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> And, through the same lens, maybe human-created art is more interesting because it is real. Conversations I have with people in real life almost always come

> And, through the same lens, maybe human-created art is more interesting because it is real. Conversations I have with people in real life almost always come back to this point. Most people find AI stuff novel, but few find it particularly interesting on an artistic level. I only really hear about people being ecstatic about AI online, by people who are, for lack of a better term, really online, and who do not have the skills, know-how, or ability, to make art themselves. I always find the breathless joy that some people express at this stuff with confusion. To me, the very instant someone mentions "AI generated" I just instantly find it un-interesting artistically. It's not the same as photoshop or using digital art suites. It's AI generated. Insisting on the bare minimum human involvement as a feature is just a non-starter for me if something is presented as art. I'll wait to see if the utopian vision people have for this stuff comes to fruition. But I have enough years of seeing breathless positivity for some new tech curdle into resignation that it's ended up as ad focused, bland, MBA driven, slop, that I'm not very optimistic.

vouaobrasil 2y ago
I think the main point is that art is interesting precisely because it can transmit human experience. It's communication from another human being. AI "media" completely lacks that. It's more of an expression of the machine-soul, which is tempting us to continue its development until it takes over.
- polishdude20 2y ago
  For me, art is more interesting, moving, soul connecting the more it is made by less and less people. Art by one person gives me a unique perspective to the artists mind. AI generated art is the opposite of being created by one person. It's an amalgamation of millions or billions of people's input. To me that's uninteresting, not novel and not mind-expanding at all.
visarga 2y ago
> Insisting on the bare minimum human involvement as a feature is just a non starter for me if something is presented as art You can make the guidance as superficial or detailed as you like. Input detailed descriptions, use real images as reference, you can spend a minute or a day on it. If you prompt "cute dog" you should expect generic outputs. If you write half a screen with detailed instructions, you can expect it to be mostly your contribution. It's the old "you're holding it wrong" problem. BTW, try to input an image in chatGPT or Claude and ask for a description, you will be amazed how detailed it can get.
- beezlebroxxxxxx 2y ago
  You need an image for an ad. You write a brief and send it to an artist who follows your brief and makes the image for you. You make more detailed briefs, or you make generic briefs. You receive an image. Regardless, did you make that image or just get a response to your brief? You want a painting of your dog. You send the painter dozens of photos of your dog. You describe your dog in rapturous, incredible, detail. You receive a painting in response. Did you make that painting? Were you the artist in any normal parlance? When you use chatGPT or Claude you're signing up to getting/receiving the image generated as a response to your prompt, not creating that image. You're involvement is always lessened. You might claim you made that image, but then you would be like a company claiming they made the response to their brief, or the dog owner insisting they were the painter, which everyone would consider nonsensical if not plain wrong. Are they collaborators? Maybe. But the degree of collaboration in making the image is very very small.
  - visarga 2y ago
    > Did you make that painting? Were you the artist in any normal parlance? The symphony conductor just waves her hands reading the score, does she make music? The orchestra makes all the sounds. She just prompts them. Same for movie director.
    - maroonblazer 2y ago
      The analogy isn't quite right. The conductor and director spend days collaborating with the symphony and the actors/crew. Parent's example is them literally prompting - via a creative brief - the artist or agency.
    - chefandy 2y ago
      The symphony conductor gets credit for being the conductor-- not for being Beethoven. A film director has a thousand times more influence on their final product than a conductor has on theirs, and they still don't try to take credit for the writing, costume, set design, acting, score, special effects, etc. etc. etc. I've yet to see stable diffusion spit out a list of credits after generating an image.
schmidtleonard 2y ago
> "AI generated" I just instantly find it un-interesting artistically How familiar are you with what is possible and how much human effort goes towards achieving it? https://civitai.com/images https://civitai.com/images Photography, digital painting, 3D rendering -- these all went through a phase of being panned as "not real art" before they were accepted, but they were all eventually accepted and they all turned out to have their own type of merit. It will be the same for AI tools.
- jsheard 2y ago
  If I were trying to convince people that AI art is interesting and creative then I would not choose to highlight the site dedicated to strip-mining the creativity of non-AI artists, to produce models which regurgitate their ideas ad infinitum.
  - spookie 2y ago
    Not to mention extremely suspicious checkpoints that produce imagery of extremely young women. Or in others words women with extremely child like features in ways kids should not be presented.
- consteval 2y ago
  I would say the difference here is with these: > Photography, digital painting, 3D rendering You still make these. You sit down and form the art. When you use AI you don't make anything, you ask someone else to make it, i.e. you've commissioned it. It doesn't really matter if I sit down for a portrait and describe in excruciating detail what I want, I'm still not a painter. It doesn't even matter, in my eyes, how good or how shit the art is. It can be the best art ever, but the only reason art, as a whole, has value is because of the human aspect. Picasso famously said he spent his childhood learning how to paint professionally, and then spent the rest of his life learning how to paint like a child. And I think that really encapsulates the meaning of art. It's not so much about the end product, it's about the author's intention to get there. Anybody can paint like a child, very few have the inclination and inspiration to think of that. You can see this a lot in contemporary art. People say it looks really easy. Sure, it looks easy now, because you've already seen it and didn't come up with it. The coming up with it part is the art, not the thing.
xanderlewis 2y ago
> I only really hear about people being ecstatic about AI online, by people who are, for lack of a better term, really online, and who do not have the skills, know-how, or ability, to make art themselves. Well put. This is also my experience. And I'm no AI doom-monger or neo-Luddite.
mattgreenrocks 2y ago
> I only really hear about people being ecstatic about AI online, by people who are, for lack of a better term, really online, and who do not have the skills, know-how, or ability, to make art themselves. Yes, I've noticed this. The people who are excited about it usually come off as opportunistic (hence the "breathless joy"), and not really interested in letting whatever art/craft they want to make deeply change them. They just want the recognition of being able to make the thing without the formative work. (I hesitate to point this out, anticipating allegations of elitism.) Plus, really online people tend to dominate online discussions, giving the impression that the public will be happy to consume only AI generated things. Then again, the public is happy to consume social media engagement crap, so I'm very curious what the revealed preference is here. The value in learning this stuff is that it changes you. I'll be forever indebted to my guitar teacher partially because he teaches me to do the work, and that evidence of doing the work is manifest readily, and to play the long, long game.
aliasxneo 2y ago
I think a key piece here is that I often consume art from the mindset of, "What was the creator thinking?" What is their worldview? What social situations pushed them to express things in this way? For video, it's possible AI can feed into the overall creative pipeline, but I don't see it replacing the human touch. If anything, it opens up the industry to less-technical people who can spend more time focusing on the human touch. Even if the next big film has AI generation in it, if it came from someone with a fascinating story and creative insight, I'll still likely appreciate it.
nitwit005 2y ago
People find even randomly generated stuff artistic. I remember the San Francisco Chronicle review of an art piece, which was random cracks in rock caused by heating. I sort of wondered how you could claim to be the creator of the art when your kiln did all the work, but I suppose they did the important labor of putting it in there.
wraptile 2y ago
I feel the opposite. I don't care how the sausage was made as long as it's a good sausage. Art was never about the creation process. In fact, before the internet most would never see the process at all. Just go to your local museum and you'll never know how most of pieces were made and that's a good thing. Art is all about the effect on the viewer.
- nessbot 2y ago
  This requires such a shallow definition for the word "art." I think you're more just talking about images. Art is about more, including the process.
  - wraptile 2y ago
    Nah, meta-art is not that interesting tbh and the meta art culture is quite shallow in itself. Real art has always been about sharing an experience or an idea with the viewer and the production is completely irrelevant for this. In other words if I take an AI drawing and lie the end user would still have the same experience as if I was telling the truth. My lie would only affect the meta culture not the art piece or viewers experience.
Auracle 2y ago
> I only really hear about people being ecstatic about AI online, by people who are, for lack of a better term, really online, and who do not have the skills, know-how, or ability, to make art themselves. I generate a lot of art using Stable Diffusion/Flux of my spouse, kids, friends, etc. I was a professional photographer for nearly 10 years - I quit just last year.

