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ChatGPT Images 2.0

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Re: ChatGPT Images 2.0

#311
post #266

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Only novel art is interesting. AI can't really do novel. It's a prediction algorithm; it imitates. You can add noise, but that mostly just makes it worse. It can be used to facilitate original stuff though. But so many people want to make art, and it's so cheap to distribute it, that art is already commoditized. If people prefer human-created art, satisfying that preference is practically free.

AI can be novel, there is nothing in the transformer architecture which prohibits novelty, it's just that structurally it much prefers pattern-matching. But the idea of novelty is a misnomer I think. Any random number generator can arbitrarily create a "novel" output that a human has never seen before. The issue is whether something is both novel and useful, which is hard for even humans to do consistently.

Anthropic recently changed their take-home test specifically to be more “out-of-distribution” and therefore more resistant to AI so they can assess humans.

I’m so tired of “there’s nothing preventing”, and “humans do that too”. Modern AI is just not there. It’s not like humans and has difficulties with adapting to novelty.

Whether transformers can overcome that remains to be seen, but it is not a guarantee. We’ve been dealing with these same issues for decades and AI still struggles with them.

Re: ChatGPT Images 2.0

#312

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I dunno, I have some band posters that are pretty cool pieces of art that obviously had a lot of thought put into them (pre-AI era stuff). I don't think I'd hang up an AI generated band poster, even if it was cool; I'd feel weird and tacky about it.

I was hosting a Karaoke event in my town and really went out of my way to ensure my promotional poster looked nothing like AI. I really really really did not want my townfolks thinking I would use AI to design a poster. My design rules were: No gradients; no purple; prefer muted colors; plenty of sharp corners and overlapping shapes; Use the Boba Milky font face;

Yes, but…

https://imgur.com/a/cYn68Cp

Re: ChatGPT Images 2.0

#313

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The issue is that the signalling makes sense when human generated work is better than AI generated. Soon AI generated work will be better across the board with the rare exception of stuff the top X% of humans put a lot of bespoke highly personalized effort into. Preferring human work will be luxury status-signalling just like it is for clothing, food, etc.

I'm probably in a weird subgroup that isn't representative of the general public, but I've found myself preferring "rough" art/logos/images/etc, basically because it signals a human put time into it. Or maybe not preferring, but at least noticing it more than the generally highly refined/polished AI artwork that I've been seeing.

There’s no reason to think people broadly want “better” writing, images, whatever. Look at the indie game scene, it’s been booming for years despite simpler graphics, lower fidelity assets, etc. Same for retro music, slam poetry, local coffee shops, ugly farmers market produce, etc.

There is a mass, bland appeal to “better” things but it’s not ubiquitously desired and there will always be people looking outside of that purely because “better” is entirely subjective and means nothing at all.

Re: ChatGPT Images 2.0

#314

Pretty mixed feelings on this. From the page at least, the images are very good. I'd find it hard to know that they're AI. Which I think is a problem. If we had a functioning congress, I wonder if we might end up with legislation that these things need to be watermarked or otherwise made identifiable as AI generated.. I also don't like that these things are trained on specific artist's styles without really crediting…

You might be onto something. I find every image unsettling. they're very good no doubt, but maybe it disturbs me because all of it is a complete copy of what someone else created. I know, I know, there is no pure invention. That's not what i mean. Humans borrow from other humans all the time. There's a humanity in that! A machine fully repurposing a human contribution as some kind of new creation, iono i'm old, it's weird and i don't like it.

Maybe i'm just bloviating also.

Re: ChatGPT Images 2.0

#315
post #118

> On the flip side, there are hundreds of ways that these tools cause genuine harm, not just to individuals but to entire systems. Yeah, agree. I think it's the first time I'm asking myself: Ok, so this new cool tech, what is it good for? Like, in terms of art, it's discarded (art is about humans), in terms of assets: sure, but people is getting tired of AI-generated images (and even if we cannot tell if an image is…

Here’s one example: I just recently used for image generation to design my balcony. It was a great way to see design ideas imagined in place and decide what to do. There are many cases people would hire an artist to illustrate an idea or early prototype. AI generated images make that something you can do by yourself or 10x faster than a few years ago.

Did the same for my front garden.

