Setting aside the usual arguments on the anti- and pro-AI art debate and the nature of creativity itself, perhaps the negative reaction that the Redditor encountered is part of a sea change in opinion among many people that think corporate AI platforms are exploitive and extractive in nature because their datasets rely on copyrighted material without the original artists’ permission. And that’s without getting into AI’s negative drag on the environment.
Funny, just this morning I woke up to someone commenting on one of my pieces of art that I’d posted on Reddit that if I hadn’t put in the comment how I did it, they’d have thought it was an AI generated picture.
It’s super-painful to be a technologist and an artist at the same time right now because there are way too many people in tech who have no understanding of what it means to create art. There’s people in the art community who don’t really get AI either, of course, but since they are trending towards probably the right opinion based on an incomplete understanding of what the things we see as AI actually are, it’s much easier to listen to them. If anything, the artists can labor under the misapprehension that the current crop of AI tools are doing more than they actually are.
In the golden age of analog photography, people would do a print and include the raw borders of the image. So you’d see sprocket holes if it’s 35mm film or a variety of rough boundaries for other film formats. And it was a known artistic convention that you were showing exactly what you shot, no cropping, no edits, etc. The early first version of Instagram decided that those film borders meant “art” so of course they added the fake film borders and it grated on my nerves because I think it was the edges from a roll of Velvia, which is a brilliant color slide film. And then someone would have the photo with the B&W filter because that also means “art” but you would never see a B&W Velvia shot unless you were working really hard on a thing. So this is far from the first time that a bunch of clueless people on the tech side of the fence did something silly out of ego and ignorance.
The picture I posted is the result of a bunch of work on fabbing, 3D printing, FastLED programming, photographic technique, providing an interesting concept to a person and an existing body of work such that said person would want to show up to some random eccentric’s place for a shoot, et al. And, well… captions on art exist for a reason, right? It adds layers to the work to know that the artist was half-mad when they painted it and maybe you can tell by the painting’s brushwork or just know your art history really well but maybe you can’t and so a caption helps create context for people not skilled in that particular art.
And, there’s not really “secrets” in art. Lots of curators and art critics will take great pains to explain why Jackson Pollock or Mark Rothko so if you are still wandering around saying “BUT IT LOOKS LIKE GIANT SQUARES” that’s intentional ignorance.
Now, I’ve been exploring my particular weird genre of art for a while now. Before AI, Photoshop was the thing. Much in the same way as I could have thrown a long enough prompt into a spicy-autocomplete image generator, I also could have probably photoshopped it. Then again, the tutorials for the Photoshop version of the technique all refer back to the actual photographic effect.
Describing something as it’s not has long been a violation of social norms that people who are stuck in a world of intentional ignorance, ego, and disrespect for the artistic process have engaged in. In the simultaneous heyday of Second Life and Flickr, people wanting to treat their Second Life as their primary life caused Flickr to create features so people could mediate this boundary. So, on one level, this isn’t entirely new and posting AI art in the painting reddit is no different from posting filtered Second Life to the portrait group on flickr. It’s simple rudeness of the sort that the unglamorous aspects of community moderation are there to solve for.
I have gotten quizzed about how I make my art, but I’ve never seen anybody go off and then create a replica of my art, they’ve always gone off and created something new and novel and interesting and you might not even realize that what got them there was tricks I shared with them it’s so different. Artists don’t see other art in the gallery and autocomplete art that looks like what they saw, they incorporate ideas into their own work with their own flair.
Thus, there’s more going on than just mere rudeness. I’ve been doing this for a long time now and the AI companies have a habit of misrepresenting exactly what content they have stolen to train their image models. So it’s entirely likely that the cool AI picture that someone thinks my art looks like is really just autocompleted using parts of my art. Except I can’t say “no” and if there was a market for people making art that looks roughly like mine, I’d offer paid workshops or something.
Well now I want to see some of your work. It sounds interesting as hell
Well, the photo in question is: https://www.flickr.com/photos/cyberspace/53570370332/
Not to be off topic… but… Your username… wirehead… its dark and disturbing and absolutely i love it!
We, the people who all roughly simultaneously chose the same name at roughly the same time only to engage in endless wars over who gets it on a new site, actually exist in a diverse multi-gendered animal-loving book-reading population, of which I am only one example, merely the member of our tribe who happened to nab it here. I’ve actually talked with other Wireheads and the similarities are interesting.
All I know is that it somehow appeared in my brain before I read the Niven book that introduced it to me. And, also, at this point in history, I find Niven and many people who operated in his orbit deeply disgusting and disturbing examples of humanity, so it’s good that I came up with it on my own.
Pretty sure that artists are pissed because they are gonna lose jobs and money. To which I say we’ll you chose that career path deal with it or go on another career. I hate the argument that AI is stealing art as it’s using existing art to generate other art, oh yeah ? Then what about you, how do you think you get inspired? Oh by looking at other art ? Hmm sounds an awful lot the same to me! Let me put it this way due to AI even I might loose my job in the future but you know what I do to combat that ? I try to learn how to use AI as that’s the skill that will be required in the future!
I feel ya. They complain a lot about something being better than them. Aren’t humans supposed to adapt and overcome or did we forget that skill a long while ago?
Adapt and overcome how? Using AI? By the nature of the matter, less artists will be needed using AI, some will not make it. So, what then? Dropping their artistic career to go carry boxes for Amazon? What a shitty path we are making for humanity if we need to drop careers of passion to do menial jobs.
