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> which doesn't have any intention behind it Except that it does. > "I have been exploring a special prompt that I will be publishing at a later date, I have

> which doesn't have any intention behind it Except that it does. > "I have been exploring a special prompt that I will be publishing at a later date, I have created 100s of images using it, and after many weeks of fine tuning and curating my gens, I chose my top 3 A human made the '100s of images', and finessed it down to get what they're looking for. Then, this human picked their favorite. Presumably the human also named this. There's plenty of human intention here.

ghusto 4y ago
Not what I meant by intention, I meant intention in the individual pieces. In other words, the intention of the AI, not the user using the AI.
- jhugo 4y ago
  The AI is just a tool they used to produce an image. They could have written another type of computer program and produced something that would be called, for example, generative art. The headline is clickbaity; a human won an art contest with a piece of art that was the output of a computer program.
- obstroperous 4y ago
  This is like saying I used Paint Shop Pro in the 90s and applied a Gaussian blur and you asking "what is the intention of the computer program." There is no intention. It's a technology, not an active agent in society.
taylorius 4y ago
If that human had hired 5 painters to paint images (instead of the AI), told them what to paint, and refined his instructions to them over the production of 10 rounds of canvases - would anyone consider that human to be the artist? He's a client.
- kruuuder 4y ago
  Yeah that's the point of the discussion, the lines are blurring. In your example, you cannot deny that the client has done at least some amount of artistic work, too. If you insist that they are 100% client and 0% artist, then let's look at other situations: What about an art director at a video game company? 0% artist?
  - dahfizz 4y ago
    > What about an art director at a video game company? 0% artist? Yes. My CEO has excellent technical (and business) knowledge. He will often give me direction on my projects because he knows both the business requirements but also the technical implementations that might fulfill those requirements. His input is very valuable, but to say he is a programmer or that he is creating these programs is wrong. He hasn't written a line of code in many years. Being an Art director is a management position. Having domain knowledge is surely useful, but you're managing, not creating.
    - krisoft 4y ago
      > Being an Art director is a management position. Are you sure you know what an art director does? They might or might not be the line manager of the artists but that is not their main responsibility. To quote wikipedia: “It is the charge of a sole art director to supervise and unify the vision of an artistic production. In particular, they are in charge of its overall visual appearance and how it communicates visually, stimulates moods, contrasts features, and psychologically appeals to a target audience. The art director makes decisions about visual elements, what artistic style(s) to use, and when to use motion.” I would call that creation. Sure they don’t just grab a brush and start painting. (Except when they do, because that is the best way to communicate what they want from others.) Would you also say that movie directors are not creating just managing?
      - dahfizz 4y ago
        > It is the charge of a sole art director to supervise and unify the vision of an artistic production. <snip>. The art director makes decisions about visual elements, what artistic style(s) to use, and when to use motion.” I don't see how you can call it creation when they don't create anything. They make decisions about what to create, they provide input on how to create, but they do 0 creation themselves. If I ask my partner to cook dinner, does that mean I made dinner? > Would you also say that movie directors are not creating just managing? Yes. It's in the name - they are directing. They are managing the creation of their team. They themselves just sit in a chair and bark orders - not creating anything.
zamalek 4y ago
Honestly, after playing around with Midjourney for an hour, there's also plenty of AI intent here. It's not be sentient intent, but something else that's altogether unique and interesting. Put another way, if a million monkeys were to reproduce the entire works of Shakespeare, those works would be no less poignant. Théåtre D'opéra Spatial is a beautiful work and really draws in me in.
nonbirithm 4y ago
Sometimes it feels like the need for a human to finesse the result into something appealing is a limitation of the current technology. As in, if it were possible to somehow create an algorithmic criteria for "what one is looking for" in regards to some specific subset of art and let it feed into the model and back ad infinitum, people would prefer that to doing the manual work of sifting through the rejects. If that hypothesis becomes true, I think it will have severe implications for the value of human intention in art. Would we prefer that endless feedback loop over the painstaking labor of honing a skill for oneself? I don't think it's clear yet, because the technology is still too limited to test such a hypothesis. But would that become the norm if it were possible? Of course, I don't know if such an subjective concept is encodable in an algorithm. But I'm not beyond believing that such an advancement would be highly desirable if the technology progresses far enough, to the point that something "good enough" for most people and aesthetic styles will emerge. People have already been taken by surprise from the developments in generative art so far.