vouaobrasil 2y ago

I think the main point is that art is interesting precisely because it can transmit human experience. It's communication from another human being. AI "media" completely lacks that. It's more of an expression of the machine-soul, which is tempting us to continue its development until it takes over.

polishdude20 2y ago
For me, art is more interesting, moving, soul connecting the more it is made by less and less people. Art by one person gives me a unique perspective to the artists mind. AI generated art is the opposite of being created by one person. It's an amalgamation of millions or billions of people's input. To me that's uninteresting, not novel and not mind-expanding at all.

visarga 2y ago

> Insisting on the bare minimum human involvement as a feature is just a non starter for me if something is presented as art You can make the guidance as superficial or detailed as you like. Input detailed descriptions, use real images as reference, you can spend a minute or a day on it. If you prompt "cute dog" you should expect generic outputs. If you write half a screen with detailed instructions, you can expect it to be mostly your contribution. It's the old "you're holding it wrong" problem. BTW, try to input an image in chatGPT or Claude and ask for a description, you will be amazed how detailed it can get.

beezlebroxxxxxx 2y ago
You need an image for an ad. You write a brief and send it to an artist who follows your brief and makes the image for you. You make more detailed briefs, or you make generic briefs. You receive an image. Regardless, did you make that image or just get a response to your brief? You want a painting of your dog. You send the painter dozens of photos of your dog. You describe your dog in rapturous, incredible, detail. You receive a painting in response. Did you make that painting? Were you the artist in any normal parlance? When you use chatGPT or Claude you're signing up to getting/receiving the image generated as a response to your prompt, not creating that image. You're involvement is always lessened. You might claim you made that image, but then you would be like a company claiming they made the response to their brief, or the dog owner insisting they were the painter, which everyone would consider nonsensical if not plain wrong. Are they collaborators? Maybe. But the degree of collaboration in making the image is very very small.
- visarga 2y ago
  > Did you make that painting? Were you the artist in any normal parlance? The symphony conductor just waves her hands reading the score, does she make music? The orchestra makes all the sounds. She just prompts them. Same for movie director.
  - maroonblazer 2y ago
    The analogy isn't quite right. The conductor and director spend days collaborating with the symphony and the actors/crew. Parent's example is them literally prompting - via a creative brief - the artist or agency.
  - chefandy 2y ago
    The symphony conductor gets credit for being the conductor-- not for being Beethoven. A film director has a thousand times more influence on their final product than a conductor has on theirs, and they still don't try to take credit for the writing, costume, set design, acting, score, special effects, etc. etc. etc. I've yet to see stable diffusion spit out a list of credits after generating an image.

