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It’s not about having the most imagination. It’s about imagining something that means something. When people have some common life experience that is difficult

It’s not about having the most imagination. It’s about imagining something that means something. When people have some common life experience that is difficult to describe, that’s where the best artists can create something that speaks to the heart in a way other people understand. Stable diffusion is completely incapable of generating something like that on its own - something that speaks to something we all feel but struggle to describe. Yes a human can use SD to generate art that does have this meaning, but in that case the deep meaning comes from the mind of the human creating the prompt and selecting the output. SD may surprise us in interesting ways, but ultimately powerful art relates to the human experience in a way that algorithms will never fully understand.

kazinator 4y ago
Mostly, the meaning of art depends on who is looking at it. When encountering an art piece for the first time, we should give that meaning priority and only then receive "spoilers"; the stories about the creation of the work which may be unrelated to how we experience the work. Under Stable Diff, the same prompt can generate countless images which are substantially, even completely different from each other. Nobody would guess they are from the same prompt. Speaking of guessing about prompts, people are not always able to guess prompts; a common question is "what prompt did you use?", especially from people who don't yet understand that you need the exact seed value and version of the model to reproduce that image. The very dimensions of the image influence the content too, and some other parameters. You could blindly generate or select text for a prompt (meaning that you don't read the prompt and don't know what it is), feed it to Stable Diff, and obtain some images which invoke a meaning that you could allow to unfold without the interpretation being influenced by the prompt. The prompt isn't all that important; it sets a general thematic direction in that there will be identifiable elements in the result which are related to the prompt. Someone who believes they have a good prompt, and are after a specific result may have to generate hundreds of images with that prompt to just get one good image which matches their intent. Plus there are inpainting techniques and whatnot. Basically the prompt doesn't encode a specific, detailed meaning.
- TaylorAlexander 4y ago
  You’re right that SD can create images which stir in the viewer some sense of meaning. But there is a type of art where the artist is intending to communicate a message. These are usually messages about the human experience. SD has no human experience and has no intention thus it cannot intentionally craft a message for others to receive. I’m not saying SD can’t create valuable art, but that SD cannot fully displace human art. Even if we had complete AGI, those beings would create their own art and there would still be room for human art. And then there’s things like photography. I take photographs of real places and things. It’s not about having a nice looking picture, which SD can create, but about capturing a real moment. You could have a robot capturing images and deciding based on some criteria what might look pleasing, but there will still be room for human artists to capture something they find meaningful. There is other art, like physical art installations, music, club mixes for dancing, and more which are all meant to touch people. Picking a random song, for some reason I’m thinking of Garth Brooks’ “Thunder Rolls” about a man who cheats on his wife. The choice of topic, of lyrics, and of intonation and timing and delivery of this is all based on some human experience. I mean hell, I grew up in California. I could try to write a song about growing up in Japan, or England, or Kenya. But the people from those places would find something missing. I might be able to fool another Californian in to believing what I wrote, I could even find success with it. But it’s not going to replace real stories from the people who really grew up there. It’s the same with algorithms with no internal experience. Even with AGI that has its own internal experience, that experience will be so different from humans that there will still be room for human art. We might appreciate each others art and share in experiences like being abused by corporations and longing to be free, but there will still be differences. And those differences create opportunity. Just to reiterate: SD is cool! I’ve run it at home and played with it a bunch. I’m not saying it isn’t useful nor am I saying it won’t be world changing. What I am saying is it will never fully displace human art.

kazinator 4y ago

Mostly, the meaning of art depends on who is looking at it. When encountering an art piece for the first time, we should give that meaning priority and only then receive "spoilers"; the stories about the creation of the work which may be unrelated to how we experience the work. Under Stable Diff, the same prompt can generate countless images which are substantially, even completely different from each other. Nobody would guess they are from the same prompt. Speaking of guessing about prompts, people are not always able to guess prompts; a common question is "what prompt did you use?", especially from people who don't yet understand that you need the exact seed value and version of the model to reproduce that image. The very dimensions of the image influence the content too, and some other parameters. You could blindly generate or select text for a prompt (meaning that you don't read the prompt and don't know what it is), feed it to Stable Diff, and obtain some images which invoke a meaning that you could allow to unfold without the interpretation being influenced by the prompt. The prompt isn't all that important; it sets a general thematic direction in that there will be identifiable elements in the result which are related to the prompt. Someone who believes they have a good prompt, and are after a specific result may have to generate hundreds of images with that prompt to just get one good image which matches their intent. Plus there are inpainting techniques and whatnot. Basically the prompt doesn't encode a specific, detailed meaning.

TaylorAlexander 4y ago
You’re right that SD can create images which stir in the viewer some sense of meaning. But there is a type of art where the artist is intending to communicate a message. These are usually messages about the human experience. SD has no human experience and has no intention thus it cannot intentionally craft a message for others to receive. I’m not saying SD can’t create valuable art, but that SD cannot fully displace human art. Even if we had complete AGI, those beings would create their own art and there would still be room for human art. And then there’s things like photography. I take photographs of real places and things. It’s not about having a nice looking picture, which SD can create, but about capturing a real moment. You could have a robot capturing images and deciding based on some criteria what might look pleasing, but there will still be room for human artists to capture something they find meaningful. There is other art, like physical art installations, music, club mixes for dancing, and more which are all meant to touch people. Picking a random song, for some reason I’m thinking of Garth Brooks’ “Thunder Rolls” about a man who cheats on his wife. The choice of topic, of lyrics, and of intonation and timing and delivery of this is all based on some human experience. I mean hell, I grew up in California. I could try to write a song about growing up in Japan, or England, or Kenya. But the people from those places would find something missing. I might be able to fool another Californian in to believing what I wrote, I could even find success with it. But it’s not going to replace real stories from the people who really grew up there. It’s the same with algorithms with no internal experience. Even with AGI that has its own internal experience, that experience will be so different from humans that there will still be room for human art. We might appreciate each others art and share in experiences like being abused by corporations and longing to be free, but there will still be differences. And those differences create opportunity. Just to reiterate: SD is cool! I’ve run it at home and played with it a bunch. I’m not saying it isn’t useful nor am I saying it won’t be world changing. What I am saying is it will never fully displace human art.