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I think the fear of AI art is really unfounded. Once the novelty wears off, people will learn to view it for what it is: fancy clip art. You'll see pieces by Mi

I think the fear of AI art is really unfounded. Once the novelty wears off, people will learn to view it for what it is: fancy clip art. You'll see pieces by Midjourney at your local Urban Outfitters as "cool" wall art, probably on some graphic tees; just a bunch of generic junk really. It's use online will become as ubiquitous as stock photography, and you'll see the same images used everywhere and for everything. Digital art as a whole will probably be most negatively impacted, because we will view things much more negatively knowing the tools involved. I already can't enjoy anything Midjourney makes because it all looks the same. I just immediately turn my brain off when I see that signature style. Was certainly cool for a few minutes though. ShutterStock should be concerned, but artists and graphic designers don't need to worry. Just another tool.

tartoran 4y ago
Absolutely this but in the short term. I had a similar thought the first time I saw the sensational results of Dall-e. It reminded me of how many times I was impressed with technology only to see it go into the background and take their place not having taken over the world how it was expected in my naive mind. But I don’t doubt this will make a large impact in the future generations. I paint and this will indeed not deter me from painting - even if to never be seem by anyone - but am not sure I would have taken to painting if I had some future version of some AI generating tool at my fingertips from an early age… I think it will become something the rich will afford rejoice in, and also the rich will most likely afford to shield their children from technology.
TulliusCicero 4y ago
I think you're greatly underselling the potential here. Stable Diffusion and Dall-e 2 can already make some legitimately great stuff, and they're going to keep getting better. For example, here's some art from a modified Stable Diffusion model: https://www.reddit.com/gallery/wkd77a https://www.reddit.com/gallery/wkd77a I don't know how you can look at this and think, "ah yes, just some more generic junk."
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- archibaldJ 4y ago
  A class of things starts to become generic when they are predictable and summarizable by words to a degree where people can form mental representations of them to a higher accuracy. > here's some art from a modified Stable Diffusion model: https://www.reddit.com/gallery/wkd77a https://www.reddit.com/gallery/wkd77a The "fantasy girl" style of paintings has always looked generic to me (even back when it was painted by human artists). They are cute to look at, for sure. And so is looking at photographs of models, unless it is your friend and you miss her. Otherwise the story just ends there. I think in the end images are just story-telling devices. They are a means to an end. The nice thing of AI art is that it'll inspire more people to realize that. And the same goes with words and representations around us. What's important are not the words and representations, but the story they are telling, which in terms has physiological and emotional ramifications, and may provoke thoughts and feelings and actions, or the change of a habit, a new sentiment, a grain of salt, a breath of fresh air, etc. Those are what the human experience is about. And yet we always tend to focus too much at the finger pointing to the moon. I really hope that's the change AI would bring into this world. More awareness to the moon. And then there will be aspirations and new movements as we restructure soceties.
  - TulliusCicero 4y ago
    More Stable Diffusion examples here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32493516 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32493516
    - archibaldJ 4y ago
      This is crazy. I'm an an early DallE2 user. And looks like Stable Diffusion is much better than DallE2 (at least for these genres of gen)
      - TulliusCicero 4y ago
neuronic 4y ago
This sounds overtly negative and cynical, I wonder why that is? These are basically first generation open image generation AI services and your post sadly reminds me of the "get off my lawn attitude" of an old grampa who doesn't understand why cars aren't made of steel anymore despite all the information being out there and easily accessible. Criticism is fine and certainly warranted. Discussion and disagreement is encouraged - that's what makes us democrats after all. I don't disagree with images of Midjourney having a distinct look either, or things getting repetitive, for example. But what does > Was certainly cool for a few minutes though. even mean in the face of Midjourney running a bigger Discord server than Minecraft (!) and heaps of articles appearing how low hanging fruit in digital art are obviously subject to be replaced by these apps in the foreseeable future?
- hef19898 4y ago
  There might or might not be a market for AI art (who knows with art, everything people consider desireable has a legitimate market), I don't know because I don't have the slightest clue about art besides "I like that". I am sure so that stuff created by humans will always something specual about it that a soulless machine (heck, that sounds like something straight outbof Terminator) cannot reproduce. I think there will always be artists, collectors and hobby artists pursueing manual creation of things, maybe even more so the more AI / digital art we have, even if as a simple counter weight and outlet of creativity.
- rightbyte 4y ago
  > cars aren't made of steel anymore Aren't they? Aluminium cars are still quite rare right?
- oldstrangers 4y ago
  It's a great service, and it'll do really interesting stuff. From an artistic perspective though, it's really bottom of the barrel for me. Maybe that'll change given enough time and some people doing some really cutting edge stuff utilizing multiple mediums. But right now, it's just soulless, and that's a good thing for human artists.
prohobo 4y ago
It's much better than clip art. It generates fully bespoke and creative renditions of your ideas. Right now the models are a bit weak, but given a few years this will blow 90% of digital artists out of the water. People won't re-use anything, they'll generate something new for every thing they do. That said, I still agree that we probably don't need to fear AI art. In fact, we might - as artists - want to thank it. For a long time now a lot of artists have felt a kind of ennui because of the lack of a clear path to innovation or creating something "new" and inspiring. Things have become stale and overly commodified, with musicians, photographers, painters, etc. often complaining that anything they create or see is unintentionally retreading well-worn tracks. You talk to any striving and ambitious artist and they'll tell you there's not much inspiring art anymore. The way this AI art works is that it essentially re-arranges old motifs in new ways. It's a permutation device that shows you the current state of art (if it has a large enough training set) applied to arbitrary situations. Artists might be able to use it to find the negative space where new exploration is possible and finally start creating inspiring art again. Imagine coming up with an idea then feeding it to an AI and seeing if it's already been done? If the AI can't express it, then there might be something interesting there. I think, creatively speaking, this is bad for Bob Ross and good for Dali. I'm sure Bob Ross himself wouldn't mind though.
- krapp 4y ago
  > For a long time now a lot of artists have felt a kind of ennui because of the lack of a clear path to innovation or creating something "new" and inspiring. Things have become stale and overly commodified, with musicians, photographers, painters, etc. often complaining that anything they create or see is unintentionally retreading well-worn tracks. You talk to any striving and ambitious artist and they'll tell you there's not much inspiring art anymore. I think this is projection on your part - likely from the point of being a jaded consumer and/or HN contrarian who sees all modern media as formulaic and uninspired, unless you can demonstrate how you know the opinions of enough artists in enough genres (apparently all of them) to be able to diagnose all of it with "a kind of ennui." Maybe you're a creative who feels this about your own work, but from what I've seen following a number of creatives on Twitter, a lot of them are angry that this technology sources their work without consent, and threatens to take away their livelihood. Some are embracing it as a creative outlet, but most of them were doing just fine without it. >Artists might be able to use it to find the negative space where new exploration is possible and finally start creating inspiring art again. >Imagine coming up with an idea then feeding it to an AI and seeing if it's already been done? If the AI can't express it, then there might be something interesting there. You seem to be making the common mistake of equating novelty with quality. I suspect this has a lot to do with the differences in how innovation and "hype" work in tech culture, and many creative fields, where in the latter cases it's more accepted to work within established genres and draw upon prior elements and motifs rather than try to find the next "empty, legally distinct slot" in the market to fill and become the next big thing. But art rarely tends to be about doing something completely unique. Not that it would work anyway - these systems have such a vast corpus to draw from that they would generate something based on an input, no matter what. >I think, creatively speaking, this is bad for Bob Ross and good for Dali. I'm sure Bob Ross himself wouldn't mind though. If you think it's any more difficult for an AI to crank out something in the style of Dali than Bob Ross, you aren't paying attention.