schmidtleonard 2y ago

> "AI generated" I just instantly find it un-interesting artistically How familiar are you with what is possible and how much human effort goes towards achieving it? https://civitai.com/images https://civitai.com/images Photography, digital painting, 3D rendering -- these all went through a phase of being panned as "not real art" before they were accepted, but they were all eventually accepted and they all turned out to have their own type of merit. It will be the same for AI tools.

jsheard 2y ago
If I were trying to convince people that AI art is interesting and creative then I would not choose to highlight the site dedicated to strip-mining the creativity of non-AI artists, to produce models which regurgitate their ideas ad infinitum.
- spookie 2y ago
  Not to mention extremely suspicious checkpoints that produce imagery of extremely young women. Or in others words women with extremely child like features in ways kids should not be presented.
consteval 2y ago
I would say the difference here is with these: > Photography, digital painting, 3D rendering You still make these. You sit down and form the art. When you use AI you don't make anything, you ask someone else to make it, i.e. you've commissioned it. It doesn't really matter if I sit down for a portrait and describe in excruciating detail what I want, I'm still not a painter. It doesn't even matter, in my eyes, how good or how shit the art is. It can be the best art ever, but the only reason art, as a whole, has value is because of the human aspect. Picasso famously said he spent his childhood learning how to paint professionally, and then spent the rest of his life learning how to paint like a child. And I think that really encapsulates the meaning of art. It's not so much about the end product, it's about the author's intention to get there. Anybody can paint like a child, very few have the inclination and inspiration to think of that. You can see this a lot in contemporary art. People say it looks really easy. Sure, it looks easy now, because you've already seen it and didn't come up with it. The coming up with it part is the art, not the thing.

xanderlewis 2y ago

mattgreenrocks 2y ago

> I only really hear about people being ecstatic about AI online, by people who are, for lack of a better term, really online, and who do not have the skills, know-how, or ability, to make art themselves. Yes, I've noticed this. The people who are excited about it usually come off as opportunistic (hence the "breathless joy"), and not really interested in letting whatever art/craft they want to make deeply change them. They just want the recognition of being able to make the thing without the formative work. (I hesitate to point this out, anticipating allegations of elitism.) Plus, really online people tend to dominate online discussions, giving the impression that the public will be happy to consume only AI generated things. Then again, the public is happy to consume social media engagement crap, so I'm very curious what the revealed preference is here. The value in learning this stuff is that it changes you. I'll be forever indebted to my guitar teacher partially because he teaches me to do the work, and that evidence of doing the work is manifest readily, and to play the long, long game.

aliasxneo 2y ago

I think a key piece here is that I often consume art from the mindset of, "What was the creator thinking?" What is their worldview? What social situations pushed them to express things in this way? For video, it's possible AI can feed into the overall creative pipeline, but I don't see it replacing the human touch. If anything, it opens up the industry to less-technical people who can spend more time focusing on the human touch. Even if the next big film has AI generation in it, if it came from someone with a fascinating story and creative insight, I'll still likely appreciate it.

nitwit005 2y ago

People find even randomly generated stuff artistic. I remember the San Francisco Chronicle review of an art piece, which was random cracks in rock caused by heating. I sort of wondered how you could claim to be the creator of the art when your kiln did all the work, but I suppose they did the important labor of putting it in there.

wraptile 2y ago

I feel the opposite. I don't care how the sausage was made as long as it's a good sausage. Art was never about the creation process. In fact, before the internet most would never see the process at all. Just go to your local museum and you'll never know how most of pieces were made and that's a good thing. Art is all about the effect on the viewer.

nessbot 2y ago
This requires such a shallow definition for the word "art." I think you're more just talking about images. Art is about more, including the process.
- wraptile 2y ago
  Nah, meta-art is not that interesting tbh and the meta art culture is quite shallow in itself. Real art has always been about sharing an experience or an idea with the viewer and the production is completely irrelevant for this. In other words if I take an AI drawing and lie the end user would still have the same experience as if I was telling the truth. My lie would only affect the meta culture not the art piece or viewers experience.

Auracle 2y ago

> I only really hear about people being ecstatic about AI online, by people who are, for lack of a better term, really online, and who do not have the skills, know-how, or ability, to make art themselves. I generate a lot of art using Stable Diffusion/Flux of my spouse, kids, friends, etc. I was a professional photographer for nearly 10 years - I quit just last year.