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GenAI Art Is the Least Imaginative Use of AI Imaginable

138 points by jebarker 2y ago

bbor 2y ago
I’m a huge fan of this person if they’re behind the ocarina app (God, what nostalgia!) but I found this piece somewhat philosophically empty. They acknowledge that they don’t have any answers on broader philosophy of aesthetics questions (which is good, very few do), but give in to cynical rejection regardless. Namely: …they purport to be tools for creating art, but by making every effort to dismiss and eradicate the process of learning to expressive ourselves, what they are actually creating is a new generation of consumers… I am not philosophically in opposition to generative AI, even for artistic creation. For one, I don’t know what “AI making art” evens means at this point; I barely, if at all, understand “humans making art”. I am inclined to say, therefore, “there should be room for that, too”. At the same time, I am committed to preserving and protecting the room for humans to labor profusely, unenjoyably, illogically to creatively express themselves… “There should be room for that, too” should apply both ways. This cynicism ultimately shows a lack of imagination, IMHO. If use of generative AI is just consumption, then why are there people held in high regard in those communities for producing particularly great stuff? Why is some output more popular than the rest? The simple answer is that humans are far from being out of the loop in art creation. AI can clearly generate aesthetic material based on some inputs, reason about the meaning of a piece given a description, and maybe take some intuitive guesses on overall aesthetic “quality” or “appeal” — but all of that is a) piecemeal and b) not nearly as sophisticated as human engagement with aesthetic value. Some would say it’s one of our most fundamental talents, and I would say it’s at the core of morality, happiness, etc! The robots are not replacing human artists any time soon in my opinion, and I think it’s a plain fact that Suno alone is not up to the task. As more of a side note, I don’t love how they engage with effort and aesthetics (/value more generally, as in mountain climbing). Yes, some people like some activities that inherently have arbitrary amounts of effort attached — the people who beat dark souls using a drum kit or a banana as their controller come to mind! But that kind of leisure activity is neither exhaustive nor universally-appealing. I guess no one wants to do things that are so trivial that they are instant, but beyond that there’s a huge range. Musicians in particular employ a plethora of newfangled tools, both to increase output (eg virtual instruments, autotune, smart composition software) and to enable entirely new modes of production (eg loop pedals). As they so poignantly say: there should be room for both ;)
moffkalast 2y ago
> "What we need is a computer that isn’t labor-saving, but which increases the work for us to do." — John Cage Arguably both are needed. The kind that replaces the mindless repetitive work (e.g. dishwasher, roomba) so we have more time to focus on the kind that lets us do more than before (e.g. an orbital satelite, 3D printer). There are only 24 hours in a day and you can't do more without doing less first.
- portaouflop 2y ago
  Inventions like the dishwasher for domestic use never really led to meaningful work reduction for the people (women) doing this kind of work.
  - skybrian 2y ago
    Seems like you can pretty easily use more dishes with less effort? If you end up spending more time on other chores, that's up to you.
    - asdff 2y ago
      Having lived in apartments with and without dishwashers its not as much of a time savings as you might realize. the dishwasher needs a degree of maintenance. Dishes have to be loaded precariously in a way to effectively wash them from the sprayer jets. Some dishes have to be washed by hand still. Everything needs rinsing and scraping. Its a modern dishwasher so that means its too weak to dry dishes on dry cycle to skirt energy efficiency standards, so dishes are then loaded into the rack by the sink to dry. and the whole cycle takes like 2 and a half hours. And I'm wondering why I'm not saving much time and its because the time savings isn't really significant to begin with. Coupled with the fact that when I was hand washing, I'd actually wash dishes as I generated them during cooking. It only takes me about 30 seconds to wash a plate or pan with sink and sponge and soap. I could have most dishes done before dinner was even served saved for the plates and silverware it was eaten with and maybe the last pan in the process, maybe 30 seconds work hardly less effort than the act of rinsing and scraping before the dishes go into the dishwasher. All that begin said I still use it, but I probably am not saving much, if any time, with the new rituals it requires.
cozzyd 2y ago
it's pointed out in the story, but Ge Wang is the author of the ChucK strongly timed programming language (which has the famous upchuck operator...)
gedy 2y ago
I'm what people who know me call a "creative person", but generative AI for images and especially music really is a terrific tool. > What if the point of art is that we actually make it? It seems the author's point is the struggle and effort is what makes it worthwhile, but I kind of disagree. I used to pour a ton of time, effort, and heart into making something I wanted to see or hear, but unfortunately the results weren't particularly memorable (for me or others). The effort seemed to erase a lot of the novelty and interest for me as well. Gen AI has made creating a lot more enjoyable for me, even if much of it is curation of trial and error. Most of the music I listen to in past year is created in Suno (my own), and it's a lot better than my musical efforts in the past.
- bobxmax 2y ago
  it's a great tool if you aren't an ornery artist who refuses to adapt to new ways and means.
  - spencerflem 2y ago
    most ai art is bland and worthless and has no meaning behind it. im not postmodern enough to say its all the struggle, but regardless of if AI us used or not I expect the artist to have some idea of what they're trying to do or say, and typing a sentence into a box ain't it
    - Filligree 2y ago
      95% of everything is shit. That doesn’t make the remaining five percent worthless.
      - spencerflem 2y ago
        i would prefer instead of an ai stock photo, an ugly unprofessional doodle. that would tell me something about the person drawing it, how they see the world, and if its bad at least its human. ai stock photos also tell me something about the person making it and not much about it is endearing
skybrian 2y ago
> Increases the work for us to do This sounds like a video game to me, and we do have lots of them. How should generated AI images be presented? I think of it as wandering in Borge's library of babel. Maybe it looks like Google's image search, or like Minecraft? Unfortunately, current AI image generators aren't fast enough to do it interactively.
- Kuinox 2y ago
  Some current gen ai can generate images, in real time, how that's not enough interactive ?
  - skybrian 2y ago
    Can they fill the screen with 20 variations nearly instantly? If so, I'd like to see that.
    - Jordan-117 2y ago
      There are already efficient models that can generate single images in real time as fast as you can type the prompt. I wonder if you could tweak this approach to instead generate a page full of static thumbnails on submitting a query (using different seeds for each result), and then upscale the desired image when clicked.
      - Filligree 2y ago
        It won’t be the same image once you upscale it. Moreover, while the fast generators do exist, they’re lower quality. That doesn’t mean just resolution—it also means comprehension and prompt understanding, so upon running the same prompt through a better AI you’ll get something entirely different.
