Live data from Hacker News

Nano Banana 2: Google's latest AI image generation model

blog.google

371–380 of 593 posts

Re: Nano Banana 2: Google's latest AI image generation model

#371

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In my childhood, slide shows were very deliberately curated, in no small part because the presentation of the slides was a relatively elaborate, shared family event.

But curation was done mainly by the creators, who were the people who were able to do the creation in the first place (professional photographers, people who could afford to buy the expensive camera, people who could afford the software for editing photos/slideshows in mass etc.). Now everyone can curate, and consumers can actually pick which curated collection is truly the best.

But what does 'best' even mean in this context? A photographer sharing their 'best' photos was some combination of sharing their personal perspective and their effort to capture shared memories on behalf of others. So yeah it was a limited/privileged (often patriarchal) role. What they picked was interpretive, but that curation was part of the expression/information the viewer was experiencing.

We can mix and match the media we choose to view or keep so easily, when previously there was so much more material and opportunity cost to choosing what to shoot, develop, keep, and share. I think that inevitably loses some meaning.

Re: Nano Banana 2: Google's latest AI image generation model

#372
post #269

Some random predictions about what AI image generation tools will do/are doing to art: 1. The narrative/life of the artist becomes a lot more important. The most successful artists are ones that craft a story around their life and art, and don't just create stuff and stop. This will become even more important. 2. Originality matters more than ever. By design, these tools can only copy and mix things that already exis…

I mostly disagree. > 1... The narrative/life of the artist becomes a lot more important. When I watch a movie, I don't care about the artist's life. I care about character life, that's very different. > 2... Originality matters more than ever. By design, these tools can only copy and mix things that already exist. It's like you assigning to humans divine capabilities :) . Hyperbolizing a little, humans also only copy…

> When I watch a movie, I don't care about the artist's life. I care about character life, that's very different.

The target audiences for art and film are not the same. The latter is far more pop culture. You can't apply them the same way, and the narrative of the artist has been extremely important for decades. People will watch slop movies. They don't pay $30K for slop art. They're paying that for historical importance or, if contemporary, artist narrative.

I'm in fandom spaces, and the prejudice against AI art is overwhelming. I also run in art collecting circles, being somewhat wealthy but not a billionaire. They also care about authenticity.

That is to say, the people who pay for original art, and participate in art spaces, are generally educated who actively hate AI. Filmgoers are probably a standard deviation lower in education, and are far more willing to part with the cost of one unit of consumption (a $10 ticket) than art buyers.

AI is a threat to graphic designers and those in their orbit.

The only way I see AI being a threat to professional artists is AI copies of their work. And AI isn't anything new there. I have a friend who gets commissioned by hotels to do one-off pieces for display all over the world. People have been making knockoff pieces of her style and selling them for at least a decade. And that's her lower margin, small pieces made for a couple thousand dollars to hang at your house, not her $100K+ pieces for hotels where they fly her out to supervise reassembly and mounting.

Re: Nano Banana 2: Google's latest AI image generation model

#373

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's kind of like the difference between something being enjoyable for you, and something being widely popular? In a hypothetical world of "AI can produce a lot of extremely high quality art", you can easily find (or commission) AI art you would absolutely love. But it probably wouldn't be something that anyone else would find a lot of value in? There will be no AI-generated Titanic. There will be many AI-generated m…

Was Titanic actually that good of a film? Perhaps I should watch it again now that almost three decades have passed.

as someone who had a DiCaprio lookalike in his middle school when it came out, who attracted ALL the girls' attention, and also as someone whose first date ever was to see Titanic

I begrudgingly have to admit it is a very good movie

Re: Nano Banana 2: Google's latest AI image generation model

#374
post #204
post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can still buy a Polaroid, there is one factory left in the world able to produce the film required but they still make them.

