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Online art communities begin banning AI-generated images

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Re: Online art communities begin banning AI-generated images

#101

Post by Ukv »

nottorp wrote: post #49
Kiro wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And neither would constitute as plagiarism by the legal definition of it. Yes, it's a problem that they are trained on material without consent but what they produce is something totally new and not even close to plagiarism.

> what they produce is something totally new It is? I may be cursed with a good memory but absolutely no "AI art" that my friends passed on to me looked original. In some cases it was painfully obvious what it's based on, in other cases it just felt like i've seen it before. Legal it may be (although there will be conflicts about machine generated derivative works) but it's also boring. People are just enthusiastic b…

> In some cases it was painfully obvious what it's based on

Do you have an example of this?

Ideally with a link (for DALL-E 2/Midjourney) or prompt and seed (for Stable Diffusion) to show that it was generated from an incidental prompt - as opposed to uploading the existing image and just using the AI for inpainting/fine-tuning.

Re: Online art communities begin banning AI-generated images

#102

Post by actually_a_dog »

gdubs wrote: post #29

I have a degree in Studio Arts in addition to being a software developer (and recently I've started making a lot of creative work with AI). Back when I was in school, there was already plenty of debate about 'what is "Art"'? It's always been hotly contested. Most of my teachers felt that 'technique' was not Art. Others were more purists – life painters, etc – and felt that, no, technique is art. Duchamp poked the art…

I agree 100% with this. The only thing I would add is that a key property of art is that it must make the audience feel something. It seems very clear that AI-generated art is making people feel something, and I think that what it makes people feel will change over time, as these tools become more accepted in the art world.

I also think it's very interesting that these tools enable a near absence of technique. I tend to be one of those who doesn't value technique very much. For instance, I believe I've commented on this site before that while I certainly appreciate the time, effort, and technique that goes into photorealistic painting, I don't think it brings a whole lot to the table beyond what a photograph would. This is strictly a personal assessment, of course -- others are free to, and do disagree with me. I just feel as though photorealistic art leaves less room in it for the viewer than other forms. (Incidentally, I think this also applies to AI art, and may be a part of the reaction to it.)

Re: Online art communities begin banning AI-generated images

#103

Post by nonbirithm »

RcouF1uZ4gsC wrote: post #5

> Left unchecked, it’s not hard to imagine AI art crowding out illustrations that took days or weeks for someone to make. This reminds me of what someone from the 1800's would say: "If left unchecked, it is not hard to imagine photography crowding out paintings that took days or weeks for someone to make." Or several thousand years ago when the pottery wheel was invented. Or when humans learned to cast metals instead…

> "If left unchecked, it is not hard to imagine photography crowding out paintings that took days or weeks for someone to make."

The difference I see is that photographers don't try to pass off their works as bona fide paintings without telling anyone. Even if they did, it's usually easier to discern whether something is a painting or a photograph than with AI, because there's usually no need to aim for replicating the exact look of a photograph in a painting.

AI artists submit their work as digital art, and this distinction is far harder to make owing to the sheer sophistication of the former. The problem is that both use the medium of digital art, but the provenance is different, so there is still a desire to classify them differently. And as discussed, the huge output of these programs makes the need more urgent.

The interesting questions in this debate to me involve asking what happens when you take the humanity out of art creation, and how the underlying humans will react to that. Even photographers have to use their legs to go outside, train their eyes to find something interesting and press the shutter button with a fleshy finger, all while having the final output able to be visualized in the process. I'm not sure if "art" has ever been decoupled from humanity at this large of a scale in human history before, and that could signal a significant cultural shift if so.

The cultural implications of someone or something being associated with "AI" will outstrip any advancements in technology. Many artists are revered because of the culture surrounding them, not just the specific combination of paints they slathered on a canvas. It is that culture that I think will undergo turbulent changes as a result of the clashes between technologists and the larger art world.

If the culture decides that AI-generated art is plagiarism, then this debate will never end.

Also, asking "what prompt did you use" is probably going to become an insult with the implied intent of dehumanizing its target in the near future, when applied to certain art spheres.

Re: Online art communities begin banning AI-generated images

#104

Post by aortega »

zackmorris wrote: post #84
aortega wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I'll always remember 2022 as the year that creativity died. It's like saying that computers killed artists. AI is just a tool, it still need a human in control and guiding it, can't generate anything on his own (yet). If anything, this can help creativity.

If a computer is a bicycle for the mind, then an AI is a mind for the mind. Admittedly, my acquired lack of creativity after a lifetime of struggle is the very thing preventing me from seeing beyond this horizon. Too old to begin the training and all that! Ironically, I find the not-knowing to be somewhat comforting.

>AI is a mind for the mind.