    - TZubiri 2y ago
      So we experience a marvellous breakthrough in technology and your big complaint is that it's not fast or voluminous enough, and your big idea is to make (demand) more of it? There's million of useful stuff you can create with what you are given. Do not chose to complain about what you have and demand more.
CephalopodMD 2y ago
I feel the same way about using nfts to sell jpegs on the internet
- noman-land 2y ago
  What about NFTs as registrations for domain names a la ens.domains?
  - spencerflem 2y ago
    much better, for sure. one of very few real valuable use cases i can see for NFTs
    - noman-land 2y ago
      Love you.
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
  - packetlost 2y ago
    I think there are some good uses for NFTs (and other token stuff), and this is one. The stupid jpegs thing is just... uhg, it's dumb and it's sad that that is where the technology went.
  - talldayo 2y ago
    In principle it's less offensive than the "tulip mania" enthusiasm most people share, but it still suffers for the same reasons. Additionally, people simply might not care enough to register with NFTs - lord knows I don't care enough, and I'm one of the few people capable of doing it. But I'm not worried about getting my domain revoked so... what's the point? To spend money on a vanity label that a grand total of maybe 4 people will ever use? ENS will inevitably butt up against the cryptocurrency problem of having few legitimate use cases and even fewer legitimate users. Outside the e/acc Twitter circles and lolcow online harassment forums, the demand for such an "uncensorable internet" is almost nonexistent.
TZubiri 2y ago
Other unimaginative pitches I hear every day: - We will use LLMs to create/summarize documents. - "You are StartupAI, an AI that is an expert in X and answers questions about X" - An LLM that I can replace an employee with and fire them. As with any revolution, we get to revise a whole generation of software and see how we can retrofit or rethink the solution/product. If you seek to build something novel, we will have to actually be creative, not minimally apply the technology to immediately extract value.
jedberg 2y ago
Of all the things I do with AI, art is probably the one I do the most. When you create written content on the internet, "the algorithm" rewards you more if you add art to it. I am not an artist, but I can write good. So when I'm done writing, I pop over to my AI image generator, describe a few images I want, pop them into the post, and away I go! And then boom, greater engagement. As an added bonus, I don't have to worry about copyright, because at the moment copyright law considers me the creator if I modify it or the AI (which makes it uncopywriteable). So I'm in the clear there (for now).
- andrepd 2y ago
  Isn't it amazing when a good chunk of monetary incentive in the present day is directed towards the terrifying concept of "engagement"?
- Fricken 2y ago
  Once I was an editorial illustrator, and the mantra always was "concept is king". Stick figures are kosher so long as they communicate something. Impressionists emerged following the invention of the camera, as they had no more incentive to pursue realism. I think in the age of AI slop any form of crude image making is better so long as it's human. Scribble something out with crayons. Shape an animal out of a slice of bread, post a pic. It's all legit now, technical art abilities mean nothing. To impress you actually have to have a good idea.
  - perching_aix 2y ago
    This is actually reflected even in the AI slop. Most pictures look broadly appealing and correct, but very generic. So to draw a crowd it has to stand out some other way - be it the lighting, the colors, the materials, the framing, the poses, the setting, or whatever else. They really made me reevaluate what is it that I'm actually looking for and how much I value each of these aspects.
- tspike 2y ago
  Would you consider the images you create to be art?
redeux 2y ago
GenAI is not capable of making art. Self expression is not only inherent in art, it’s essential. What AI does is make pretty pictures, but nothing more. It’s not a tool for making art because it removes the means for artistic expression. It’s possible for someone to make art from GenAI outputs, but that requires taking artistic liberties post generation.
- ZYbCRq22HbJ2y7 2y ago
  > It’s possible for someone to make art from GenAI outputs, but that requires taking artistic liberties post generation. Plenty of people use others' expressions as a form of art, (sharing song lyrics, singing others' songs in the shower, cat memes, and so on).
  - zxvkhkxvdvbdxz 2y ago
    Indeed, one could argue that everything is a remix of pre-existing expressions. This, of course does not rhyme well with current copyright laws. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=coGpmA4saEk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=coGpmA4saEk
- idle_zealot 2y ago
  As far as I understand, art is typically understood to have two components: expression and impression. The creation of something, anything, as a form of self-expression, is considered art. Additionally, though, art is in eyes of the beholder. If a feeling is inspired in someone by the observation of a thing, act, etc, then it becomes art to them, in that moment. Notably, though, it doesn't necessarily make that thing art to anyone else, unless it is curated at which point that curation is a form of expression. These definitions are distinct from the requirements for copyright.
- marssaxman 2y ago
  It's not the AI that makes the art, but the person who tells the AI what to do. A painter friend of mine has gotten into generative AI lately, and the sometimes-pretty, sometimes-intimidating pictures she comes up with sure look like an artistic expression to me. She has a vision of something she wants to see, and she uses tools to bring that vision into reality, just like she does with paint; the new tools just give her new options.
0xcafefood 2y ago
No, Chatbot All The Things is the least imaginative use of "AI." There's even a chatbot to search your Chrome history [1]. Nothing screams solution in search of a problem more than this. [1] https://support.google.com/chrome/a/answer/15248971 https://support.google.com/chrome/a/answer/15248971
- Mistletoe 2y ago
  Google Photos just added this completely subpar feature for how I have to search my photos in the app. -.-
- crucialfelix 2y ago
  Although the chatbot in chrome devtools is really useful. I selected a DOM node and ask "why isn't this visible" and it queried the DOM, css and figured out the height was 0 and explained exactly what lead to it being 0.
  - skydhash 2y ago
    The reason for a DOM node not being visible is either the height/width being 0, its position is out of the viewport, it's behind other nodes or its opacity is 0. And that's basically the same for any layout engine that use node tree. The inspector is so easy to use that using a chatbot for the specified reason is a waste of resources.
    - sadeshmukh 2y ago
      There are so many more layers. Yeah, the height is zero. Why? Turns out the stylesheet styles are getting overridden by some global and import order is off. This is the perfect case for a chatbot that can see what's going on.
      - skydhash 2y ago
        You can see all the styles that are applied to a specific node and their provenance. I believe learning how to properly debug is way more valuable than hoping that an LLM will get it right. And there's no global, and import order is kinda the wrong way to think about it.
crucialfelix 2y ago