tartoran 4y ago

Absolutely this but in the short term. I had a similar thought the first time I saw the sensational results of Dall-e. It reminded me of how many times I was impressed with technology only to see it go into the background and take their place not having taken over the world how it was expected in my naive mind. But I don’t doubt this will make a large impact in the future generations. I paint and this will indeed not deter me from painting - even if to never be seem by anyone - but am not sure I would have taken to painting if I had some future version of some AI generating tool at my fingertips from an early age… I think it will become something the rich will afford rejoice in, and also the rich will most likely afford to shield their children from technology.

TulliusCicero 4y ago

I think you're greatly underselling the potential here. Stable Diffusion and Dall-e 2 can already make some legitimately great stuff, and they're going to keep getting better. For example, here's some art from a modified Stable Diffusion model: https://www.reddit.com/gallery/wkd77a https://www.reddit.com/gallery/wkd77a I don't know how you can look at this and think, "ah yes, just some more generic junk."

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
archibaldJ 4y ago
A class of things starts to become generic when they are predictable and summarizable by words to a degree where people can form mental representations of them to a higher accuracy. > here's some art from a modified Stable Diffusion model: https://www.reddit.com/gallery/wkd77a https://www.reddit.com/gallery/wkd77a The "fantasy girl" style of paintings has always looked generic to me (even back when it was painted by human artists). They are cute to look at, for sure. And so is looking at photographs of models, unless it is your friend and you miss her. Otherwise the story just ends there. I think in the end images are just story-telling devices. They are a means to an end. The nice thing of AI art is that it'll inspire more people to realize that. And the same goes with words and representations around us. What's important are not the words and representations, but the story they are telling, which in terms has physiological and emotional ramifications, and may provoke thoughts and feelings and actions, or the change of a habit, a new sentiment, a grain of salt, a breath of fresh air, etc. Those are what the human experience is about. And yet we always tend to focus too much at the finger pointing to the moon. I really hope that's the change AI would bring into this world. More awareness to the moon. And then there will be aspirations and new movements as we restructure soceties.
- TulliusCicero 4y ago
  More Stable Diffusion examples here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32493516 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32493516
  - archibaldJ 4y ago
    This is crazy. I'm an an early DallE2 user. And looks like Stable Diffusion is much better than DallE2 (at least for these genres of gen)
    - TulliusCicero 4y ago

