4 ms·

This is like a painter lamenting the invention of the camera because it takes away their ability to enjoy realist paintings. Now we laud photographer’s choices

This is like a painter lamenting the invention of the camera because it takes away their ability to enjoy realist paintings. Now we laud photographer’s choices and denigrate the ones made by folks producing AI images. DALL-E is the disposable camera of AI images. There are plenty of artists working with more complex tool chains that take lots of effort and energy to create, and form their own type of AI art.

skepticATX 3y ago
Photography still takes a ton of skill though. It's still ultimately a human creation. AI art is the antithesis of this.
- MiiMe19 3y ago
  I think that if photography takes skill compared to painting, then AI art takes skill compared to photography. Just different skills.
- vidarh 3y ago
  Like with photography, you can put in zero effort, or you can spend hours, days, weeks tweaking details. Some people just churn out images they happen to like from low-effort prompts, some people fine-tune their own models to get just the look they want.
- eightysixfour 3y ago
  This is what painters said about photographers. Low quality photography is not elevated to the status of art. Low quality AI generations are not elevated to the status of art. The actual art will be made by people with something to say or show and it will take energy and effort - it won’t be made by typing your idea into DALL-E, it’ll happen with complex workflows on fine-tuned models. It is just another tool with different strengths, weaknesses, and constraints.
  - skepticATX 3y ago
    > it won’t be made by typing your idea into DALL-E, it’ll happen with complex workflows on fine-tuned models. I'm not convinced that this is what will happen long-term, but if it is, I'd completely agree that it's a new art form.
- op00to 3y ago
  Nah, it really doesn’t take skill. My 4 year old takes photographs all the time.
  - vidarh 3y ago
    And of course that is a frequent criticism of some other types of art too. E.g. my son loves art, but gets exasperated at anything remotely abstract. Part of my enjoyment of taking him to art exhibitions is things like when he walked past a Picasso with a look of utter disdain and loud audible huff. Or the conversations we had about Matisse's sculptures, or the paper cutouts from his later years. (I don't really like Matisse either - the thing I enjoy most of the visual experiences of the Matisse museum in Nice is the olive garden, despite the total lack of intent behind how the tree-branches grow)
    - op00to 3y ago
      I don’t appreciate my kids pictures, but he seems to get some sort of enjoyment out of the act of creation. I think art is based on the intention of the creator and not the viewer.
      - vidarh 3y ago
        I think it's fine for it to be either, as long as we recognize that unless the creator tells us their intent, our interpretation is just a interpretation and may or may not even intersect with theirs. My son is 14 now, and draws plenty of things I enjoy for their actual appearance, but I know most of them are scribbles or practice to him, and I don't try to analyze them for intent that I know usually isn't there. Meanwhile, two of his pictures from when he was smaller that I know he did with intent, because he told us, and we wrote it down, are scribbles to me. Shapeless blobs. One of them I quite enjoy on a visual level, but while to him it was a fox, to me it is a red swirl that while visually pleasing in no way is anything like a fox. While I wouldn't have it on the wall if it wasn't my son's, his intent behind it does not make it better. The other is hideous, but his intent was to paint his mum and me, abd so I love it. For that one the intent is what gives it value to me. That is a rare exception. But only because he told us, and because of the emotional value of that. He could've given us any random painting and said the same thing, and it's value would be the same. The "art" in that instance was his statement. I also know from discussing his drawings with him, that whether he enjoyed a given drawing or I enjoyed seeing it, often correlates poorly - many of his that I enjoy are things he dismisses completely for reasons that does not affect my enjoyment of them at all.
- pcthrowaway 3y ago
  ...until all photography is AI-enhanced also https://www.theverge.com/2023/3/13/23637401/samsung-fake-moon-photos-ai-galaxy-s21-s23-ultra https://www.theverge.com/2023/3/13/23637401/samsung-fake-moo...
stonedge 3y ago
Anytime I see a photo taken on actual film, even though it's been digitized for posting online, there's a visceral reaction of beauty. To you point of DALL-E being the disposable camera, I feel those images are in fact "disposable". I feel nothing.
- eightysixfour 3y ago
  I don’t really buy your claim that you have a “visceral” reaction to every image you see captured on actual film. Ignoring the oddity of that statement, even if you did, I’m not sure why what you feel is supposed to determine what is or isn’t art.
- tasuki 3y ago
  Are you sure you can recognise it?
asadotzler 3y ago
The rudimentary knobs on generative AI tools almost guarantee low quality output but they can do it with such speed and in such volume that trained artists are concerned it will overwhelm the market. Yes, photography was similar in how it overwhelmed painting, but the difference is that photography, from day one, offered a gloriously rich set of tools for making pictures while DALL-E is a peg-board toddler toy by comparison and the results speak for themselves. Just compare the first few years of photography to the middling pablum we have that's spit out from these generative AI models. Despite the models stealing the entire history of world art and putting all of that at the fingertips of untrained artists, the results are still embarrassingly naive and mostly boring. The reason is that art isn't about the tools, it's about the mind and people with no training and no experience in art cannot make consistently good art without training, even with tools that let them create sophisticated collages of other people's real art.

skepticATX 3y ago

Photography still takes a ton of skill though. It's still ultimately a human creation. AI art is the antithesis of this.