> “I am going up to Princeton to start grad school in computer science.” I replied, “I want to build the world’s most advanced automated music composition machine.” > The guitarist studied me for a moment and asked, succinct and earnest, “What’s the point?” Strongly agree. The whole point of music is the process of making it. That doesn't mean we can't repurpose generative systems, hack them until they do something fresh and expressive. Around about the same time (2001) I visited Princeton and gave a presentation of my music generation system built in Super Collider. I jokingly stated that I wanted to eventually just press a button and have it spit out a hit song. Composer Paul Lansky scowled when I said that! I also got a chance to sit in classes with Perry Cook (mentioned in the article) and he was the best professor I've ever seen. Really inspirational.
deleted 2y ago
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Hatchback7599 2y ago
As a software engineer and artist[1], my views on art and generative AI have been evolving. In my opinion, GenAI has revealed that the art isn't primarily in the creation, but in the selection. It used to take incredible talent to create something worth selecting (writing, painting, sculpture, etc), so creation and selection were often so close to be seen as indistinguishable. A technically skilled artist was likely to create something great, because they were likely making high quality selective decisions all along the creation process. So the end result of a gifted writer was probably a high quality work. But now the creation of technically skilled works has become detached from the selection process. Now we're flooded with technically skilled work, but no selection. But the selection process is still critical to make something compelling and innovative. The artist needs to evolve to inject themselves into selective decisions of GenAI, both in the process and in selecting the final result. 1. https://youtu.be/ggRcDQZWD_8?t=1253 https://youtu.be/ggRcDQZWD_8?t=1253
- brulard 2y ago
  Underappreciated comment right there. The idea about selection vs creation was on my mind, but I wasn't able to put the idea into a solid form as you did there. Thanks.
asdasdsddd 2y ago
This is a boomer take. Technology in music has evolved over time and people continue to enjoy old and new music nonetheless, whether it's created from samples on a computer or performed live at a bar, despite the fact that people decry every generation that the next generation's music is not real music.
davely 2y ago
It will take a long time, but I think the ever growing usage of GenAI tools will ultimately make people desire human created works even more. That said, there's a common thread in a lot of writing similar to this piece. Basically, it's some form of, "GenAI isn't art. GenAI creations lack a human element present in the creation process. GenAI creations cheapen the creative process in general due to the ease at which they can pop out new things." I'm mixed on this. This is something we've always had to deal with as a species. This greatly simplies a lot of human history here, but consider: - Our (long, long ago) ancestors had to paint on walls with their fingers. They had to make music by banging sticks together - Paint brushes were invented. Musical instruments were invented. These things make it easier and quicker for people to _create_ - Mechanical machines made it easier to make garments and print books - Digital machines made it even easier to write stories, or make music, or play music The word processor alone made it ridiculously easy for highly evolved apes to start pounding on keyboards and outputting works of various lengths and quality. Prior to the GenAI craze, there were music creation tools that contained multi-gigabyte sample packs. You could throw together random samples and make good sounding songs. Photoshop and Illustrator made it exceedingly easy for artists to flex their creative muscles and get their ideas out there. At the end of the day, these are all tools. And I think GenAI will ultimately be used in a similar way. It's a tool. Can it be used in a bad way? Sure. Just like PhotoShop. Just like Word. Regarding what is and isn't art -- I don't think it's up to us to decide. And does it matter? History is full of ridiculous examples of things that might or might not be art.[0][1] Humans don't necessarily need to be involved in the creation process either.[2] [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fountain_(Duchamp) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fountain_(Duchamp) [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comedian_(artwork) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comedian_(artwork) [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pierre_Brassau https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pierre_Brassau
- deleted 2y ago
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- ickelbawd 2y ago
  None of those links are art. They’re stunts at best. I know, I know someone will disagree, but they’re wrong. The difference between cave paintings, brush paintings, and even photoshop versus AI generated works is that a human had to visualize mentally and then translate their internal visualization into the medium without words. AI generated does not require that. Artists like Jackson Pollock or more modern instances of digital artists lie somewhere between the two—creating with little intention and little control.
KaoruAoiShiho 2y ago
I don't disagree at all, the process of human storytelling is key to art. But at the same time I'm still going to use genAI 99% of the time when I just want a pretty picture, when I'm in the mood for doing it myself I will, but most of the time I probably won't be.
ilaksh 2y ago
I would really like an objective explanation of why this attitude "that the whole point of art is the process of making it" is anything but pretentiousness in it's purest form. Surely the actual artifact itself has some value? And even if one supposes that a key part of the value is self-exploration (which I disagree with generally because that presupposes an excessive level of self-importance), then being able to iterate more easily by leveraging AI art can be a huge advantage for many artists. This is not to say that actual fundamental skills like drawing ability etc. aren't valuable. And it will be hard to develop them if you rely entirely on AI, especially while learning. But I don't see how it is logically necessary at all to completely exclude AI. To me, this is a rationalization for disliking AI because it displaces humans to some degree or another. I think that is a fair reaction, but the rationale is nonsense. I predict that the number of people who start to resent AI will increase dramatically over the coming few decades. Especially if we can't improve the structure of society to be less centered around exploiting labor.
- dingnuts 2y ago
  The point of art for the artist is expression. The point for the audience is to gain something through shared experience with the artist. AI outputs are not created by a conscious agent experiencing affect, and its audience shares an experience with no one. It's not compelling, and isn't art.
  - nelsondev 2y ago
    The audience member can share the experience with the person sitting beside them. Doesn’t have to be shared with the artist.
  - Philpax 2y ago
    > AI outputs are not created by a conscious agent experiencing affect Who is controlling the AI and driving it to specific outputs? The void?
- aidenn0 2y ago
  > I would really like an objective explanation of why this attitude "that the whole point of art is the process of making it" is anything but pretentiousness in it's purest form. It's not necessarily pretentiousness (though it's definitely pretentiousness adjacent), but a view from the point-of-view of an artist. I say it's adjacent to pretentiousness because I think implicit in the entire article is the assumption that creation is superior to consumption (and also the assumption that art created just to pay the bills is inferior to art created for its own sake[1]). 1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Potboiler https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Potboiler
