That's shortsighted. I'm sure they'll come around. There's already been some great demonstrations of artists using ai to enhance their visions instead of being just a simple output.
Online art communities begin banning AI-generated images
171–180 of 356 posts
Re: Online art communities begin banning AI-generated images
#172I 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…
I wouldn't worry too much about AI stamping out creativity, all the results I have seen just look like the type of art you see in hotel rooms and hallways. It's supremely ignorable stuff, possibly exactly because the models are built from billions of samples and by definition most of those samples will be average and below.
Re: Online art communities begin banning AI-generated images
#173I 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 totally agree [1]. Once all the panic dies down, I think you'll see these technologies enabling artists more than hurting them.
The displacement problem isn't quite there yet. While it's a good replacement for stock photo aggregators, it's not a great replacement for commissioning an actual artist. E.g. if you want a consistent look and feel for each of your images, you'll struggle. It's only the C-listers, who create heaps of bland stock photos in hopes of earning royalties, who have something to worry about.
As the technology improves, you'll see a whole new tranche of creators who are able to harness it to create amazing new things.
[1] https://superbowl.substack.com/p/the-future-of-art-is-artifi...
Re: Online art communities begin banning AI-generated images
#174I 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…
>were considered 'not artists' by a lot of people at the time. You make a good point that the trend of automating art is not a recent one. At some point I think a line in the sand must be drawn where the human artist is no longer the primary conceptualizer. Writing a text prompt is a fair place for that line to be drawn in my opinion.
> Writing a text prompt is a fair place for that line to be drawn in my opinion.
I read an article[0] on the subject the other day. At some point it said that some art tools are inherently easy to use. Part of the difference between an amateur and an actual artist is in the mastery of such tool.
Think of a phone camera for example. It's extremely easy to take more than decent pictures with it. But it takes a good photographer to make art with it.
Bringing it back to the topic at hand it means that yes, describing what you want to see to this kind of software is easy on a basic level. But you get a picture that looks like any other. Instead, you need to speak the language of the software to obtain a better materialization of your vision, and that requires some sort of mastery of that tool. That would be the difference between an illustration made with stable diffusion and actual art.
[0] https://www.indiscreto.org/non-fa-tutto-il-computer-il-ritor... (in Italian, sorry)
Re: Online art communities begin banning AI-generated images
#175It's going to be interesting to see how this is going to get enforced in the likely future in which AI art becomes in every way indistinguishable from human art.
They're just tilting at windmills. It's already difficult enough to catch cheaters in chess, where there are, at most, a few dozen candidate moves in any position. This is a space with infinite candidate moves. Best case scenario is that they catch a few people who have no idea how to create art otherwise. But, short of an exam-like proctoring system where art can only be created under complete supervision, I doubt t…
I agree it will be hard or impossible to catch cheaters. But you get it backwards: AI generated art probably is more easily detectable. A chess game can be represented in a relatively small number of bytes, while artwork must represented with a much larger number. That means more opportunities to find an unintentional signal of provenance (e.g. artefacts that aren't readily noticeable to humans).
Re: Online art communities begin banning AI-generated images
#176Earlier 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…
Another discovery that something thought to be uniquely human really isn't that hard.
It seems to me that the human effort spent in creating the original images in an AI's data set is an important element to consider when thinking of the "difficulty" here.
Re: Online art communities begin banning AI-generated images
#177Earlier quoted context omitted.
>were considered 'not artists' by a lot of people at the time. You make a good point that the trend of automating art is not a recent one. At some point I think a line in the sand must be drawn where the human artist is no longer the primary conceptualizer. Writing a text prompt is a fair place for that line to be drawn in my opinion.
> Writing a text prompt is a fair place for that line to be drawn in my opinion. I read an article[0] on the subject the other day. At some point it said that some art tools are inherently easy to use. Part of the difference between an amateur and an actual artist is in the mastery of such tool. Think of a phone camera for example. It's extremely easy to take more than decent pictures with it. But it takes a good pho…
If you used an AI to write a million DALL-E prompts for a million different outputs - are you an artist if you pick the nicest looking output and call it art?
Re: Online art communities begin banning AI-generated images
#178I 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…
Anecdotally I dated an artist for a short time who upon entering my home proceeded to ask me how much I paid for my art and why I would pay for something as awful as what I have.
My art was made by a friend of mine who works in a union factory in Texas. Art is his real joy and I was able to snag some pieces from when we were in college together. It's easy to write off that the pieces are just sentimental and therefore subject to sentimental value, but really, his work is very abstract and each piece (if you can snag them in order) describes a time in his life.
I tried to explain to this person how art to me is the story not told or the story as I see it. More recently I had the opportunity to really appreciate his work when I was on an LSD trip, but that's a story for another time.
Re: Online art communities begin banning AI-generated images
#179I recall some time back the "photo of the year" with some esteemed organization looked like something you'd take at random. Just a few people doing various things. A snapshot, the sort you'd take back during the film era when you'd load film then click the shutter in case the first photo had a light leak.
A throwaway photo. And it won.
Re: Online art communities begin banning AI-generated images
#180I 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…
Art is whatever the rich and influential patron who pays for it decides.
They can afford to pay off the press, change the narrative and overpay the artist.
Be it the de Medici in the Renaissance or CIA and state department backing abstract expressionism.