Not withstanding a few code violations, it generated some good ideas we were then able to tweak. The main thing was we had no idea of what we wanted to do, but seeing a lot of possibilities overlaid over the existing non-garden got us going. We were then able to extend the theme to other parts of the yard.

Re: ChatGPT Images 2.0

#316
post #15

I've been trying out the new model like this: OPENAI_API_KEY="$(llm keys get openai)" \ uv run https://tools.simonwillison.net/python/openai_image.py \ -m gpt-image-2 \ "Do a where's Waldo style image but it's where is the raccoon holding a ham radio" Code here: https://github.com/simonw/tools/blob/main/python/openai_imag... Here's what I got from that prompt. I do not think it included a raccoon holding a ham radio…

Like... this has things that AI will seemingly always be terrible at?

At some point the level of detail is utter garbo and always will be. An artist who was thoughtful could have some mistakes but someone who put that much time into a drawing wouldn't have:

- Nightmarish screaming faces on most people

- A sign that points seemingly both directions, or the incorrect one for a lake and a first AID tent that doesn't exist

- A dog in bottom left and near lake which looks like some sort of fuzzy monstrosity...

It looks SO impressive before you try to take in any detail. The hand selected images for the preview have the same shit. The view of musculature has a sternocleidomastoid with no clavicle attachment. The periodic table seems good until you take a look at the metals...

We're reconfiguring all of our RAM & GPUs and wasting so much water and electricity for crappier where's Waldos??

Re: ChatGPT Images 2.0

#317
post #126
post #118

> On the flip side, there are hundreds of ways that these tools cause genuine harm, not just to individuals but to entire systems. Yeah, agree. I think it's the first time I'm asking myself: Ok, so this new cool tech, what is it good for? Like, in terms of art, it's discarded (art is about humans), in terms of assets: sure, but people is getting tired of AI-generated images (and even if we cannot tell if an image is…

I think there's real value to be had in using this for diagrams. Visual explanations are useful, but most people don't have the talent and/or the time to produce them. This new model (and Nano Banana Pro before it) has tipped across the quality boundary where it actually can produce a visual explanation that moves beyond space-filling slop and helps people understand a concept. I've never used an AI-generated image i…

Are there any models that are specifically trained to produce diagrams as SVG? I'd much prefer that to diffusion-based raster image generation models for a few reasons:

- The usual advantages of vector graphics: resolution-independence, zoom without jagged edges, etc.

- As a consequence of the above, vector graphics (particularly SVG) can more easily be converted to useful tactile graphics for blind people.

- Vector graphics can more practically be edited.

Re: ChatGPT Images 2.0

#319
post #107

Genuine question: what positive use cases are sufficient to accept the harm from image generators? One that i can think of: - replacing photography of people who may be unable to consent or for whom it may be traumatic to revisit photographs and suitable models may not be available, e.g. dementia patients, babies, examples of medical conditions. Most other vaguely positive use cases boil down to "look what image gene…

Democratizing visual communication is arguably useful, for instance helping people to create diagrams that illustrate a concept they wish to convey. This is contingent on the tech working sufficiently well that the visuals are more effective at communication than the text that went into producing them though.

It's always felt like way overhyping to call something "democratization" when it's something I could do as a middle schooler in 2005. It takes some skill to do very well but it's not like basic diagram creation isn't something people already could do for basically free (I create figures for my job all the time now and chatGPT is more expensive than tools I use for design).

Commissioning high quality diagrams from a designer is expensive and I guess it's much cheaper now to essentially commission something but idk, "democratization" still feels weird for just undercutting humans on price.

Re: ChatGPT Images 2.0

#320
post #251
post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can’t design wallpapers/stickers/icons/…, but I can describe what I want to an image generation model verbally or with a source photo, and the new ones yield pretty good results. For icons in particular, this opens up a completely new way of customizing my home screen and shortcuts. Not necessary for the survival of society, maybe, but I enjoy this new capability.

So we get a fresh new cheap way to spread propaganda and lies and erode trust all across society while cementing power and control for a few at the top, and in return get a few measly icons (as if there weren’t literally thousands of them freely available already) and silly images for momentaneous amusement? What a rotten exchange.

Don’t blame the tools. Stalin, Mao and Hitler didn’t need AI.
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