ghusto 4y ago

Not what I meant by intention, I meant intention in the individual pieces. In other words, the intention of the AI, not the user using the AI.

jhugo 4y ago
The AI is just a tool they used to produce an image. They could have written another type of computer program and produced something that would be called, for example, generative art. The headline is clickbaity; a human won an art contest with a piece of art that was the output of a computer program.
obstroperous 4y ago
This is like saying I used Paint Shop Pro in the 90s and applied a Gaussian blur and you asking "what is the intention of the computer program." There is no intention. It's a technology, not an active agent in society.

taylorius 4y ago

If that human had hired 5 painters to paint images (instead of the AI), told them what to paint, and refined his instructions to them over the production of 10 rounds of canvases - would anyone consider that human to be the artist? He's a client.

kruuuder 4y ago
Yeah that's the point of the discussion, the lines are blurring. In your example, you cannot deny that the client has done at least some amount of artistic work, too. If you insist that they are 100% client and 0% artist, then let's look at other situations: What about an art director at a video game company? 0% artist?
- dahfizz 4y ago
  > What about an art director at a video game company? 0% artist? Yes. My CEO has excellent technical (and business) knowledge. He will often give me direction on my projects because he knows both the business requirements but also the technical implementations that might fulfill those requirements. His input is very valuable, but to say he is a programmer or that he is creating these programs is wrong. He hasn't written a line of code in many years. Being an Art director is a management position. Having domain knowledge is surely useful, but you're managing, not creating.
  - krisoft 4y ago
    > Being an Art director is a management position. Are you sure you know what an art director does? They might or might not be the line manager of the artists but that is not their main responsibility. To quote wikipedia: “It is the charge of a sole art director to supervise and unify the vision of an artistic production. In particular, they are in charge of its overall visual appearance and how it communicates visually, stimulates moods, contrasts features, and psychologically appeals to a target audience. The art director makes decisions about visual elements, what artistic style(s) to use, and when to use motion.” I would call that creation. Sure they don’t just grab a brush and start painting. (Except when they do, because that is the best way to communicate what they want from others.) Would you also say that movie directors are not creating just managing?
    - dahfizz 4y ago
      > It is the charge of a sole art director to supervise and unify the vision of an artistic production. <snip>. The art director makes decisions about visual elements, what artistic style(s) to use, and when to use motion.” I don't see how you can call it creation when they don't create anything. They make decisions about what to create, they provide input on how to create, but they do 0 creation themselves. If I ask my partner to cook dinner, does that mean I made dinner? > Would you also say that movie directors are not creating just managing? Yes. It's in the name - they are directing. They are managing the creation of their team. They themselves just sit in a chair and bark orders - not creating anything.

zamalek 4y ago

Honestly, after playing around with Midjourney for an hour, there's also plenty of AI intent here. It's not be sentient intent, but something else that's altogether unique and interesting. Put another way, if a million monkeys were to reproduce the entire works of Shakespeare, those works would be no less poignant. Théåtre D'opéra Spatial is a beautiful work and really draws in me in.

nonbirithm 4y ago

Sometimes it feels like the need for a human to finesse the result into something appealing is a limitation of the current technology. As in, if it were possible to somehow create an algorithmic criteria for "what one is looking for" in regards to some specific subset of art and let it feed into the model and back ad infinitum, people would prefer that to doing the manual work of sifting through the rejects. If that hypothesis becomes true, I think it will have severe implications for the value of human intention in art. Would we prefer that endless feedback loop over the painstaking labor of honing a skill for oneself? I don't think it's clear yet, because the technology is still too limited to test such a hypothesis. But would that become the norm if it were possible? Of course, I don't know if such an subjective concept is encodable in an algorithm. But I'm not beyond believing that such an advancement would be highly desirable if the technology progresses far enough, to the point that something "good enough" for most people and aesthetic styles will emerge. People have already been taken by surprise from the developments in generative art so far.