MiiMe19 3y ago
I think that if photography takes skill compared to painting, then AI art takes skill compared to photography. Just different skills.
vidarh 3y ago
Like with photography, you can put in zero effort, or you can spend hours, days, weeks tweaking details. Some people just churn out images they happen to like from low-effort prompts, some people fine-tune their own models to get just the look they want.
eightysixfour 3y ago
This is what painters said about photographers. Low quality photography is not elevated to the status of art. Low quality AI generations are not elevated to the status of art. The actual art will be made by people with something to say or show and it will take energy and effort - it won’t be made by typing your idea into DALL-E, it’ll happen with complex workflows on fine-tuned models. It is just another tool with different strengths, weaknesses, and constraints.
- skepticATX 3y ago
  > it won’t be made by typing your idea into DALL-E, it’ll happen with complex workflows on fine-tuned models. I'm not convinced that this is what will happen long-term, but if it is, I'd completely agree that it's a new art form.
op00to 3y ago
Nah, it really doesn’t take skill. My 4 year old takes photographs all the time.
- vidarh 3y ago
  And of course that is a frequent criticism of some other types of art too. E.g. my son loves art, but gets exasperated at anything remotely abstract. Part of my enjoyment of taking him to art exhibitions is things like when he walked past a Picasso with a look of utter disdain and loud audible huff. Or the conversations we had about Matisse's sculptures, or the paper cutouts from his later years. (I don't really like Matisse either - the thing I enjoy most of the visual experiences of the Matisse museum in Nice is the olive garden, despite the total lack of intent behind how the tree-branches grow)
  - op00to 3y ago
    I don’t appreciate my kids pictures, but he seems to get some sort of enjoyment out of the act of creation. I think art is based on the intention of the creator and not the viewer.
    - vidarh 3y ago
      I think it's fine for it to be either, as long as we recognize that unless the creator tells us their intent, our interpretation is just a interpretation and may or may not even intersect with theirs. My son is 14 now, and draws plenty of things I enjoy for their actual appearance, but I know most of them are scribbles or practice to him, and I don't try to analyze them for intent that I know usually isn't there. Meanwhile, two of his pictures from when he was smaller that I know he did with intent, because he told us, and we wrote it down, are scribbles to me. Shapeless blobs. One of them I quite enjoy on a visual level, but while to him it was a fox, to me it is a red swirl that while visually pleasing in no way is anything like a fox. While I wouldn't have it on the wall if it wasn't my son's, his intent behind it does not make it better. The other is hideous, but his intent was to paint his mum and me, abd so I love it. For that one the intent is what gives it value to me. That is a rare exception. But only because he told us, and because of the emotional value of that. He could've given us any random painting and said the same thing, and it's value would be the same. The "art" in that instance was his statement. I also know from discussing his drawings with him, that whether he enjoyed a given drawing or I enjoyed seeing it, often correlates poorly - many of his that I enjoy are things he dismisses completely for reasons that does not affect my enjoyment of them at all.
pcthrowaway 3y ago
...until all photography is AI-enhanced also https://www.theverge.com/2023/3/13/23637401/samsung-fake-moon-photos-ai-galaxy-s21-s23-ultra https://www.theverge.com/2023/3/13/23637401/samsung-fake-moo...

stonedge 3y ago

Anytime I see a photo taken on actual film, even though it's been digitized for posting online, there's a visceral reaction of beauty. To you point of DALL-E being the disposable camera, I feel those images are in fact "disposable". I feel nothing.

eightysixfour 3y ago
I don’t really buy your claim that you have a “visceral” reaction to every image you see captured on actual film. Ignoring the oddity of that statement, even if you did, I’m not sure why what you feel is supposed to determine what is or isn’t art.
tasuki 3y ago
Are you sure you can recognise it?

asadotzler 3y ago

The rudimentary knobs on generative AI tools almost guarantee low quality output but they can do it with such speed and in such volume that trained artists are concerned it will overwhelm the market. Yes, photography was similar in how it overwhelmed painting, but the difference is that photography, from day one, offered a gloriously rich set of tools for making pictures while DALL-E is a peg-board toddler toy by comparison and the results speak for themselves. Just compare the first few years of photography to the middling pablum we have that's spit out from these generative AI models. Despite the models stealing the entire history of world art and putting all of that at the fingertips of untrained artists, the results are still embarrassingly naive and mostly boring. The reason is that art isn't about the tools, it's about the mind and people with no training and no experience in art cannot make consistently good art without training, even with tools that let them create sophisticated collages of other people's real art.