8 ms·

I love using LLMs to generate pictures. I'd call myself rather creative, but absolutely useless in any artistic craft. Now, I can just describe any image I can

I love using LLMs to generate pictures. I'd call myself rather creative, but absolutely useless in any artistic craft. Now, I can just describe any image I can imagine and get 90% accurate results, which is good enough for the presentations I hold, online pet projects (created a squirrel-themed online math-learning game for which I previously would have needed a designer to create squirrel highschool themed imagery) and memes. For many, many websites this is going to be good enough.

candiddevmike 2y ago
My problem with finding enjoyment in this is the same problem I have when using cheat codes in games: the doing part is the fun part, getting to the end or just permutations of the end gets really boring.
- williamcotton 2y ago
  Trying to draw a squirrel when you have no artistic talents or experience is not the fun part. I've produced my own music recordings in the past and I've hired musicians to play the instruments that I cannot. Having exasperated recording engineers watch my 5,000th take on a drum fill that I absolutely cannot play is not the fun part. Sitting behind the glass and watching my vision come to life from a really good drummer is absolutely the fun part.
  - schwartzworld 2y ago
    > Sitting behind the glass and watching my vision come to life from a really good drummer is absolutely the fun part. Is having the ai spit out idea after idea fun in the same way for you?
    - marcellus23 2y ago
      He's not talking about using AI to generate ideas, he's talking about using AI to turn ideas into reality.
munksbeer 2y ago
>I love using LLMs to generate pictures. I'd call myself rather creative, but absolutely useless in any artistic craft. Now, I can just describe any image I can imagine and get 90% accurate results May I ask what you use? I'm not yet even a paid subscriber to any of the models, because my company offer a corporate internal subscription chatbot and code integration that works well enough for what I've been doing so far but has no image generation. I have tried image generation on the free tier but run out of free use before I get anyway pleasing. What do you pay for?
- wincy 2y ago
  I was generating pictures to use for a little game I made with my six and ten year old kids. They were so excited to see us go from idea to execution so quickly, they were laughing and we had a ton of fun. The only thing that disappointed me was I got throttled. We’d need to pay for API image gen to get it even faster. I made a logo for an internal product that wouldn’t have had a logo otherwise at our company. I also make a lot of shitpost memes to my friends to trash talk in the long running turn based war game we’ve all been playing, like “make a cartoony image of a dog man and a Greek giant beating up a devil” and the picture it gave was just hilarious and perfect, like an old timey Popeye cartoon. Two years ago I was spending three hours using local models like Stable Diffusion to get exactly what I wanted. I had to inpaint and generate 100 variations which would have been insanely expensive if I wasn’t powering it with my own hardware. Now I get something good in minutes, it’s crazy really.
  - genewitch 2y ago
    Feels like you didn't answer the question. i know you weren't who was asked, but still.
  - munksbeer 2y ago
    Thanks. Which service do you use please? I'm wanting to try a paid service, just want to know which ones people recommend.
    - HelloMcFly 2y ago
__loam 2y ago
If you use this technology, you're actively harming creative labor.
- Empact 2y ago
  Creative labor is not entitled to the work parent comment is describing. We employ labor because it is beneficial to us, not merely because it exists as an option. Creative labor’s responsibility is to adapt to a changing world and find roles where their labor is not simply produced / exceeded by a computer system. Practically speaking, the work described would most likely never have been done, rather than been done by an artist if that were the only option - it’s uncommon to employ artists to help with incidental tasks relative to side projects, etc.
- genewitch 2y ago
  Whatever. I wrote and co-wrote ten albums and my total take was $3. The market is saturated and the way it works means ten get rich for every million artists. I feel as though this has been pretty constant throughout history. Of course there's a lot of talent out there, "wasted", but I think that's always been the case. How many William Shakesmans did we lose with all the war, famine, disease? I actually decided I'd probably never write music again after 1-shot making a song about the south Korea coup attempt several months ago. I had the song done before the news really even hit the US. Why would I destroy my own hearing writing music anymore when I can prompt an AI to do it for me, with the same net result - no one cares. here's the 3-shot remix, the triangle cracks me up so much that i had to upload it https://soundcloud.com/djoutcold/coup-detat-symphony-remix https://soundcloud.com/djoutcold/coup-detat-symphony-remix the "original" "1-shot" is on my soundcloud page as well. https://soundcloud.com/djoutcold/i-aint-even-writing-music-anymore-byeeee https://soundcloud.com/djoutcold/i-aint-even-writing-music-a... it's in lojban. That's why you can't understand it. Yes. Lojban. Brings a tear to my eye every time i hear it. fkin AI [0] more my style - hold music for our PBX https://soundcloud.com/djoutcold/bew-hold-music https://soundcloud.com/djoutcold/bew-hold-music also all my stuff is CC licensed, mostly CC0 at this point.
  - Garlef 2y ago
    > How many William Shakesmans did we lose with all the war, famine, disease? (Just a small comment out of context of the remaining discussion:) Maybe not many? It could be that "cultural attention" is limited and there's not much space at the top anyways. In other words: It might be that there's always a few famous artists that get remembered and the rest is forgotten. Same as winning the world cup: There's always a team that wins and it says nothing about the quality in a universal way. At best it says something about quality relative to the competition. (Not sure I'd fully get behind the argument i composed here. But I found it interesting.)
nitwit005 2y ago
> For many, many websites this is going to be good enough. It was largely a solved problem though. Companies did not seem to have an issue with using stock photos. My current company's website is full of them. For business use cases, those galleries were already so extensive before AI image generation, that what you wanted was almost always there. They seemingly looked at people's search queries, and added images to match previously failed queries. Even things you wouldn't think would have a photo like "man in business suit jump kicking a guy while screaming", have plenty of results.
- dylan604 2y ago
  Really? What stock service would have a selection of squirrels in a high school setting doing various math or other subject related things? To think any/all combined stock services would be the end all is just unrealistic. Sure, someone one might have settled on something just because they got tired of scrolling (much like streaming video services), that does not mean they are happy with their selection. Just happy to be done. Now, with generativeAI, they can have squirrels doing anything in any setting they can describe. If they don't like it, they can just tweak the description until they are happy. It's an obvious plus for them. I never drank the kool-aid to be all gung-ho on this boom/fad, but I'm not going to be so obstinate that I refuse to accept some people find it quite useful. May someone make all the squirrel attending highschool generative art they want, but you can't tell me some stock place is good 'nuff for everything.
  - nitwit005 2y ago
    I searched Shutterstock for squirrels doing math. Here's a squirrel doing math: https://www.shutterstock.com/image-vector/pensive-squirrel-doing-sums-on-chalkboard-2140718345 https://www.shutterstock.com/image-vector/pensive-squirrel-d... Yes, it's obvious that if your use case is obscure enough, or you need a ton of unique images, they won't work, which is why I said "largely a solved problem".
    - sroussey 2y ago
      But image generation these days is simply image search anyway. Wether or not the image existed before is almost irrelevant.