No, make art for fun and not for money. 😒 Art is for fun and culture, not for profit
I try to learn how to use AI
And exactly which part of this process could not be done by AI too?
Which part will still require hiring a human?
The one where you have to give inputs to it in order to get what you want from it
That will not be a marketable skill, if the intended “customer”, who just wants the end product, can do all of that themselves.
There are already improvements being made in understanding the intent better, which will eventually render all “prompt engineering” unnecessary and obsolete.
The necessity to tweak prompts will be a very short-lived thing from these early days. At best it will give you an extra year or so.
Similarly if you picture yourself as an owner of a company - you cannot sell something to people that they can just make themselves with zero effort required. Especially in an environment with a million competitors. At best your moat could be the network effects of a large user base, but that’s not an easy place to get to.
Really? Are you sure that someone that knows a lot about art can’t create better art with AI then your average Joe ? And are you sure that’s not marketable ? Cause I’m pretty sure I can make a banner or a poster my self for advertising if I wanted to but I still prefer to pay a professional to make it as it will be better! Everything is marketable so don’t give me that. This shit is pretty much the same issue that was created with automatisation when factories started using robots instead of people. It’s inevitable, it’s the future and just like then people will find other jobs!
You are assuming that progress in AI capabilities will stall somewhere close to its present day state. Because today, a professional-made poster will still be better than one you can make yourself. But that won’t be the case forever.
This is more akin to how there used to be elevator operators vs. people just pressing a button themselves, or how people couldn’t easily book their own airline tickets without going through a travel agent, and now they just order them through a website.
Yes, it’s called progress. Some jobs will disappear but others jobs will replace those. The world population is quite bigger then what it was 100 years ago and even thought computers and robots replaced a lot of jobs we still have jobs today as a matter of fact we have more jobs. As someone has to mention and program those robots. Someone has to create programs and games, someone has to mentain the infrastructure. Youtube videos and streaming became a job. Simply put the point I’m trying to make is AI might take away some jobs but it will also open up new jobs opportunities for other people. And no matter how pissed of you are that AI is doing something that you consider wrong and think that only humans should do it you will never be able to stop AI from becoming a thing. There was a lot of push back against automatisation too and that did absolutely nothing and humans got replaced by robots on assembly lines and shit like that.
And no I don’t assume that it will stall, it will evolve but humans will still have to give inputs to AI in order to crate those posters, and we will find more creative ways to give better inputs in order to get better art. Simply put using AI at a professional level will become a skill and a new job. I’m pretty sure that I wouldn’t be able to create better AI art the someone that does that everyday as a job. At best I will give some input like make this picture in the style of Picasso or something while someone that studied art will know more art terms and concepts then just make it like Picasso.
As someone has to mention and program those robots.
Why couldn’t an AI do that?
Someone has to create programs and games, someone has to maintain the infrastructure.
Same question.
Youtube videos and streaming became a job.
This will only work because of the parasocial aspect, and there will probably be strong competition from AI there too.
For every thing you imagine, simply ask yourself - will AI be able to do it better?
So far I haven’t heard anything convincing where the answer would be “no”.
This whole “giving inputs” argument is 100% leaning on today’s technological limitations.
With enough advancements, no input you could ever come up with will be able to compete with the automated ones - even if they are working from some very high level goal, like “make something people want” (to give a slightly exaggerated example).
Nobody’s going to pay you to utter the phrase “make something people want” (and it’s not competitive as a business either).
Typically, I don’t find anything offensive about the images ai creates. What I do take issue with is the outlandish claims of artistic ownership because they strung some words together.
Agreed. Consider this absolutely batshit take from the reddit post linked in the article.
Your art looks pretty good, so most people wouldn’t be able to tell it’s AI unless you told them it’s AI.
Generally it’s always best to just lie and tell everyone you made it yourself, just to avoid all the toxic people that hate AI, because not having to read hateful comments from people like that is reason enough to lie. Don’t need to provide any evidence or go into details, just tell everyone you made it yourself and ignore anyone that question it.
“Your art”. I’m sure clicking the “regenerate” button on mid journey for 5 hours took lots of work. It’s hard not to feel real hate for these people.
AI art is like the speech synthesiser that came with Amiga’s Workbench. Amusing for yourself to make it say swears, but of no interest to anyone else.
I think there are interesting aspects of AI art. It takes a real artist to properly instruct an AI to create something new, different, and interesting. When I think of modern art, a lot of art snobs were dismissive of it because “it’s not art.” I think we will see the same opinions of AI art change as new, different, and interesting artwork is made.
Thing is, generated art is not new or different. It’s a machine amalgamation of existing works. The only vaguely interesting bits are how it mangles body parts into some kind of Cronenberg horror.
People who are scared of ai art would also be scared of cameras in their inception.
Human art will prevail.
let us look at music.
real art = zero to none listeners
popmusic = ppl love it
from what i understand most humans like popular things so they can align with a herd.
while artists will keep making art, ppl will keep ignoring it.
People talk about A.I. art threatening artist jobs but everything I’ve seen created by A.I. tools is the most absolute dogshit art ever made, counting the stuff they found in Saddam Hussein’s mansions.
So, I would think the theft of IP for training models is the larger objection. No one thinks a Balder’s Gate 3 fan was gonna commission an artist to make a drawing for them. They’re pissed their work was used without permission.
I think AI art looks neat
That won’t get you into art school but it also won’t get you kicked out.
*adjusts horn-rims* yesyes very neat do you have anything else to say but that you’re whimsical?
There are so many possibilities for AI art, to say it’s all bad is painting it all with one brush
