabilities. The AI tools definitely make it possible for a non artist to make a comic, illustrate a poem or an album cover, or make art for an indie video game. So in those ways more people will get access to things that they might not have before.

I think the next wave will probably be video related AI tools and those will also be really impactful.

At present it still takes a lot of trial and error to create what you want, something that a knowledgeable designer can probably do better than the average person, so I still see a need for design people in the loop in most cases.

I can definitely see people starting to use AI tools for memes - it will be interesting to see if that is as sticky as memes are today. I think a lot of their value comes from recognizable formats, but AI art could definitely provide some interesting variety and new forms of expression.

Fakes and misinformation is still a threat. We have yet to have a big event triggered by a fake AI generated image, but I think that day is coming.

One thing about AI generated art - while you can make some crazy and interesting combinations (something that is fertile ground for artistic experimentation), the AI models can only ever interpolate _existing_ artwork. They can never come up with a new style or something that nobody has ever done before. One could argue that all art evolves from past art, but I think if we only ever used AI tools then creativity would eventually stagnate as the tools could only ever regurgitate a variation on something that has already been done.