sampton 2y ago
Gen art space has seen a flurry of new developments that give artists great deal of control. Everything from control net, lora, ip adapters, to layer level noise injection. People with lazy and regressive attitudes will be left behind.
- dwnw 2y ago
  If they don't like where you are going and they go a simpler way, I don't think they will feel left behind at all. More like dodged a pitfall. How is this lazy again? I thought we are supposed to use the AI to be lazy.
shombaboor 2y ago
AI art is theft, especially when created via text prompt. Drawings needs to drawn, paintings need to be painted etc. Art via prompt is 'find and take'.
- Philpax 2y ago
  Photography is theft, especially when taken via point-and-shoot camera. Landscapes need to be painted, portraits need to be sketched etc. Art via photography is 'find and take'.
segasaturn 2y ago
There used to be a time, in the early days around 2018-2020, where "AI art" was something that only could have been made by an AI. Very trippy and resembling hallucinations. Sort of like dreams of a computer. I do miss that era of AI art. If you search "early ai art" on Google images there are some good examples.
- aradox66 2y ago
  Deep dream! The eyes
- prophesi 2y ago
  I bought a book a few years ago called The Artist in the Machine by Arthur Miller[0] and it covers a lot of early AI creativity. I wish they shelled out for more color pages, because I agree things like DeepDream and GAN art are very trippy and would have made it a great coffee table book. It's wild that it took just two or three more years for diffusion models to hit the scene and take the world by storm. [0] https://direct.mit.edu/books/book/4547/The-Artist-in-the-MachineThe-World-of-AI-Powered https://direct.mit.edu/books/book/4547/The-Artist-in-the-Mac...
currymj 2y ago
i'm sort of pleased to see that with DeepSeek and the o-series, the hype/energy is shifting back towards coding and mathematical tasks, and away from generating images and videos. Programmers seem to be mostly happy with LLMs, unlike artists and musicians who almost all hate them. It seems possible that the incentives will continue to be aligned well, because it's staff at AI labs automating the skills that make them valuable (rather than putting others out of a job). It's also not so unpleasant. I don't want to see AI images any more. I certainly don't want to listen to AI music. People are right to call it "slop". I understand how the field of machine learning got to image generation as a task, and that the products can be sometimes useful and fun as a novelty. But there is just a giant externality caused by the existence of these products.
voidhorse 2y ago
It's because this technology isn't (and never has been) intended for the laborers making the stuff. The ultimate aim of these companies is to address the managerial and c suite people with a product that can replace the labor pool. Honestly, I think the current consumer focus is just an irrational consequence of these companies feeling like they can't leave all that consumer money on the table, but, precisely for the reasons this piece outlines, it makes no sense to market this stuff to people who actually like their craft. These tools are purely intended for superficial people who are not interested in creating things, they are only interested in outputs and end results.
- TeMPOraL 2y ago
  You aren't wrong, especially about motivations. The "current consumer focus" has had some weird results, too - particularly in the image/video generation space, it's the consumers, or rather the OSS community, that actually did 90% of the work of turning AI research output into product prototypes - which many a startup now just pick, polish and scale up. Not to dismiss that work, either, but that's mostly the old-school SaaS building work; the hot AI part is already there on Github, packaged into ComfyUI nodes for people to play with. Full video is a slightly different story because of compute demands, but image generation is basically the infamous Dropbox comment situation - any fancy image generation task you see offered as a service, a moderately tech-savvy person could replicate for personal use with ComfyUI over a weekend. That applies to interactive portraits too - the nodes are but a click away, models run fast enough for local use on an average PC. I'd like to challenge you on your conclusion, though: > These tools are purely intended for superficial people who are not interested in creating things, they are only interested in outputs and end results. But this is exactly how progress is made. Quoting Alfred North Whitehead[0]: "Civilization advances by extending the number of important operations which we can perform without thinking of them." Where for one craftsman, the process is the most important part of their creative work, another craftsman only cares about the output of the former, because it's an input to their creative work. That doesn't make the latter person "superficial", they're just one level up the dependency graph. -- [0] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alfred_North_Whitehead https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alfred_North_Whitehead
wilg 2y ago
I think people underestimate how the nature of current generative AI products is simply based on what extremely large corpuses of data are available. Text, photos, video, audio. This is the easy stuff, the first step.
perching_aix 2y ago
Ever since AI art came into the scene I've seen more and better artworks than ever before. I understand why people have ethical problems with it, but the results are genuinely really good even when done by beginners. I honestly think anyone claiming otherwise is just plain lying to themselves at this point. This is to the extreme that sometimes when browsing imageboards I find myself feeling surfeited. It's been a very interesting experience and a bit of a learning moment really. The common appeals to the ivory towers of high art are missing the point terribly hard. This was never about them, just like typical commercial art isn't about them either. Nobody cares, you just happen to be beating the same drum the masses do right now.
- deleted 2y ago
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mrandish 2y ago
I have zero interest in a tool that turns a text description into an image, video or song. However, I would pay serious money for a generative AI tool that worked differently. I make visuals and music because I love the process of realizing and refining my ideas into end results I like. My challenge is the shortcomings in my mechanical drawing skills or music keyboard fingering skills. Things like maintaining correct proportions across an object. Or nailing the triplet note syncopated timing. Things that take months of iterative practice to reliably do. I need a tool that takes granular inputs during my creation process and collaborates interactively with me to extend or perfect them. Or suggest other options for that one granular element based on my initial attempts. Not finished results, just the next step in the process. And give it to me as an individual stroke, a masked layer or a MIDI track I can then continue to modify and remix manually. Can I really be the only person who desperately wants this?
- imtringued 2y ago
  You're not the only one. All the comments here assume that AI will be good enough to completely replace people. As of today I think AI outputs are kind of bad. Lots of artefacts everywhere once you zoom in. What's needed is greater control over the output and whoever does that control becomes an artist in the process. He or she might use a futuristic hypertech brush, but a brush nevertheless.

