An amusing diatribe. Criticisms that can well be leveled at a large fraction of humanity.
I Am An AI Hater
321–330 of 515 posts
Re: I Am An AI Hater
#322I too am an AI hater, and I generally agree with the sentiment, but that Miyazaki quote was taken far out of context.
To those missing the context: his comment was not about generative AI art at all, but some creepy zombie-like walking motion that was learned by some reinforcement learning agent.
Re: I Am An AI Hater
#323Earlier quoted context omitted.
Lawyers of all the most beloved companies - Disney, New York Times, book publishers, music publishers and more - are now engaged in court battles, trying to sue all kinds of AI companies for "copyright infringement". So far, case law is shaping up towards "nope, AI training is fair use". As it well should.
If your product wouldn't exist without inputting someone else's product, it is derivative of that someone else's product. This isn't a human learning. This is a corporate, for profit product, it is derivative, and violates copyright.
That's not the standard we hold "human generated" media to. Not even "mockbusters" are illegal under copyright law. Nothing is new and everything is a remix. And I see no reason to make an exception for AI.
Copyright law is a disgrace, and copyright should be cut down massively - not made into an even more far-reaching anti-freedom abomination than it already is.
Re: I Am An AI Hater
#324Earlier quoted context omitted.
If your product wouldn't exist without inputting someone else's product, it is derivative of that someone else's product. This isn't a human learning. This is a corporate, for profit product, it is derivative, and violates copyright.
That's not the standard we hold "human generated" media to. Not even "mockbusters" are illegal under copyright law. Nothing is new and everything is a remix. And I see no reason to make an exception for AI. Copyright law is a disgrace, and copyright should be cut down massively - not made into an even more far-reaching anti-freedom abomination than it already is.
> Nothing is new and everything is a remix.
This is absolutely not true.
Re: I Am An AI Hater
#325My personal AI dichotomy: - When I use AI, it is typically useful. - When other people build and do things with AI, it's slop that I didn't ask for which is waste of resources and a threat to humanity. This entirely sums up my thoughts on the technology. I suppose it's rather like the personal benefits vs greater harm of using coal for electricity.
This is an interesting point that I can agree with without having consciously realized.
It's easy to use lazily and for use cases that are annoying. But used in the right contexts with the limitations in mind it's personally quite useful indeed.
Re: I Am An AI Hater
#326Just now, I just watched a France24 news presenter ask Grok about crime in DC. Shake. My. Head. I kind of feel like we're headed for something... not good.
Re: I Am An AI Hater
#327Re: I Am An AI Hater
#328Earlier quoted context omitted.
"What is or isn't art" didn't simply become a topic because people like to philosophize about the meaning of words. Over the 20th century the art world took fascination with the subversive, transgressive, the postmodern, rejecting authority and standards of beauty that were deemed limiting and oppressive etc. One direct contributing component was photography. Skill of realistic depiction became deemphasized, with mas…
By this same logic, AI will also become accepted as art in 50 years. And by the way, no one who's serious about AI "art" uses commercial generators, they use local AI with workflow managers like ComfyUI. They are not just typing into a box like Midjourney. Therefore these are the hackers who're showing the middle finger to Disney, they dislike copyright as much as anyone.
That's right, and a lot of stuff is being conflated and the "debate" is mostly on the level of soundbites and emotional vibes. Many have strong opinions who have never tried the models or seen someone skilled using them (easy to find YouTube streams), combining LoRAs, ControlNets, etc.
I generally find the specific debate around "whether it's art" super boring. People have squeezed all the juice out of "what even is art" decades before the banana taped to a wall. Duchamp's Fountain, Manzoni's Artist's Shit, John Cage's 4′33″, the Red Square by Malevich, Jackson Pollock etc.
I simply don't care if it's art. It's not an inherently prestigious label to me given this history.
Re: I Am An AI Hater
#329Earlier quoted context omitted.
That goes for all art. It either stirs you or it doesn't. I find https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9tjstsWoQiw to be one of the most beautiful pieces ever recorded, others can't listen to it and think it is bland and a terrible recording. You can't argue about taste.
I don't think this is just taste. The painting was made in a specific historic context and commemorates the bombing of Guernica. Without knowing that context, it may be appreciated as a disembodied visual artifact, but that's not how art really works or ever worked. An influential artpiece usually states something relevant to the historic moment and intellectual Zeitgeist of the time. You may like the music of Zombie…
I don't consider context a clear win. I'd argue that there's also quite the disconnect sometimes between what a work is about and why it's popular.
Let's take Zombie by The Cranberries as an example. I really liked this song as a kid, still do, I think it has a great sound. The difference is that I now speak English, can understand the lyrics, and could look up the historical context. Ever since I did so, listening to it has never been the same, and not in a good way.
There are also examples which are not going to be so specific to my opinions. Kendrick's Swimming Pools was a house party staple, despite the song carrying heavy anti-alcoholism messaging. The contrast is almost comical.
For a different example, let's consider temporal contextuality; you describe Guernica being reliant on this. When I try to think of an example, I'm reminded of vague memories of shows with oddly timely subtitles. Subtitles that referenced things that were very specific to the given cultural moment, basically memes, but vanished since. It's not a good experience, and I'd say it would be reasonable to chalk such a thing up as a critique, rather than something worthy of praise.
This is also why I half-seriously referred to the piece being "aggressively pretentious". Rather than coming across as something I'm just genuinely missing the context for, it comes across as something with manufactured sophistication (which then I am indeed missing the context for, but unapologetically). This might still be a mirage, but I think with how pretty much stereotyped this experience is at this point, I'd imagine there's got to be some truth to it at least.
Re: I Am An AI Hater
#330Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't think this is just taste. The painting was made in a specific historic context and commemorates the bombing of Guernica. Without knowing that context, it may be appreciated as a disembodied visual artifact, but that's not how art really works or ever worked. An influential artpiece usually states something relevant to the historic moment and intellectual Zeitgeist of the time. You may like the music of Zombie…
Yes, context is really important. But:JS Bach made a whole raft of music, and quite a large fraction of it was religiously inspired. In spite of that it is perfectly possible to appreciate it at a deep emotional level without that particular spiritual connection. This is the genius of art to me: that it opens up an emotional channel between two individual separated by time and space and manages to convey a feeling, a…
> And yet: it moves me. And I doubt any AI would have come up with it or even a close approximation if it wasn't part of the input.
I would have thought similarly, but actually feeding 19th century poems to Suno and iterating on the prompts several times I got some results that moved me emotionally, as in, listening/reading the words with this musical presentation enhanced my appreciation of the poems and it felt more visceral. Like making angry revolutionary poems into grunge brought it closer and less of a "histoic", "bookish", "dusty" thing.