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in the whole discussion, I feel you are missing a point. AI creates something that looks like art to humans based on a probability distribution. for me art is

in the whole discussion, I feel you are missing a point. AI creates something that looks like art to humans based on a probability distribution. for me art is not the end product but the process. I want to understand the artists intentions and often a work that looks blant, because deep because of the artist's explanations. Take Agnes Martin's paintings as an example.

techdragon 4y ago
The way you say “something that looks like art” feels like you don’t consider the output of these AI models as art, and that generally speaking you have specific views on either what art is or what counts as art… So what of the Dadaist, the postmodern and the rest, where art is only art because we say it is art, and the creation of art need only involve the “artist” scribbling their signature on the object to bestow it with “artistic merit”. I cannot see a good way to reconcile a philosophy (law is different here, plenty of art can be illegal, eg: graffiti) involving AI and art like this… Duchamp’s readymades, are the products of a factory’s meant for consumer use, are Art… AI art is the product of an sophisticated set of multiple software tools combined and then used by a person to produce their own artistic vision, the output is Art. If Duchamp signing a urinal makes the urinal art then me using a prompt to craft a specific artistic outcome arguably required more creative effort to understand my “tools” and use them to produce a result that should also be considered art if I want to call it that. I accept that we may come around and regulate and legislate these tools, just like how it’s illegal to make a graffiti masterpiece on someone’s wall without permission, it may eventually be illegal to use models trained with “unlicensed” data and the matter settled… but can we quit with this denigration of the output as somehow not actually art?
- kgarten 4y ago
  It might be art but it's art created by humans using matrix multiplications and a lot of data. For me the image generators are tools. They don't have intention, consciousness, and don't "know" why they produce something. So if you are asking if AI alone can produce art, I would say no, because AI lacks these properties. You have to present a prompt and press a button, that person is the creator of the Art. The AI when prompted can just produce sth. that looks like art to us humans. The user who prompted it has to add the "process and intention" to it. Regarding Duchamp's Urinal, the intention and the critique it voices is critical for being considered art (and a lot of people still argue about it). https://www.bbc.com/culture/article/20170410-the-urinal-that-changed-how-we-think https://www.bbc.com/culture/article/20170410-the-urinal-that... There have been a lot of upside down urinals in the world before Duchamp did that, yet nobody considered it art. Here again the intention matters. Matrix multiplications on big data don't have any intention.

techdragon 4y ago

The way you say “something that looks like art” feels like you don’t consider the output of these AI models as art, and that generally speaking you have specific views on either what art is or what counts as art… So what of the Dadaist, the postmodern and the rest, where art is only art because we say it is art, and the creation of art need only involve the “artist” scribbling their signature on the object to bestow it with “artistic merit”. I cannot see a good way to reconcile a philosophy (law is different here, plenty of art can be illegal, eg: graffiti) involving AI and art like this… Duchamp’s readymades, are the products of a factory’s meant for consumer use, are Art… AI art is the product of an sophisticated set of multiple software tools combined and then used by a person to produce their own artistic vision, the output is Art. If Duchamp signing a urinal makes the urinal art then me using a prompt to craft a specific artistic outcome arguably required more creative effort to understand my “tools” and use them to produce a result that should also be considered art if I want to call it that. I accept that we may come around and regulate and legislate these tools, just like how it’s illegal to make a graffiti masterpiece on someone’s wall without permission, it may eventually be illegal to use models trained with “unlicensed” data and the matter settled… but can we quit with this denigration of the output as somehow not actually art?

kgarten 4y ago
It might be art but it's art created by humans using matrix multiplications and a lot of data. For me the image generators are tools. They don't have intention, consciousness, and don't "know" why they produce something. So if you are asking if AI alone can produce art, I would say no, because AI lacks these properties. You have to present a prompt and press a button, that person is the creator of the Art. The AI when prompted can just produce sth. that looks like art to us humans. The user who prompted it has to add the "process and intention" to it. Regarding Duchamp's Urinal, the intention and the critique it voices is critical for being considered art (and a lot of people still argue about it). https://www.bbc.com/culture/article/20170410-the-urinal-that-changed-how-we-think https://www.bbc.com/culture/article/20170410-the-urinal-that... There have been a lot of upside down urinals in the world before Duchamp did that, yet nobody considered it art. Here again the intention matters. Matrix multiplications on big data don't have any intention.