138 points by jebarker 2y ago

bbor 2y ago

I’m a huge fan of this person if they’re behind the ocarina app (God, what nostalgia!) but I found this piece somewhat philosophically empty. They acknowledge that they don’t have any answers on broader philosophy of aesthetics questions (which is good, very few do), but give in to cynical rejection regardless. Namely: …they purport to be tools for creating art, but by making every effort to dismiss and eradicate the process of learning to expressive ourselves, what they are actually creating is a new generation of consumers… I am not philosophically in opposition to generative AI, even for artistic creation. For one, I don’t know what “AI making art” evens means at this point; I barely, if at all, understand “humans making art”. I am inclined to say, therefore, “there should be room for that, too”. At the same time, I am committed to preserving and protecting the room for humans to labor profusely, unenjoyably, illogically to creatively express themselves… “There should be room for that, too” should apply both ways. This cynicism ultimately shows a lack of imagination, IMHO. If use of generative AI is just consumption, then why are there people held in high regard in those communities for producing particularly great stuff? Why is some output more popular than the rest? The simple answer is that humans are far from being out of the loop in art creation. AI can clearly generate aesthetic material based on some inputs, reason about the meaning of a piece given a description, and maybe take some intuitive guesses on overall aesthetic “quality” or “appeal” — but all of that is a) piecemeal and b) not nearly as sophisticated as human engagement with aesthetic value. Some would say it’s one of our most fundamental talents, and I would say it’s at the core of morality, happiness, etc! The robots are not replacing human artists any time soon in my opinion, and I think it’s a plain fact that Suno alone is not up to the task. As more of a side note, I don’t love how they engage with effort and aesthetics (/value more generally, as in mountain climbing). Yes, some people like some activities that inherently have arbitrary amounts of effort attached — the people who beat dark souls using a drum kit or a banana as their controller come to mind! But that kind of leisure activity is neither exhaustive nor universally-appealing. I guess no one wants to do things that are so trivial that they are instant, but beyond that there’s a huge range. Musicians in particular employ a plethora of newfangled tools, both to increase output (eg virtual instruments, autotune, smart composition software) and to enable entirely new modes of production (eg loop pedals). As they so poignantly say: there should be room for both ;)

moffkalast 2y ago

> "What we need is a computer that isn’t labor-saving, but which increases the work for us to do." — John Cage Arguably both are needed. The kind that replaces the mindless repetitive work (e.g. dishwasher, roomba) so we have more time to focus on the kind that lets us do more than before (e.g. an orbital satelite, 3D printer). There are only 24 hours in a day and you can't do more without doing less first.

portaouflop 2y ago
Inventions like the dishwasher for domestic use never really led to meaningful work reduction for the people (women) doing this kind of work.
- skybrian 2y ago
  Seems like you can pretty easily use more dishes with less effort? If you end up spending more time on other chores, that's up to you.
  - asdff 2y ago
    Having lived in apartments with and without dishwashers its not as much of a time savings as you might realize. the dishwasher needs a degree of maintenance. Dishes have to be loaded precariously in a way to effectively wash them from the sprayer jets. Some dishes have to be washed by hand still. Everything needs rinsing and scraping. Its a modern dishwasher so that means its too weak to dry dishes on dry cycle to skirt energy efficiency standards, so dishes are then loaded into the rack by the sink to dry. and the whole cycle takes like 2 and a half hours. And I'm wondering why I'm not saving much time and its because the time savings isn't really significant to begin with. Coupled with the fact that when I was hand washing, I'd actually wash dishes as I generated them during cooking. It only takes me about 30 seconds to wash a plate or pan with sink and sponge and soap. I could have most dishes done before dinner was even served saved for the plates and silverware it was eaten with and maybe the last pan in the process, maybe 30 seconds work hardly less effort than the act of rinsing and scraping before the dishes go into the dishwasher. All that begin said I still use it, but I probably am not saving much, if any time, with the new rituals it requires.

cozzyd 2y ago

it's pointed out in the story, but Ge Wang is the author of the ChucK strongly timed programming language (which has the famous upchuck operator...)

gedy 2y ago

I'm what people who know me call a "creative person", but generative AI for images and especially music really is a terrific tool. > What if the point of art is that we actually make it? It seems the author's point is the struggle and effort is what makes it worthwhile, but I kind of disagree. I used to pour a ton of time, effort, and heart into making something I wanted to see or hear, but unfortunately the results weren't particularly memorable (for me or others). The effort seemed to erase a lot of the novelty and interest for me as well. Gen AI has made creating a lot more enjoyable for me, even if much of it is curation of trial and error. Most of the music I listen to in past year is created in Suno (my own), and it's a lot better than my musical efforts in the past.

bobxmax 2y ago
it's a great tool if you aren't an ornery artist who refuses to adapt to new ways and means.
- spencerflem 2y ago
  most ai art is bland and worthless and has no meaning behind it. im not postmodern enough to say its all the struggle, but regardless of if AI us used or not I expect the artist to have some idea of what they're trying to do or say, and typing a sentence into a box ain't it
  - Filligree 2y ago
    95% of everything is shit. That doesn’t make the remaining five percent worthless.
    - spencerflem 2y ago
      i would prefer instead of an ai stock photo, an ugly unprofessional doodle. that would tell me something about the person drawing it, how they see the world, and if its bad at least its human. ai stock photos also tell me something about the person making it and not much about it is endearing

skybrian 2y ago

> Increases the work for us to do This sounds like a video game to me, and we do have lots of them. How should generated AI images be presented? I think of it as wandering in Borge's library of babel. Maybe it looks like Google's image search, or like Minecraft? Unfortunately, current AI image generators aren't fast enough to do it interactively.