neuronic 4y ago

This sounds overtly negative and cynical, I wonder why that is? These are basically first generation open image generation AI services and your post sadly reminds me of the "get off my lawn attitude" of an old grampa who doesn't understand why cars aren't made of steel anymore despite all the information being out there and easily accessible. Criticism is fine and certainly warranted. Discussion and disagreement is encouraged - that's what makes us democrats after all. I don't disagree with images of Midjourney having a distinct look either, or things getting repetitive, for example. But what does > Was certainly cool for a few minutes though. even mean in the face of Midjourney running a bigger Discord server than Minecraft (!) and heaps of articles appearing how low hanging fruit in digital art are obviously subject to be replaced by these apps in the foreseeable future?

hef19898 4y ago
There might or might not be a market for AI art (who knows with art, everything people consider desireable has a legitimate market), I don't know because I don't have the slightest clue about art besides "I like that". I am sure so that stuff created by humans will always something specual about it that a soulless machine (heck, that sounds like something straight outbof Terminator) cannot reproduce. I think there will always be artists, collectors and hobby artists pursueing manual creation of things, maybe even more so the more AI / digital art we have, even if as a simple counter weight and outlet of creativity.
rightbyte 4y ago
> cars aren't made of steel anymore Aren't they? Aluminium cars are still quite rare right?
oldstrangers 4y ago
It's a great service, and it'll do really interesting stuff. From an artistic perspective though, it's really bottom of the barrel for me. Maybe that'll change given enough time and some people doing some really cutting edge stuff utilizing multiple mediums. But right now, it's just soulless, and that's a good thing for human artists.

prohobo 4y ago

It's much better than clip art. It generates fully bespoke and creative renditions of your ideas. Right now the models are a bit weak, but given a few years this will blow 90% of digital artists out of the water. People won't re-use anything, they'll generate something new for every thing they do. That said, I still agree that we probably don't need to fear AI art. In fact, we might - as artists - want to thank it. For a long time now a lot of artists have felt a kind of ennui because of the lack of a clear path to innovation or creating something "new" and inspiring. Things have become stale and overly commodified, with musicians, photographers, painters, etc. often complaining that anything they create or see is unintentionally retreading well-worn tracks. You talk to any striving and ambitious artist and they'll tell you there's not much inspiring art anymore. The way this AI art works is that it essentially re-arranges old motifs in new ways. It's a permutation device that shows you the current state of art (if it has a large enough training set) applied to arbitrary situations. Artists might be able to use it to find the negative space where new exploration is possible and finally start creating inspiring art again. Imagine coming up with an idea then feeding it to an AI and seeing if it's already been done? If the AI can't express it, then there might be something interesting there. I think, creatively speaking, this is bad for Bob Ross and good for Dali. I'm sure Bob Ross himself wouldn't mind though.

krapp 4y ago
> For a long time now a lot of artists have felt a kind of ennui because of the lack of a clear path to innovation or creating something "new" and inspiring. Things have become stale and overly commodified, with musicians, photographers, painters, etc. often complaining that anything they create or see is unintentionally retreading well-worn tracks. You talk to any striving and ambitious artist and they'll tell you there's not much inspiring art anymore. I think this is projection on your part - likely from the point of being a jaded consumer and/or HN contrarian who sees all modern media as formulaic and uninspired, unless you can demonstrate how you know the opinions of enough artists in enough genres (apparently all of them) to be able to diagnose all of it with "a kind of ennui." Maybe you're a creative who feels this about your own work, but from what I've seen following a number of creatives on Twitter, a lot of them are angry that this technology sources their work without consent, and threatens to take away their livelihood. Some are embracing it as a creative outlet, but most of them were doing just fine without it. >Artists might be able to use it to find the negative space where new exploration is possible and finally start creating inspiring art again. >Imagine coming up with an idea then feeding it to an AI and seeing if it's already been done? If the AI can't express it, then there might be something interesting there. You seem to be making the common mistake of equating novelty with quality. I suspect this has a lot to do with the differences in how innovation and "hype" work in tech culture, and many creative fields, where in the latter cases it's more accepted to work within established genres and draw upon prior elements and motifs rather than try to find the next "empty, legally distinct slot" in the market to fill and become the next big thing. But art rarely tends to be about doing something completely unique. Not that it would work anyway - these systems have such a vast corpus to draw from that they would generate something based on an input, no matter what. >I think, creatively speaking, this is bad for Bob Ross and good for Dali. I'm sure Bob Ross himself wouldn't mind though. If you think it's any more difficult for an AI to crank out something in the style of Dali than Bob Ross, you aren't paying attention.