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There's literally a saying that explicitly spells out "great artists steal." Art is imitation plus adaptation, and everybody used to know this, artists included
by FeepingCreature 2y ago
There's literally a saying that explicitly spells out "great artists steal." Art is imitation plus adaptation, and everybody used to know this, artists included, until they all spontaneously forgot about a year ago, around the time when the artificial imitation machines started becoming commercial threats.
- seanhunter 2y agoYes. That saying probably[1] started life with the quote from TS Elliot, who said "Immature poets imitate; mature poets steal; bad poets deface what they take, and good poets make it into something better, or at least something different." The composer Igor Stravinsky "took" that and changed it to “A good composer does not imitate; he steals.” and after that quote was further changed in the LaTex documentation (believe it or not), Steve Jobs took it and changed it to be Pablo Picasso saying "Lesser artists copy, great artists steal". It doesn't seem there's any evidence of Picasso saying it although Steve Jobs said a lot that Picasso said it. [1] https://quoteinvestigator.com/2013/03/06/artists-steal/ https://quoteinvestigator.com/2013/03/06/artists-steal/
- richard_todd 2y agoIt’s amusing that the sequence of events in that story makes a great example of prior art getting regurgitated and altered by humans. If he were an AI bot, we would say Steve Jobs “hallucinated” a fact about Picasso.
- chx 2y agoYeah. Still there is a human mind and effort between the original and the copy or we wouldn't care that much. That's the fundamental difference. Also https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40475364 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40475364
- FeepingCreature 2y agoSure so call it dehumanized art, but don't call it stolen art just because that sounds more severe. It's just the '24 version of "You wouldn't download a car."