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I agree that images only through AI should be removed from art sites. The issue with AI art is that the only human contribution in those pieces is the creation

by imranq 4y ago

I agree that images only through AI should be removed from art sites. The issue with AI art is that the only human contribution in those pieces is the creation of the prompt and the curation of the final image. Without sensory and experiential inputs of its own, AI can only interpolate between real images and styles. So an AI generated image doesn't add much artistic value since its not expressing any new deep truth or factual understanding of the real world. Well isn't all art just a derivative of another piece? The issue with that statement is that art is fundamentally a communication from a human artist to a human viewer. At the level of AI prompt creation and curation, you act more like an art gallery owner rather than an artist, which doesn't communicate artistic values in the same way as does an original piece derived from the experiences, history, and skill of a human artist. Dall-E 2, Stable Diffusion, should be used for inspiration and helping with minor elements of a piece, but someone passing off an AI generated image as part of their portfolio is disingenuous at best

Kiro 4y ago
And how do you define artistic value? If you don't even know if an image is generated by an AI or not, what is lost?
- zasdffaa 4y ago
  People who are precious about art will keep defining it away from anything that upsets them.
- adrian_b 4y ago
  If you just want a beautiful or intriguing image to look at, an AI-generated image may happen to satisfy that need very well. The same need can be satisfied with a photo of some natural things, e.g. living beings or minerals or places. In both cases there is no human to whom one could attribute any artistic merit for the content of the images. Whether an image is beautiful or not is not necessarily correlated with the involvement of a human in its creation, but its origin should nevertheless always be made clear.
  - cthalupa 4y ago
    >In both cases there is no human to whom one could attribute any artistic merit for the content of the images. I'm not sure this is fair. How you create your prompt at the start is going to have widely varying results on all sorts of aspects that are choices made by human artists that impact the quality of the final piece. Then there are a variety of methods, including img2img, inpainting and outpainting, etc. In all of these the AI is doing most of the work, inasmuch as putting any pixel in any place, but it's not making all of the decisions. And to be clear, I'm not some sort of AI maximalist - I have a large enough collection of human made artwork that a lot of it is stored in flat files because it wouldn't fit on my walls. I'm not planning on changing that any time soon, and will continue supporting artists I follow. There's a massive flood of crap out there. But some people are consistently making things that look quite nice that aren't just "thing x in setting y, 8k, artstation, by wlop" - there is real thought put into composition, etc. I don't know how much artistic talent this takes - I've spent a couple dozen hours playing with these tools over the past week or two, and I cannot reach the levels these people are - but it's more than none.
zasdffaa 4y ago
> any new deep truth What is a 'truth' in art. Also, what is a 'deep truth' specifically. > factual understanding of the real world Can you name me a few factual understandings that art has brought.
- sixstringtheory 4y ago
  "Truth" and "understanding" are both things that have changed throughout human history, they are not fixed. Art can be something that changes the way you understand the world, which would change your idea of what the truth is about reality. I just rewatched Goodfellas the other day. No doubt that film brought a deeper understanding for many many people about mafia philosophy, history and events, and inspired more research (I went down a Wikipedia rabbit hole after watching it, myself). Dali's melting clocks might suggest a new way to conceive of time. I only dabble a little in science fiction, but my impression is that it has historically inspired plenty of scientific and engineering endeavors, including AI generated art (and I'm sure there are plenty of dystopians out there that may show how it could go wrong). Reading literature from everything between the ancients and contemporaries, I'm constantly finding things that parallel my current interpersonal challenges and give me new insights. What is "truth" to you?
  - zasdffaa 4y ago
    FYI <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Truth https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Truth> "Truth is the property of being in accord with fact or reality" Your post is just a typical arts-based response. Not rigorous, sloppy, with "No doubt", "might suggest", "my impression is", "interpersonal challenges". It's just a sloppy mess that can't be engaged with, quite deliberately. Edit, if I sound frustrated I am. I'm trying to get a better handle on 'art' so I can understand what is there and what its genuinely worth to other people. It's rare to get anything other than gloop, from which I'm starting to wonder at the bona fides of people who say supportive things of art. Generative art is frankly amazing - how much input was from artists (any at all?), how much was from scientists/mathematicians? (and how much from the intersection of the two if that's not empty).
    - 4y ago
xani_ 4y ago
> The issue with AI art is that the only human contribution in those pieces is the creation of the prompt and the curation of the final image. Without sensory and experiential inputs of its own, AI can only interpolate between real images and styles. So an AI generated image doesn't add much artistic value since its not expressing any new deep truth or factual understanding of the real world. That kind of reasoning would throw entirety of Realism into "not art", because it is also not trying to express any artistic value. And there were arguments back then too I guess whole debate about Realism could be just copy-pasted to discussion about AI arts...

