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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 thi

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.
- prohobo 4y ago
  > 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. I don't think you understood what I said. Of course it can copy Dali now. Dali is old hat. Stale. I'm talking about someone with the artistic ambitions of Dali - except today. Someone who hasn't found their unique artistic voice yet. As for the rest of your comment, it just seems like you haven't been paying attention to any artistic communities because your claim is basically like saying "there is no inflation" just because you don't really notice it. I may be focusing too much on "originality", but the overall assessment is accurate: modern art is not nearly as inspiring as people would like it to be. Whatever inspiration means to you, I can't exactly say. For some glimpses into the status quo of Western art: - https://www.e-flux.com/journal/28/68012/the-time-that-remains-part-i-on-contemporary-nihilism/ https://www.e-flux.com/journal/28/68012/the-time-that-remain... - https://scholarscompass.vcu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1007&context=jhhs https://scholarscompass.vcu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=... - https://old.reddit.com/r/ArtistLounge/comments/kgy8j4/how_do_you_stay_inspired_when_you_feel_like/ https://old.reddit.com/r/ArtistLounge/comments/kgy8j4/how_do... - https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/41784198-the-decline-and-fall-of-western-art https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/41784198-the-decline-...
GoblinSlayer 4y ago
>You talk to any striving and ambitious artist and they'll tell you there's not much inspiring art anymore. Jaded bastard is a property of the person, not a property of art.
oldstrangers 4y ago
>It's much better than clip art. I agree, that's why I called it fancy clip art.
- prohobo 4y ago
  Isn't that basically the same as commissioning some art from a digital artist? You could say it's fancy clip art too.
  - oldstrangers 4y ago
    If you equate the uniquely individualistic style of a human artist and the totality of the human condition that informed that artist's style with a machine cobbling together a collection of data points then uhhh, sure?
    - krapp 4y ago
      No human artist is uniquely individualistic. All human artists are informed by their education, environment, and the styles of their peers. Even in the "radicals" you can see influences, and a context in which their work fits. Also, no human has ever experienced, much less can be informed by, the "totality" of the human condition. Whatever that's even supposed to mean, besides the effect of a human being having "cobbled together a collection of data points" through life experience. You're trying very hard to frame creativity as transcendent in scope and almost supernatural in scope, as if art were a divine spark no machine could ever be capable of reproducing. But history is littered with examples to the contrary, and so far only examples to the contrary.

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.

prohobo 4y ago
> 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. I don't think you understood what I said. Of course it can copy Dali now. Dali is old hat. Stale. I'm talking about someone with the artistic ambitions of Dali - except today. Someone who hasn't found their unique artistic voice yet. As for the rest of your comment, it just seems like you haven't been paying attention to any artistic communities because your claim is basically like saying "there is no inflation" just because you don't really notice it. I may be focusing too much on "originality", but the overall assessment is accurate: modern art is not nearly as inspiring as people would like it to be. Whatever inspiration means to you, I can't exactly say. For some glimpses into the status quo of Western art: - https://www.e-flux.com/journal/28/68012/the-time-that-remains-part-i-on-contemporary-nihilism/ https://www.e-flux.com/journal/28/68012/the-time-that-remain... - https://scholarscompass.vcu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1007&context=jhhs https://scholarscompass.vcu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=... - https://old.reddit.com/r/ArtistLounge/comments/kgy8j4/how_do_you_stay_inspired_when_you_feel_like/ https://old.reddit.com/r/ArtistLounge/comments/kgy8j4/how_do... - https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/41784198-the-decline-and-fall-of-western-art https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/41784198-the-decline-...

GoblinSlayer 4y ago

>You talk to any striving and ambitious artist and they'll tell you there's not much inspiring art anymore. Jaded bastard is a property of the person, not a property of art.

oldstrangers 4y ago

>It's much better than clip art. I agree, that's why I called it fancy clip art.

prohobo 4y ago
Isn't that basically the same as commissioning some art from a digital artist? You could say it's fancy clip art too.
- oldstrangers 4y ago
  If you equate the uniquely individualistic style of a human artist and the totality of the human condition that informed that artist's style with a machine cobbling together a collection of data points then uhhh, sure?
  - krapp 4y ago
    No human artist is uniquely individualistic. All human artists are informed by their education, environment, and the styles of their peers. Even in the "radicals" you can see influences, and a context in which their work fits. Also, no human has ever experienced, much less can be informed by, the "totality" of the human condition. Whatever that's even supposed to mean, besides the effect of a human being having "cobbled together a collection of data points" through life experience. You're trying very hard to frame creativity as transcendent in scope and almost supernatural in scope, as if art were a divine spark no machine could ever be capable of reproducing. But history is littered with examples to the contrary, and so far only examples to the contrary.