4 ms·

With the development of AI, it's been quite an experience to see artists grasping the fact that their craft is not the magical thing they think it is.

ch4s3 4y ago
DALL·E 2 and co are pretty neat, but the output mostly sucks as art. Good art comes from somewhere, having provenance in person, place, culture, and time. Really great art can be quite moving, and I've yet to see anything AI generated that elicits more than a chuckle or a mild "huh neat" from anyone who doesn't know why it's technically impressive.
- rafaelero 4y ago
  It's quite simple to verify your assertion. Someone should show people some pieces of art and ask them to rate the quality of each of them. If the rating between human-made art and machine-made art doesn't differ significantly, then we can comfortably say that there is nothing special on art produced by humans. I think I know what the result will be, but hopefully some researcher will carefully investigate this issue.
  - ch4s3 4y ago
    You’re talking about a question of taste, and I’m sure you could find a group of people and some samples where the group prefers the AI generated images. That seems almost tautological. There’s more to art than the mere appeal of an image to random people. Some great art is disturbing, but it is emotionally resonant. No doubt some of these AI images are quite neat to look at, but they’re basically assemblages, high tech collages. It’s a futurist parlor trick. Philosophically art requires consciousness and a conscious will to express something. These AIs aren’t conscious and don’t make art.
    - rafaelero 4y ago
      I don't think you understood what I was saying. It's not about taste, it's about being able to differentiate between human and machine made art using whatever metric people have about what constitutes good art.
      - ch4s3 4y ago
        I think you’d be hard pressed to find a group of people with minimal education in art who couldn’t reliably pice out the AI generated images. You might be able to trick them with abstract images or things intended to look like computer generated art that doesn’t have a complex or human subject matter. Frankly humans and animals generated by these things look like blurry trash or are wrong on details in a way a human wouldn’t be, even intentionally. I’ve yet to see examples that don’t look kind of shitty.
        andreilys 4y ago
        Sounds like you haven't been looking that hard. There are plenty examples on the DALL-E subreddit that put the majority of Deviant Art artists to shame.
        ch4s3 4y ago
        I just spent about 15 minutes scrolling and I’ll grant that the best 2 or 3 examples are better than the low low bar of some random crap on the social network of amateur art. Even those have weird artifacts and an utterly odd quality that feels inhuman. The best looking ones in general feel like banksy painting a character into a flea market painting, collage.
        rafaelero 4y ago
        Give it another year. These models will only get better.
        ch4s3 4y ago
        Maybe, but also maybe not. They don't really "understand" context and they don't know what something like Dutch Realism means, and they can't engage in artistic conversation with other artists. They're inherently derivative, and the output is only digital. A real painting has texture, brush strokes that rise off the canvas, and so on. Sculpture has tool marks, imperfections of casting, and little accidents related to their physicality. Again, this shit isn't art it's images with mashed together elements built by a system that has no sense of what it's doing. It's cool and all, but at best it's a pale imitation of a thing.
  - psychomugs 4y ago
    This operates on the very narrow view that the only value of art is its aesthetics, and that art can be measured against objective ratings. I value art because it communicates something from an actual human being, like an exchanging between consciousnesses. When I can derive the choices of an author or photographer or any other class of artist, I find a mutual perspective that, at the root of it, makes me feel understanding and understood. This article (posted here a few days ago) has a great argument on why AI art isn’t art: https://erikhoel.substack.com/p/ai-art-isnt-art https://erikhoel.substack.com/p/ai-art-isnt-art
    - rafaelero 4y ago
      Yeah, we do enjoy that human connection / communication. That's why I think we will see a lot of artists using AI to generate their art and then sell it as if it were their own and assign some deep meaning to them.
- nradov 4y ago
  A blue canvas with a white line sold for $44M. Pretty sure an AI could generate that. https://nypost.com/2013/05/15/43-8-million-for-this/ https://nypost.com/2013/05/15/43-8-million-for-this/
  - ch4s3 4y ago
    Sure great. Everyone loves to punch high dollar contemporary abstract art sales. It’s a pretty well worn and boring critique of a narrow corner of contemporary art. My point still holds that anything vaguely representational looks kind of bad and has an uncanny quality. It’s clear that the trick is a kind of collage in most of the images I’ve seen.
- srg0 4y ago
  I can see Dall-E and co lowering the skill level required to accomplish some artistic tasks. Specialisation and delegation were part of the artistic creation for centuries. AI can do some mundane tasks reasonably well (e.g. shade a volume or draw a character in a specific pose). This should lower the barrier to entry and allow new artists with a different training and background to create in new ways. Sort of like some electronic musicians do not know to play an instrument, and rely solely on hardware or software to actually trigger sounds.
hnzix 4y ago
There's nothing particularly magical about craft. Craft is a process that most people can learn. But art is not craft. The magic of art is in the artist's taste and personality. Until AI has a sense of good taste and can carefully blend multiple styles into a new genre, the human cannot be replaced. And at that point we're basically at the singularity.
asdff 4y ago
It's never been about the craft. A lot of people can draw and paint in this world. People pay more money for art because of the individual behind it and its provenance. AI generated content will probably remain relegated to stock imagery or cheap mass produced prints sold at retailers.
- rafaelero 4y ago
  I partially agree when it comes to music and painting. But when I watch a movie, I am not that interested on who wrote it. The same with books. I just want to be entertained.
  - asdff 4y ago
    Well then your tastes fall into the cheapo mass produced prints at Target category for movies and books. Some people do care about the provenance of a film, and watch any movie that comes out from a director they fawn over, for example.

