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Typing a prompt into DALLE does not take effort and it does not make you an artist. Don't kid yourself that the people generating art and submitting it to thes

by biftek 4y ago

Typing a prompt into DALLE does not take effort and it does not make you an artist. Don't kid yourself that the people generating art and submitting it to these sites are the same ones writing and training the AI.

filoleg 4y ago
"Pressing a shutter button on your camera and tweaking a few parameters in settings does not take effort and it does not make one an artist." I think we have established by now that photography is art, so your argument doesn't feel like it would stand the test of time much. Just like the photography one didn't.
- biftek 4y ago
  I think you're just proving my point actually, being able to take photos doesn't make everyone an artist or every photo art. To take truly great photos you still need to understand basics like composition and lighting (just like illustration and painting) which do take effort, and your still not guaranteed to get good photos. A camera, like AI, is simply a tool and it's no doubt already helping artists, but to think typing a prompt into a website somehow makes you an artist on its own is foolish.
  - filoleg 4y ago
    In that sense, yeah, fully agreed. Someone typing up whatever in the prompt is about as much of art as someone taking a random selfie in poorly lit environment on their smartphone. However, there is definitely nuance to generating art using AI that is similar to photography as art in a way. There are massive blog posts and writeups that exist already, talking about different techniques for crafting prompts and fiddling with the model to achieve different results. Stuff like how ordering of the words matters (e.g., the order changes how much the model weighs a word), how the choice of different samplers affect the outcome, which words tend to be strong modifiers (e.g., if you want something looking like a real photo, add a specific camera model name), the number of iterations and guidance scale parameter choice, etc. That's barely scratching the surface, given the whole thing became available less than a month ago, and people discover all those methods and techniques in real time. I am willing to bet that in a year, the complexity of a "good prompt" will be lightyears away from where we are now. It's like someone invented a music instrument/artmaking tool, except it behaves a lot like a blackbox. So instead of developing techniques from the base knowledge of how the tool was created, we have to test and try bajillion different things to figure out how to get what we want. And no, I am not trying to make a claim that generating art using those AI models is an equivalent to creating an acrylic painting. Just like i wouldnt claim that taking a great (in terms of art) photograph is an equivalent to creating an acrylic painting. Both of those stand in classes of their own.
- arrosenberg 4y ago
  The photographer definitely has more agency over what they are shooting than a programmer does over what an algorithm produces. When I take a photo I have a image in my head I am trying to capture; when I train an AI to do the same I don't have that image, its just generating a bunch of images based off an idea and I select the one that is most appealing. I'm sure there are people doing tuning that is much more involved, but at a basic level it's not the same thing. Doing photography or drawing are much more emotionally rewarding than generating images with code, at least for me.

by biftek 4y ago

filoleg 4y ago

"Pressing a shutter button on your camera and tweaking a few parameters in settings does not take effort and it does not make one an artist." I think we have established by now that photography is art, so your argument doesn't feel like it would stand the test of time much. Just like the photography one didn't.

biftek 4y ago
I think you're just proving my point actually, being able to take photos doesn't make everyone an artist or every photo art. To take truly great photos you still need to understand basics like composition and lighting (just like illustration and painting) which do take effort, and your still not guaranteed to get good photos. A camera, like AI, is simply a tool and it's no doubt already helping artists, but to think typing a prompt into a website somehow makes you an artist on its own is foolish.
- filoleg 4y ago
  In that sense, yeah, fully agreed. Someone typing up whatever in the prompt is about as much of art as someone taking a random selfie in poorly lit environment on their smartphone. However, there is definitely nuance to generating art using AI that is similar to photography as art in a way. There are massive blog posts and writeups that exist already, talking about different techniques for crafting prompts and fiddling with the model to achieve different results. Stuff like how ordering of the words matters (e.g., the order changes how much the model weighs a word), how the choice of different samplers affect the outcome, which words tend to be strong modifiers (e.g., if you want something looking like a real photo, add a specific camera model name), the number of iterations and guidance scale parameter choice, etc. That's barely scratching the surface, given the whole thing became available less than a month ago, and people discover all those methods and techniques in real time. I am willing to bet that in a year, the complexity of a "good prompt" will be lightyears away from where we are now. It's like someone invented a music instrument/artmaking tool, except it behaves a lot like a blackbox. So instead of developing techniques from the base knowledge of how the tool was created, we have to test and try bajillion different things to figure out how to get what we want. And no, I am not trying to make a claim that generating art using those AI models is an equivalent to creating an acrylic painting. Just like i wouldnt claim that taking a great (in terms of art) photograph is an equivalent to creating an acrylic painting. Both of those stand in classes of their own.
arrosenberg 4y ago
The photographer definitely has more agency over what they are shooting than a programmer does over what an algorithm produces. When I take a photo I have a image in my head I am trying to capture; when I train an AI to do the same I don't have that image, its just generating a bunch of images based off an idea and I select the one that is most appealing. I'm sure there are people doing tuning that is much more involved, but at a basic level it's not the same thing. Doing photography or drawing are much more emotionally rewarding than generating images with code, at least for me.