by imranq 4y ago

Kiro 4y ago

And how do you define artistic value? If you don't even know if an image is generated by an AI or not, what is lost?

zasdffaa 4y ago
People who are precious about art will keep defining it away from anything that upsets them.
adrian_b 4y ago
If you just want a beautiful or intriguing image to look at, an AI-generated image may happen to satisfy that need very well. The same need can be satisfied with a photo of some natural things, e.g. living beings or minerals or places. In both cases there is no human to whom one could attribute any artistic merit for the content of the images. Whether an image is beautiful or not is not necessarily correlated with the involvement of a human in its creation, but its origin should nevertheless always be made clear.
- cthalupa 4y ago
  >In both cases there is no human to whom one could attribute any artistic merit for the content of the images. I'm not sure this is fair. How you create your prompt at the start is going to have widely varying results on all sorts of aspects that are choices made by human artists that impact the quality of the final piece. Then there are a variety of methods, including img2img, inpainting and outpainting, etc. In all of these the AI is doing most of the work, inasmuch as putting any pixel in any place, but it's not making all of the decisions. And to be clear, I'm not some sort of AI maximalist - I have a large enough collection of human made artwork that a lot of it is stored in flat files because it wouldn't fit on my walls. I'm not planning on changing that any time soon, and will continue supporting artists I follow. There's a massive flood of crap out there. But some people are consistently making things that look quite nice that aren't just "thing x in setting y, 8k, artstation, by wlop" - there is real thought put into composition, etc. I don't know how much artistic talent this takes - I've spent a couple dozen hours playing with these tools over the past week or two, and I cannot reach the levels these people are - but it's more than none.

zasdffaa 4y ago

> any new deep truth What is a 'truth' in art. Also, what is a 'deep truth' specifically. > factual understanding of the real world Can you name me a few factual understandings that art has brought.

sixstringtheory 4y ago
"Truth" and "understanding" are both things that have changed throughout human history, they are not fixed. Art can be something that changes the way you understand the world, which would change your idea of what the truth is about reality. I just rewatched Goodfellas the other day. No doubt that film brought a deeper understanding for many many people about mafia philosophy, history and events, and inspired more research (I went down a Wikipedia rabbit hole after watching it, myself). Dali's melting clocks might suggest a new way to conceive of time. I only dabble a little in science fiction, but my impression is that it has historically inspired plenty of scientific and engineering endeavors, including AI generated art (and I'm sure there are plenty of dystopians out there that may show how it could go wrong). Reading literature from everything between the ancients and contemporaries, I'm constantly finding things that parallel my current interpersonal challenges and give me new insights. What is "truth" to you?
- zasdffaa 4y ago
  FYI <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Truth https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Truth> "Truth is the property of being in accord with fact or reality" Your post is just a typical arts-based response. Not rigorous, sloppy, with "No doubt", "might suggest", "my impression is", "interpersonal challenges". It's just a sloppy mess that can't be engaged with, quite deliberately. Edit, if I sound frustrated I am. I'm trying to get a better handle on 'art' so I can understand what is there and what its genuinely worth to other people. It's rare to get anything other than gloop, from which I'm starting to wonder at the bona fides of people who say supportive things of art. Generative art is frankly amazing - how much input was from artists (any at all?), how much was from scientists/mathematicians? (and how much from the intersection of the two if that's not empty).
  - 4y ago

xani_ 4y ago

> The issue with AI art is that the only human contribution in those pieces is the creation of the prompt and the curation of the final image. Without sensory and experiential inputs of its own, AI can only interpolate between real images and styles. So an AI generated image doesn't add much artistic value since its not expressing any new deep truth or factual understanding of the real world. That kind of reasoning would throw entirety of Realism into "not art", because it is also not trying to express any artistic value. And there were arguments back then too I guess whole debate about Realism could be just copy-pasted to discussion about AI arts...