Kuinox 2y ago
Some current gen ai can generate images, in real time, how that's not enough interactive ?
- skybrian 2y ago
  Can they fill the screen with 20 variations nearly instantly? If so, I'd like to see that.
  - Jordan-117 2y ago
    There are already efficient models that can generate single images in real time as fast as you can type the prompt. I wonder if you could tweak this approach to instead generate a page full of static thumbnails on submitting a query (using different seeds for each result), and then upscale the desired image when clicked.
    - Filligree 2y ago
      It won’t be the same image once you upscale it. Moreover, while the fast generators do exist, they’re lower quality. That doesn’t mean just resolution—it also means comprehension and prompt understanding, so upon running the same prompt through a better AI you’ll get something entirely different.
  - TZubiri 2y ago
    So we experience a marvellous breakthrough in technology and your big complaint is that it's not fast or voluminous enough, and your big idea is to make (demand) more of it? There's million of useful stuff you can create with what you are given. Do not chose to complain about what you have and demand more.

CephalopodMD 2y ago

I feel the same way about using nfts to sell jpegs on the internet

noman-land 2y ago
What about NFTs as registrations for domain names a la ens.domains?
- spencerflem 2y ago
  much better, for sure. one of very few real valuable use cases i can see for NFTs
  - noman-land 2y ago
    Love you.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- packetlost 2y ago
  I think there are some good uses for NFTs (and other token stuff), and this is one. The stupid jpegs thing is just... uhg, it's dumb and it's sad that that is where the technology went.
- talldayo 2y ago
  In principle it's less offensive than the "tulip mania" enthusiasm most people share, but it still suffers for the same reasons. Additionally, people simply might not care enough to register with NFTs - lord knows I don't care enough, and I'm one of the few people capable of doing it. But I'm not worried about getting my domain revoked so... what's the point? To spend money on a vanity label that a grand total of maybe 4 people will ever use? ENS will inevitably butt up against the cryptocurrency problem of having few legitimate use cases and even fewer legitimate users. Outside the e/acc Twitter circles and lolcow online harassment forums, the demand for such an "uncensorable internet" is almost nonexistent.

TZubiri 2y ago

Other unimaginative pitches I hear every day: - We will use LLMs to create/summarize documents. - "You are StartupAI, an AI that is an expert in X and answers questions about X" - An LLM that I can replace an employee with and fire them. As with any revolution, we get to revise a whole generation of software and see how we can retrofit or rethink the solution/product. If you seek to build something novel, we will have to actually be creative, not minimally apply the technology to immediately extract value.

jedberg 2y ago

Of all the things I do with AI, art is probably the one I do the most. When you create written content on the internet, "the algorithm" rewards you more if you add art to it. I am not an artist, but I can write good. So when I'm done writing, I pop over to my AI image generator, describe a few images I want, pop them into the post, and away I go! And then boom, greater engagement. As an added bonus, I don't have to worry about copyright, because at the moment copyright law considers me the creator if I modify it or the AI (which makes it uncopywriteable). So I'm in the clear there (for now).

andrepd 2y ago
Isn't it amazing when a good chunk of monetary incentive in the present day is directed towards the terrifying concept of "engagement"?
Fricken 2y ago
Once I was an editorial illustrator, and the mantra always was "concept is king". Stick figures are kosher so long as they communicate something. Impressionists emerged following the invention of the camera, as they had no more incentive to pursue realism. I think in the age of AI slop any form of crude image making is better so long as it's human. Scribble something out with crayons. Shape an animal out of a slice of bread, post a pic. It's all legit now, technical art abilities mean nothing. To impress you actually have to have a good idea.
- perching_aix 2y ago
  This is actually reflected even in the AI slop. Most pictures look broadly appealing and correct, but very generic. So to draw a crowd it has to stand out some other way - be it the lighting, the colors, the materials, the framing, the poses, the setting, or whatever else. They really made me reevaluate what is it that I'm actually looking for and how much I value each of these aspects.
tspike 2y ago
Would you consider the images you create to be art?

redeux 2y ago

GenAI is not capable of making art. Self expression is not only inherent in art, it’s essential. What AI does is make pretty pictures, but nothing more. It’s not a tool for making art because it removes the means for artistic expression. It’s possible for someone to make art from GenAI outputs, but that requires taking artistic liberties post generation.

ZYbCRq22HbJ2y7 2y ago
> It’s possible for someone to make art from GenAI outputs, but that requires taking artistic liberties post generation. Plenty of people use others' expressions as a form of art, (sharing song lyrics, singing others' songs in the shower, cat memes, and so on).
- zxvkhkxvdvbdxz 2y ago
  Indeed, one could argue that everything is a remix of pre-existing expressions. This, of course does not rhyme well with current copyright laws. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=coGpmA4saEk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=coGpmA4saEk
idle_zealot 2y ago
As far as I understand, art is typically understood to have two components: expression and impression. The creation of something, anything, as a form of self-expression, is considered art. Additionally, though, art is in eyes of the beholder. If a feeling is inspired in someone by the observation of a thing, act, etc, then it becomes art to them, in that moment. Notably, though, it doesn't necessarily make that thing art to anyone else, unless it is curated at which point that curation is a form of expression. These definitions are distinct from the requirements for copyright.
marssaxman 2y ago
It's not the AI that makes the art, but the person who tells the AI what to do. A painter friend of mine has gotten into generative AI lately, and the sometimes-pretty, sometimes-intimidating pictures she comes up with sure look like an artistic expression to me. She has a vision of something she wants to see, and she uses tools to bring that vision into reality, just like she does with paint; the new tools just give her new options.

0xcafefood 2y ago

No, Chatbot All The Things is the least imaginative use of "AI." There's even a chatbot to search your Chrome history [1]. Nothing screams solution in search of a problem more than this. [1] https://support.google.com/chrome/a/answer/15248971 https://support.google.com/chrome/a/answer/15248971

Mistletoe 2y ago
Google Photos just added this completely subpar feature for how I have to search my photos in the app. -.-
crucialfelix 2y ago
Although the chatbot in chrome devtools is really useful. I selected a DOM node and ask "why isn't this visible" and it queried the DOM, css and figured out the height was 0 and explained exactly what lead to it being 0.
- skydhash 2y ago
  The reason for a DOM node not being visible is either the height/width being 0, its position is out of the viewport, it's behind other nodes or its opacity is 0. And that's basically the same for any layout engine that use node tree. The inspector is so easy to use that using a chatbot for the specified reason is a waste of resources.
  - sadeshmukh 2y ago
    There are so many more layers. Yeah, the height is zero. Why? Turns out the stylesheet styles are getting overridden by some global and import order is off. This is the perfect case for a chatbot that can see what's going on.
    - skydhash 2y ago
      You can see all the styles that are applied to a specific node and their provenance. I believe learning how to properly debug is way more valuable than hoping that an LLM will get it right. And there's no global, and import order is kinda the wrong way to think about it.