Exactly, think of it as a symbiosis, a man is slow, but a man in a bycicle is fast. Now a man in a rocket, can go to other planets. But it is still a man, a rocket is just an inert pile of metal and fuel.

Same with AI, AI is the rocket, it propels and accelerate creativity to inhuman levels, but there is still a man controlling it. AI is just an extension of our minds like a rocket is an extension of our feet.

Re: Online art communities begin banning AI-generated images

#105

Post by AlecSchueler »

falcolas wrote: post #44

Individual art communities should be allowed to decide to only accept art created by a particular set of tools. Oil. Acrylic. Mixed Media. Watercolor. Chalk. Pencil. Digital. Photoshop. AI. And so forth. It's a matter of curation in my mind, not discrimination, and not really outrage worthy.

I didn't take the idea that this was shared as an outrage piece as much as a point of interest; it's a key point along this journey and worth noting with or without judgement.

Re: Online art communities begin banning AI-generated images

#106

Post by wccrawford »

Nursie wrote: post #15

I make all sorts of interesting stuff with DALL-E I wouldn't have the temerity to claim it was art, or wholly my creation, though.

A lot of people do, though.

And even with more traditional art, a lot of people trace something and claim they made it themselves.

However, I do think it's art. Coming up with an idea and then a prompt to express that idea, and then curating the results... That's artistry. It's not traditional, of course.

And with img2img and in-painting, there's a lot more to creating a really good work than just a prompt and curation.

I have no problem calling this art. I'm still struggling with the ethics, though. I'm not sure how I really feel about it yet.

Re: Online art communities begin banning AI-generated images

#107

Post by jjeaff »

fizx wrote: post #81
zackmorris wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'll always remember 2022 as the year that creativity died. That sounds a bit negative I guess, but techniques like stable diffusion will be applied to other problem domains, so all other art forms like music and creative writing will be automated within the next 5-10 years. And if computers can do that, they can do anything. Because that's how our brains work. Our neurons are microscopic filters magnifying patterns…

People were saying this stuff when Deep Blue beat Kasparov. Chess is perhaps thriving more than ever.

Yes, but that's because you know when deep blue is playing chess. The recent accusations that are rocking the chess world are that one of the champions may be cheating. If we get to a point where cheating can't be detected, that may do quite a lot of damage to the game.

Re: Online art communities begin banning AI-generated images

#108

Post by immigrantheart »

zackmorris wrote: post #66
gdubs wrote: post #29

I have a degree in Studio Arts in addition to being a software developer (and recently I've started making a lot of creative work with AI). Back when I was in school, there was already plenty of debate about 'what is "Art"'? It's always been hotly contested. Most of my teachers felt that 'technique' was not Art. Others were more purists – life painters, etc – and felt that, no, technique is art. Duchamp poked the art…

I'll always remember 2022 as the year that creativity died. That sounds a bit negative I guess, but techniques like stable diffusion will be applied to other problem domains, so all other art forms like music and creative writing will be automated within the next 5-10 years. And if computers can do that, they can do anything. Because that's how our brains work. Our neurons are microscopic filters magnifying patterns…

UBI doesn’t solve this

Re: Online art communities begin banning AI-generated images

#109

Post by wccrawford »

lifthrasiir wrote: post #77
gdubs wrote: post #29

I have a degree in Studio Arts in addition to being a software developer (and recently I've started making a lot of creative work with AI). Back when I was in school, there was already plenty of debate about 'what is "Art"'? It's always been hotly contested. Most of my teachers felt that 'technique' was not Art. Others were more purists – life painters, etc – and felt that, no, technique is art. Duchamp poked the art…

> Many clearly think it's a photocopier. As if StableDiffusion is hiding copies of all these works inside. In my latest series of tweets [1] I tried to argue that this is not the case in a less technical way, not sure if I was successful though. For anyone not fluent in Korean, my argument was as follows: Stable Diffusion was trained with a data set composed of about 2.32 billion text-image pairs. The model itself by…

20 bytes? Wouldn't that be about 2 bytes per image?

Re: Online art communities begin banning AI-generated images

#110

Post by lifthrasiir »

wccrawford wrote: post #109
lifthrasiir wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Many clearly think it's a photocopier. As if StableDiffusion is hiding copies of all these works inside. In my latest series of tweets [1] I tried to argue that this is not the case in a less technical way, not sure if I was successful though. For anyone not fluent in Korean, my argument was as follows: Stable Diffusion was trained with a data set composed of about 2.32 billion text-image pairs. The model itself by…

20 bytes? Wouldn't that be about 2 bytes per image?

Ah, yes, a sloppy calculation in my part. I probably wanted to say something like 20 bits in the original tweet.
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