4 ms·

The cynicism of some people in this crowd never ceases to amaze me. This stuff is nothing short of mind blowing. If you are someone who is about to comment "m

by d23 4y ago

The cynicism of some people in this crowd never ceases to amaze me. This stuff is nothing short of mind blowing. If you are someone who is about to comment "meh," you probably need to take a step back from the keyboard.

TillE 4y ago
I'm firmly in the moderate camp of "this stuff is incredibly cool and promising, but we're nowhere near the overblown predictions of human artists becoming obsolete".
- quitit 4y ago
  The only people who think this are people who have no experience in the field. The creative process, like many kinds of fields applicable to business is about problem-solving. AI text-to-image generation doesn't replace that function, however it does form an excellent tool, especially when it comes to rapid conceptualisation. This will allow more people to be creative problem solvers without needing to possess technical skills in image creation. Much in the same way that graphics apps allowed people to make image without needing to learn studio or art skills. Or DTP tools allowed more people to publish without the tedium and high set up costs. I will still be hiring illustrators and designers, and this may be one of their tools, and it would be their responsibility to be experts in it, but it doesn't replace them - it makes them better illustrators and better artists. The right way to think about this is not that it shrinks the field, rather it opens it and accelerates it - for that it's a very welcome addition. No creative is scared of this - they're looking forward to the next-generation approach, and it's clear that 2D images are not the end point. Soon we'll have 3D (already in progress), soon we'll have music, soon we'll have this for animation and programming. People fiddling with the technology have noticed some obvious short-comings, such as getting consistent results - for example it's currently not possible to develop a series of story boards where the character is obviously the same. Instead some level of reseeding the image with the desired character or outright recomposing the graphics later is needed. These aren't things that can't be fixed however, what we're seeing now is definitely an exciting new tool in its infancy.
- stocknoob 4y ago
  Expedia didn’t make travel agents obsolete. Just 99% of them. When most people can self-serve for pennies, demand will drop. Random indie game needing art assets? Done. In days, not months.
  - dogcomplex 4y ago
    Minutes or hours. Travel agents are actually a great weird example of what might happen... we didn't really get rid of 99% - more like 80-90%. They just stuck around as good salesmen who use Expedia etc better than the average person and (in theory) destress the process. Just like artists of the future almost certainly will be quite good with these AI tools and use them primarily - but maybe have a bit of artistic talent themselves.
writeslowly 4y ago
I think it's a pretty natural mindset to have for many people who work as software engineers. If you see something useful or interesting, the first reaction is often to notice what needs to be fixed or improved. It's also a field prone to nitpicking
- shepherdjerred 4y ago
  I do this a lot. I'm pretty sure its close to my worst trait, socially.
dilap 4y ago
at least it'll make for a funny reread in 10 years. the all-time classic in the genre: https://slashdot.org/story/01/10/23/1816257/apple-releases-ipod https://slashdot.org/story/01/10/23/1816257/apple-releases-i...
- boppo1 4y ago
  No I think the all time classic is Krugman saying the internet will be no more influential than the fax machine.
  - dilap 4y ago
    It's funny, but in a different genre, because we should expect Krugman to be clueless, whereas in theory people on geeky tech websites would be better.
    - silentsea90 4y ago
      Similar to the HN'er who dismissed dropbox as an ftp clone (iirc), some geeks live so close to the tech that they can see how a product is simply an iteration on what they understand/own etc. and miss the marvel of the entire package as a mass market product.
paganel 4y ago
We've been promised self-driving cars since the mid-2010s, while AGI was supposedly only 5 or 10 years away (nowadays almost nobody mentions it anymore). All that to say that a little skepticism is understandable. Back to the subject at hand, and as other people have already said, the generated images seem to lack emotion and "feel". They're good to maybe put as wall-art in a rented out AirBnb, but that's pretty much it. Still a cool thing from a technical perspective, though.

by d23 4y ago

TillE 4y ago

I'm firmly in the moderate camp of "this stuff is incredibly cool and promising, but we're nowhere near the overblown predictions of human artists becoming obsolete".

quitit 4y ago
The only people who think this are people who have no experience in the field. The creative process, like many kinds of fields applicable to business is about problem-solving. AI text-to-image generation doesn't replace that function, however it does form an excellent tool, especially when it comes to rapid conceptualisation. This will allow more people to be creative problem solvers without needing to possess technical skills in image creation. Much in the same way that graphics apps allowed people to make image without needing to learn studio or art skills. Or DTP tools allowed more people to publish without the tedium and high set up costs. I will still be hiring illustrators and designers, and this may be one of their tools, and it would be their responsibility to be experts in it, but it doesn't replace them - it makes them better illustrators and better artists. The right way to think about this is not that it shrinks the field, rather it opens it and accelerates it - for that it's a very welcome addition. No creative is scared of this - they're looking forward to the next-generation approach, and it's clear that 2D images are not the end point. Soon we'll have 3D (already in progress), soon we'll have music, soon we'll have this for animation and programming. People fiddling with the technology have noticed some obvious short-comings, such as getting consistent results - for example it's currently not possible to develop a series of story boards where the character is obviously the same. Instead some level of reseeding the image with the desired character or outright recomposing the graphics later is needed. These aren't things that can't be fixed however, what we're seeing now is definitely an exciting new tool in its infancy.
stocknoob 4y ago
Expedia didn’t make travel agents obsolete. Just 99% of them. When most people can self-serve for pennies, demand will drop. Random indie game needing art assets? Done. In days, not months.
- dogcomplex 4y ago
  Minutes or hours. Travel agents are actually a great weird example of what might happen... we didn't really get rid of 99% - more like 80-90%. They just stuck around as good salesmen who use Expedia etc better than the average person and (in theory) destress the process. Just like artists of the future almost certainly will be quite good with these AI tools and use them primarily - but maybe have a bit of artistic talent themselves.

writeslowly 4y ago

I think it's a pretty natural mindset to have for many people who work as software engineers. If you see something useful or interesting, the first reaction is often to notice what needs to be fixed or improved. It's also a field prone to nitpicking

shepherdjerred 4y ago
I do this a lot. I'm pretty sure its close to my worst trait, socially.

dilap 4y ago

at least it'll make for a funny reread in 10 years. the all-time classic in the genre: https://slashdot.org/story/01/10/23/1816257/apple-releases-ipod https://slashdot.org/story/01/10/23/1816257/apple-releases-i...

boppo1 4y ago
No I think the all time classic is Krugman saying the internet will be no more influential than the fax machine.
- dilap 4y ago
  It's funny, but in a different genre, because we should expect Krugman to be clueless, whereas in theory people on geeky tech websites would be better.
  - silentsea90 4y ago
    Similar to the HN'er who dismissed dropbox as an ftp clone (iirc), some geeks live so close to the tech that they can see how a product is simply an iteration on what they understand/own etc. and miss the marvel of the entire package as a mass market product.

paganel 4y ago

We've been promised self-driving cars since the mid-2010s, while AGI was supposedly only 5 or 10 years away (nowadays almost nobody mentions it anymore). All that to say that a little skepticism is understandable. Back to the subject at hand, and as other people have already said, the generated images seem to lack emotion and "feel". They're good to maybe put as wall-art in a rented out AirBnb, but that's pretty much it. Still a cool thing from a technical perspective, though.