crucialfelix 2y ago

> “I am going up to Princeton to start grad school in computer science.” I replied, “I want to build the world’s most advanced automated music composition machine.” > The guitarist studied me for a moment and asked, succinct and earnest, “What’s the point?” Strongly agree. The whole point of music is the process of making it. That doesn't mean we can't repurpose generative systems, hack them until they do something fresh and expressive. Around about the same time (2001) I visited Princeton and gave a presentation of my music generation system built in Super Collider. I jokingly stated that I wanted to eventually just press a button and have it spit out a hit song. Composer Paul Lansky scowled when I said that! I also got a chance to sit in classes with Perry Cook (mentioned in the article) and he was the best professor I've ever seen. Really inspirational.

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Hatchback7599 2y ago

As a software engineer and artist[1], my views on art and generative AI have been evolving. In my opinion, GenAI has revealed that the art isn't primarily in the creation, but in the selection. It used to take incredible talent to create something worth selecting (writing, painting, sculpture, etc), so creation and selection were often so close to be seen as indistinguishable. A technically skilled artist was likely to create something great, because they were likely making high quality selective decisions all along the creation process. So the end result of a gifted writer was probably a high quality work. But now the creation of technically skilled works has become detached from the selection process. Now we're flooded with technically skilled work, but no selection. But the selection process is still critical to make something compelling and innovative. The artist needs to evolve to inject themselves into selective decisions of GenAI, both in the process and in selecting the final result. 1. https://youtu.be/ggRcDQZWD_8?t=1253 https://youtu.be/ggRcDQZWD_8?t=1253

brulard 2y ago
Underappreciated comment right there. The idea about selection vs creation was on my mind, but I wasn't able to put the idea into a solid form as you did there. Thanks.

asdasdsddd 2y ago

This is a boomer take. Technology in music has evolved over time and people continue to enjoy old and new music nonetheless, whether it's created from samples on a computer or performed live at a bar, despite the fact that people decry every generation that the next generation's music is not real music.

davely 2y ago

It will take a long time, but I think the ever growing usage of GenAI tools will ultimately make people desire human created works even more. That said, there's a common thread in a lot of writing similar to this piece. Basically, it's some form of, "GenAI isn't art. GenAI creations lack a human element present in the creation process. GenAI creations cheapen the creative process in general due to the ease at which they can pop out new things." I'm mixed on this. This is something we've always had to deal with as a species. This greatly simplies a lot of human history here, but consider: - Our (long, long ago) ancestors had to paint on walls with their fingers. They had to make music by banging sticks together - Paint brushes were invented. Musical instruments were invented. These things make it easier and quicker for people to _create_ - Mechanical machines made it easier to make garments and print books - Digital machines made it even easier to write stories, or make music, or play music The word processor alone made it ridiculously easy for highly evolved apes to start pounding on keyboards and outputting works of various lengths and quality. Prior to the GenAI craze, there were music creation tools that contained multi-gigabyte sample packs. You could throw together random samples and make good sounding songs. Photoshop and Illustrator made it exceedingly easy for artists to flex their creative muscles and get their ideas out there. At the end of the day, these are all tools. And I think GenAI will ultimately be used in a similar way. It's a tool. Can it be used in a bad way? Sure. Just like PhotoShop. Just like Word. Regarding what is and isn't art -- I don't think it's up to us to decide. And does it matter? History is full of ridiculous examples of things that might or might not be art.[0][1] Humans don't necessarily need to be involved in the creation process either.[2] [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fountain_(Duchamp) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fountain_(Duchamp) [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comedian_(artwork) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comedian_(artwork) [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pierre_Brassau https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pierre_Brassau

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ickelbawd 2y ago
None of those links are art. They’re stunts at best. I know, I know someone will disagree, but they’re wrong. The difference between cave paintings, brush paintings, and even photoshop versus AI generated works is that a human had to visualize mentally and then translate their internal visualization into the medium without words. AI generated does not require that. Artists like Jackson Pollock or more modern instances of digital artists lie somewhere between the two—creating with little intention and little control.

KaoruAoiShiho 2y ago

I don't disagree at all, the process of human storytelling is key to art. But at the same time I'm still going to use genAI 99% of the time when I just want a pretty picture, when I'm in the mood for doing it myself I will, but most of the time I probably won't be.

ilaksh 2y ago

I would really like an objective explanation of why this attitude "that the whole point of art is the process of making it" is anything but pretentiousness in it's purest form. Surely the actual artifact itself has some value? And even if one supposes that a key part of the value is self-exploration (which I disagree with generally because that presupposes an excessive level of self-importance), then being able to iterate more easily by leveraging AI art can be a huge advantage for many artists. This is not to say that actual fundamental skills like drawing ability etc. aren't valuable. And it will be hard to develop them if you rely entirely on AI, especially while learning. But I don't see how it is logically necessary at all to completely exclude AI. To me, this is a rationalization for disliking AI because it displaces humans to some degree or another. I think that is a fair reaction, but the rationale is nonsense. I predict that the number of people who start to resent AI will increase dramatically over the coming few decades. Especially if we can't improve the structure of society to be less centered around exploiting labor.

dingnuts 2y ago
The point of art for the artist is expression. The point for the audience is to gain something through shared experience with the artist. AI outputs are not created by a conscious agent experiencing affect, and its audience shares an experience with no one. It's not compelling, and isn't art.
- nelsondev 2y ago
  The audience member can share the experience with the person sitting beside them. Doesn’t have to be shared with the artist.
- Philpax 2y ago
  > AI outputs are not created by a conscious agent experiencing affect Who is controlling the AI and driving it to specific outputs? The void?
aidenn0 2y ago
> I would really like an objective explanation of why this attitude "that the whole point of art is the process of making it" is anything but pretentiousness in it's purest form. It's not necessarily pretentiousness (though it's definitely pretentiousness adjacent), but a view from the point-of-view of an artist. I say it's adjacent to pretentiousness because I think implicit in the entire article is the assumption that creation is superior to consumption (and also the assumption that art created just to pay the bills is inferior to art created for its own sake[1]). 1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Potboiler https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Potboiler

sampton 2y ago

Gen art space has seen a flurry of new developments that give artists great deal of control. Everything from control net, lora, ip adapters, to layer level noise injection. People with lazy and regressive attitudes will be left behind.

dwnw 2y ago
If they don't like where you are going and they go a simpler way, I don't think they will feel left behind at all. More like dodged a pitfall. How is this lazy again? I thought we are supposed to use the AI to be lazy.

shombaboor 2y ago

AI art is theft, especially when created via text prompt. Drawings needs to drawn, paintings need to be painted etc. Art via prompt is 'find and take'.

