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Most of contemporary art is unaffected by the current AI craze. On one hand, the art world has been steadily pushing boundaries since the 19th century, and com
by smokel 3y ago
Most of contemporary art is unaffected by the current AI craze.
On one hand, the art world has been steadily pushing boundaries since the 19th century, and computer technology is just one blip on the vast radar of interesting subjects (other fashionable ones being gender, colonialist history, social practices, and physical properties of paint).
On the other hand, art is mostly created by artists who were professionally trained as artists, i.e. not as scientists. Knowledge about computer technology is typically rather limited with both artists and collectors, leading to fairly bland stuff, or properly misguided hypes such as NFTs.
- Mtinie 3y ago> Most of contemporary art is unaffected by the current AI craze. The illustrators and digital artists I know would generally disagree. As an abstract painter, I agree with you. Significant genre specificity.
- cageface 3y agoMost of the AI generated "art" I've seen I'd classify as more craft than actual art. Art is supposed to express something and communicate and so far I haven't seen any AI art that really moves me or says anything insightful about experience or existence. When I scroll through the latest highly rated work on Midjourney, for example, I'm reminded mostly of tacky poster shop stuff.
- Mtinie 3y agoThat’s fair but I don’t understand the relevance to my comment. Illustrators and graphic artists are in a hard spot given the commercial work they do. I’ve worked in this industry in the past and can attest that many of the contracts I executed on cared less about the originality of the output and more about the specifics of the prompt. Generative AI is enough for a lot of clients, if the price is right, even when the output is subjectively bad.
- cageface 3y agoYes sure the kind of art that pays the rent for commercial artists is definitely seriously threatened by AI. I'm inclined to say that AI companies should have to pay for the training data they use although that does seem to mean only companies with billion dollar warchests can train AIs.
- smokel 3y agoI totally agree. There are some confusing differences in definitions of art :) I feel sorry for the illustrators, and wonder how they'll be able to sustain their creative passions.
- numpad0 3y agoI doubt illustrators and digital artists(and their patrons) actually disagree to that line, they just hate AI image generator outputs and want them taken down. The amount of unintended strong negative sentiment an art incites isn't a proxy indication of its artistic value, I mean, I don't get why it's assumed to be one, left and right.
- Mtinie 3y ago> On the other hand, art is mostly created by artists who were professionally trained as artists, i.e. not as scientists. Knowledge about computer technology is typically rather limited with both artists and collectors, leading to fairly bland stuff, or properly misguided hypes such as NFTs. Having reread this section, and considered it, I’m going to hard disagree. You are severely underrating the technical capabilities of artists. Historical and contemporary.
- smokel 3y agoNote the "mostly" and "typically". There are some amazing artists who really know what they're doing. The chances of an artist having a PhD in machine learning and a masters at Goldsmiths are statistically speaking very low.