ch4s3 4y ago

DALL·E 2 and co are pretty neat, but the output mostly sucks as art. Good art comes from somewhere, having provenance in person, place, culture, and time. Really great art can be quite moving, and I've yet to see anything AI generated that elicits more than a chuckle or a mild "huh neat" from anyone who doesn't know why it's technically impressive.

rafaelero 4y ago
It's quite simple to verify your assertion. Someone should show people some pieces of art and ask them to rate the quality of each of them. If the rating between human-made art and machine-made art doesn't differ significantly, then we can comfortably say that there is nothing special on art produced by humans. I think I know what the result will be, but hopefully some researcher will carefully investigate this issue.
- ch4s3 4y ago
  You’re talking about a question of taste, and I’m sure you could find a group of people and some samples where the group prefers the AI generated images. That seems almost tautological. There’s more to art than the mere appeal of an image to random people. Some great art is disturbing, but it is emotionally resonant. No doubt some of these AI images are quite neat to look at, but they’re basically assemblages, high tech collages. It’s a futurist parlor trick. Philosophically art requires consciousness and a conscious will to express something. These AIs aren’t conscious and don’t make art.
  - rafaelero 4y ago
    I don't think you understood what I was saying. It's not about taste, it's about being able to differentiate between human and machine made art using whatever metric people have about what constitutes good art.
    - ch4s3 4y ago
      I think you’d be hard pressed to find a group of people with minimal education in art who couldn’t reliably pice out the AI generated images. You might be able to trick them with abstract images or things intended to look like computer generated art that doesn’t have a complex or human subject matter. Frankly humans and animals generated by these things look like blurry trash or are wrong on details in a way a human wouldn’t be, even intentionally. I’ve yet to see examples that don’t look kind of shitty.
      - andreilys 4y ago
        Sounds like you haven't been looking that hard. There are plenty examples on the DALL-E subreddit that put the majority of Deviant Art artists to shame.
        ch4s3 4y ago
        I just spent about 15 minutes scrolling and I’ll grant that the best 2 or 3 examples are better than the low low bar of some random crap on the social network of amateur art. Even those have weird artifacts and an utterly odd quality that feels inhuman. The best looking ones in general feel like banksy painting a character into a flea market painting, collage.
        rafaelero 4y ago
        Give it another year. These models will only get better.
        ch4s3 4y ago
        Maybe, but also maybe not. They don't really "understand" context and they don't know what something like Dutch Realism means, and they can't engage in artistic conversation with other artists. They're inherently derivative, and the output is only digital. A real painting has texture, brush strokes that rise off the canvas, and so on. Sculpture has tool marks, imperfections of casting, and little accidents related to their physicality. Again, this shit isn't art it's images with mashed together elements built by a system that has no sense of what it's doing. It's cool and all, but at best it's a pale imitation of a thing.
- psychomugs 4y ago
  This operates on the very narrow view that the only value of art is its aesthetics, and that art can be measured against objective ratings. I value art because it communicates something from an actual human being, like an exchanging between consciousnesses. When I can derive the choices of an author or photographer or any other class of artist, I find a mutual perspective that, at the root of it, makes me feel understanding and understood. This article (posted here a few days ago) has a great argument on why AI art isn’t art: https://erikhoel.substack.com/p/ai-art-isnt-art https://erikhoel.substack.com/p/ai-art-isnt-art
  - rafaelero 4y ago
    Yeah, we do enjoy that human connection / communication. That's why I think we will see a lot of artists using AI to generate their art and then sell it as if it were their own and assign some deep meaning to them.
nradov 4y ago
A blue canvas with a white line sold for $44M. Pretty sure an AI could generate that. https://nypost.com/2013/05/15/43-8-million-for-this/ https://nypost.com/2013/05/15/43-8-million-for-this/
- ch4s3 4y ago
  Sure great. Everyone loves to punch high dollar contemporary abstract art sales. It’s a pretty well worn and boring critique of a narrow corner of contemporary art. My point still holds that anything vaguely representational looks kind of bad and has an uncanny quality. It’s clear that the trick is a kind of collage in most of the images I’ve seen.
srg0 4y ago
I can see Dall-E and co lowering the skill level required to accomplish some artistic tasks. Specialisation and delegation were part of the artistic creation for centuries. AI can do some mundane tasks reasonably well (e.g. shade a volume or draw a character in a specific pose). This should lower the barrier to entry and allow new artists with a different training and background to create in new ways. Sort of like some electronic musicians do not know to play an instrument, and rely solely on hardware or software to actually trigger sounds.

hnzix 4y ago

There's nothing particularly magical about craft. Craft is a process that most people can learn. But art is not craft. The magic of art is in the artist's taste and personality. Until AI has a sense of good taste and can carefully blend multiple styles into a new genre, the human cannot be replaced. And at that point we're basically at the singularity.

asdff 4y ago

It's never been about the craft. A lot of people can draw and paint in this world. People pay more money for art because of the individual behind it and its provenance. AI generated content will probably remain relegated to stock imagery or cheap mass produced prints sold at retailers.

rafaelero 4y ago
I partially agree when it comes to music and painting. But when I watch a movie, I am not that interested on who wrote it. The same with books. I just want to be entertained.
- asdff 4y ago
  Well then your tastes fall into the cheapo mass produced prints at Target category for movies and books. Some people do care about the provenance of a film, and watch any movie that comes out from a director they fawn over, for example.