Philpax 2y ago
Photography is theft, especially when taken via point-and-shoot camera. Landscapes need to be painted, portraits need to be sketched etc. Art via photography is 'find and take'.

segasaturn 2y ago

There used to be a time, in the early days around 2018-2020, where "AI art" was something that only could have been made by an AI. Very trippy and resembling hallucinations. Sort of like dreams of a computer. I do miss that era of AI art. If you search "early ai art" on Google images there are some good examples.

aradox66 2y ago
Deep dream! The eyes
prophesi 2y ago
I bought a book a few years ago called The Artist in the Machine by Arthur Miller[0] and it covers a lot of early AI creativity. I wish they shelled out for more color pages, because I agree things like DeepDream and GAN art are very trippy and would have made it a great coffee table book. It's wild that it took just two or three more years for diffusion models to hit the scene and take the world by storm. [0] https://direct.mit.edu/books/book/4547/The-Artist-in-the-MachineThe-World-of-AI-Powered https://direct.mit.edu/books/book/4547/The-Artist-in-the-Mac...

currymj 2y ago

i'm sort of pleased to see that with DeepSeek and the o-series, the hype/energy is shifting back towards coding and mathematical tasks, and away from generating images and videos. Programmers seem to be mostly happy with LLMs, unlike artists and musicians who almost all hate them. It seems possible that the incentives will continue to be aligned well, because it's staff at AI labs automating the skills that make them valuable (rather than putting others out of a job). It's also not so unpleasant. I don't want to see AI images any more. I certainly don't want to listen to AI music. People are right to call it "slop". I understand how the field of machine learning got to image generation as a task, and that the products can be sometimes useful and fun as a novelty. But there is just a giant externality caused by the existence of these products.

voidhorse 2y ago

It's because this technology isn't (and never has been) intended for the laborers making the stuff. The ultimate aim of these companies is to address the managerial and c suite people with a product that can replace the labor pool. Honestly, I think the current consumer focus is just an irrational consequence of these companies feeling like they can't leave all that consumer money on the table, but, precisely for the reasons this piece outlines, it makes no sense to market this stuff to people who actually like their craft. These tools are purely intended for superficial people who are not interested in creating things, they are only interested in outputs and end results.

TeMPOraL 2y ago
You aren't wrong, especially about motivations. The "current consumer focus" has had some weird results, too - particularly in the image/video generation space, it's the consumers, or rather the OSS community, that actually did 90% of the work of turning AI research output into product prototypes - which many a startup now just pick, polish and scale up. Not to dismiss that work, either, but that's mostly the old-school SaaS building work; the hot AI part is already there on Github, packaged into ComfyUI nodes for people to play with. Full video is a slightly different story because of compute demands, but image generation is basically the infamous Dropbox comment situation - any fancy image generation task you see offered as a service, a moderately tech-savvy person could replicate for personal use with ComfyUI over a weekend. That applies to interactive portraits too - the nodes are but a click away, models run fast enough for local use on an average PC. I'd like to challenge you on your conclusion, though: > These tools are purely intended for superficial people who are not interested in creating things, they are only interested in outputs and end results. But this is exactly how progress is made. Quoting Alfred North Whitehead[0]: "Civilization advances by extending the number of important operations which we can perform without thinking of them." Where for one craftsman, the process is the most important part of their creative work, another craftsman only cares about the output of the former, because it's an input to their creative work. That doesn't make the latter person "superficial", they're just one level up the dependency graph. -- [0] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alfred_North_Whitehead https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alfred_North_Whitehead

wilg 2y ago

I think people underestimate how the nature of current generative AI products is simply based on what extremely large corpuses of data are available. Text, photos, video, audio. This is the easy stuff, the first step.

perching_aix 2y ago

Ever since AI art came into the scene I've seen more and better artworks than ever before. I understand why people have ethical problems with it, but the results are genuinely really good even when done by beginners. I honestly think anyone claiming otherwise is just plain lying to themselves at this point. This is to the extreme that sometimes when browsing imageboards I find myself feeling surfeited. It's been a very interesting experience and a bit of a learning moment really. The common appeals to the ivory towers of high art are missing the point terribly hard. This was never about them, just like typical commercial art isn't about them either. Nobody cares, you just happen to be beating the same drum the masses do right now.

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mrandish 2y ago

I have zero interest in a tool that turns a text description into an image, video or song. However, I would pay serious money for a generative AI tool that worked differently. I make visuals and music because I love the process of realizing and refining my ideas into end results I like. My challenge is the shortcomings in my mechanical drawing skills or music keyboard fingering skills. Things like maintaining correct proportions across an object. Or nailing the triplet note syncopated timing. Things that take months of iterative practice to reliably do. I need a tool that takes granular inputs during my creation process and collaborates interactively with me to extend or perfect them. Or suggest other options for that one granular element based on my initial attempts. Not finished results, just the next step in the process. And give it to me as an individual stroke, a masked layer or a MIDI track I can then continue to modify and remix manually. Can I really be the only person who desperately wants this?

imtringued 2y ago
You're not the only one. All the comments here assume that AI will be good enough to completely replace people. As of today I think AI outputs are kind of bad. Lots of artefacts everywhere once you zoom in. What's needed is greater control over the output and whoever does that control becomes an artist in the process. He or she might use a futuristic hypertech brush, but a brush nevertheless.