“Still” isn’t the right word. Once Polaroid stopped making the film, closed their factories, and sold or junked their machines, their supplies did the same, and so some of the components stopped being manufactured and available for purchase. What’s sold now as Polaroid film was a reinvention of the same idea. And it’s notably not as good. The dwindling stock of unused true Polaroid film is getting absurdly expensive…

> The dwindling stock of unused true Polaroid film is getting absurdly expensive as a result. what's the point? ain't all of this stock expired, with photos ending up just blobs or being gamble at best? (even for film stored in freezers)

Re: Nano Banana 2: Google's latest AI image generation model

#375
post #269

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mostly disagree. > 1... The narrative/life of the artist becomes a lot more important. When I watch a movie, I don't care about the artist's life. I care about character life, that's very different. > 2... Originality matters more than ever. By design, these tools can only copy and mix things that already exist. It's like you assigning to humans divine capabilities :) . Hyperbolizing a little, humans also only copy…

I agree with everything you said, except that #1 is clearly wrong. I can prove it with one word: autotune. At least in popular, mainstream culture, the viewer is heavily invested in the identity of the artist. The quality of the "art" is secondary. That's how we get music engineered by committee. And it's how we get paparazzi, People Magazine, and so forth. On the other hand, this isn't anything new at all. We've had…

All this being said, I think comparing the art market and popular music markets is foolish. 12yo boys aren't buying emerging mixed-media artists. But they are picking Spotify songs.

When I buy art, I have often spoken with the artist in the past couple days, or I am aware of their history and story and how they developed their art as a response to some other movement or artist collective.

It's rare for people to buy art just bc oil paints go brrrrrm

Re: Nano Banana 2: Google's latest AI image generation model

#376

These image gen models are getting so advanced and life like that increasingly the general public are being duped into believing AI images are actually real (ex Facebook food images or fake OF models). Don't get me wrong I will enjoy the benefits of using this model for expressing myself better than ever before, but can't help feeling there's something also very insidious about these models too.

I actually think this was a good thing. Manipulating images incredibly convincingly was already possible but the cost was high (many hours of highly skilled work). So many people assumed that most images they were seeing were "authentic" without much consideration. By making these fake images ubiquitous we are forcing people to quickly learn that they can't believe what they see on the internet and tracking down sour…

When it comes to graphic content on the internet I usually consume it's for entertainment purposes. I didn't care where it came from before and don't care today either. Low quality content exists in both categories, a bit easier to spot in AI generated, so it's actually a bonus.

Re: Nano Banana 2: Google's latest AI image generation model

#377
post #332

This looks like a response to Seedream 5.0 lite that was published two days ago. I use all those fancy image models editing capabilities for my fast fashion web shop. I must say: product photography for clothing and accessories product is dead. Those models are amazing at style transfering and garment transferring. We will see how good will be Seedream 5.0 full version.

You think they created and launched this in just 2 days? These things take a lot of effort and time to develop...

Re: Nano Banana 2: Google's latest AI image generation model

#378
post #355

Earlier quoted context omitted.

AI art is certainly considered uncool today in many circles. I do wonder though… were there other innovations that were uncool in their early years, where now nobody bats an eyelid? Is that point just a generational/passage of time issue?

Photography was considered pretty uncool; it removed what at the time was perceived as all of the skill. We now can appreciate deeper aspects of captured images such as composition, and we now see painted portraits replaced by more abstract, surreal, or imagined imagery. Generative AI is similarly revolutionary in that it moves away from realism back into the realm of the imaginary; whether or not a user's prompts ca…

Fun fact: copyright law was invented in the UK basically because painters and sculptors (!) considered photography theft. That came to a large degree before "real" text copyright as we know it today.

Re: Nano Banana 2: Google's latest AI image generation model

#379
post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you talked to "artists"? In my experience the vast majority say the opposite of what you worded here.

They are just gatekeeping and upset their skillet is devalued or completely trivialized which hurts both their pockets and ego.

I think this is a fundamentally adverserial mindset and so you should be prepared for others to treat you in kind (i.e. to attack you and minimize the value of your work)

Re: Nano Banana 2: Google's latest AI image generation model

#380

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Engineers are in business of converting non-technical problems into technical ones. Art is not a problem to be solved.

Art is a reaction to life. AI is thereby incapable of producing anything with any degree of authenticity unless it conveys the experience of being an agent to the world.

What is AI if not "a reaction to life"?

With how much data goes into the frontier systems, and how much of it gets captured by them, an AI might have, in many ways, a richer grasp of human experience than the humans themselves do.

You were only ever one human. An LLM has skimmed from millions. You have seen a tree, and the AI has seen the forest it stands in.

Post reply on HN