candiddevmike 2y ago

My problem with finding enjoyment in this is the same problem I have when using cheat codes in games: the doing part is the fun part, getting to the end or just permutations of the end gets really boring.

williamcotton 2y ago
Trying to draw a squirrel when you have no artistic talents or experience is not the fun part. I've produced my own music recordings in the past and I've hired musicians to play the instruments that I cannot. Having exasperated recording engineers watch my 5,000th take on a drum fill that I absolutely cannot play is not the fun part. Sitting behind the glass and watching my vision come to life from a really good drummer is absolutely the fun part.
- schwartzworld 2y ago
  > Sitting behind the glass and watching my vision come to life from a really good drummer is absolutely the fun part. Is having the ai spit out idea after idea fun in the same way for you?
  - marcellus23 2y ago
    He's not talking about using AI to generate ideas, he's talking about using AI to turn ideas into reality.

munksbeer 2y ago

>I love using LLMs to generate pictures. I'd call myself rather creative, but absolutely useless in any artistic craft. Now, I can just describe any image I can imagine and get 90% accurate results May I ask what you use? I'm not yet even a paid subscriber to any of the models, because my company offer a corporate internal subscription chatbot and code integration that works well enough for what I've been doing so far but has no image generation. I have tried image generation on the free tier but run out of free use before I get anyway pleasing. What do you pay for?

wincy 2y ago
I was generating pictures to use for a little game I made with my six and ten year old kids. They were so excited to see us go from idea to execution so quickly, they were laughing and we had a ton of fun. The only thing that disappointed me was I got throttled. We’d need to pay for API image gen to get it even faster. I made a logo for an internal product that wouldn’t have had a logo otherwise at our company. I also make a lot of shitpost memes to my friends to trash talk in the long running turn based war game we’ve all been playing, like “make a cartoony image of a dog man and a Greek giant beating up a devil” and the picture it gave was just hilarious and perfect, like an old timey Popeye cartoon. Two years ago I was spending three hours using local models like Stable Diffusion to get exactly what I wanted. I had to inpaint and generate 100 variations which would have been insanely expensive if I wasn’t powering it with my own hardware. Now I get something good in minutes, it’s crazy really.
- genewitch 2y ago
  Feels like you didn't answer the question. i know you weren't who was asked, but still.
- munksbeer 2y ago
  Thanks. Which service do you use please? I'm wanting to try a paid service, just want to know which ones people recommend.
  - HelloMcFly 2y ago

__loam 2y ago

If you use this technology, you're actively harming creative labor.

Empact 2y ago
Creative labor is not entitled to the work parent comment is describing. We employ labor because it is beneficial to us, not merely because it exists as an option. Creative labor’s responsibility is to adapt to a changing world and find roles where their labor is not simply produced / exceeded by a computer system. Practically speaking, the work described would most likely never have been done, rather than been done by an artist if that were the only option - it’s uncommon to employ artists to help with incidental tasks relative to side projects, etc.
genewitch 2y ago
Whatever. I wrote and co-wrote ten albums and my total take was $3. The market is saturated and the way it works means ten get rich for every million artists. I feel as though this has been pretty constant throughout history. Of course there's a lot of talent out there, "wasted", but I think that's always been the case. How many William Shakesmans did we lose with all the war, famine, disease? I actually decided I'd probably never write music again after 1-shot making a song about the south Korea coup attempt several months ago. I had the song done before the news really even hit the US. Why would I destroy my own hearing writing music anymore when I can prompt an AI to do it for me, with the same net result - no one cares. here's the 3-shot remix, the triangle cracks me up so much that i had to upload it https://soundcloud.com/djoutcold/coup-detat-symphony-remix https://soundcloud.com/djoutcold/coup-detat-symphony-remix the "original" "1-shot" is on my soundcloud page as well. https://soundcloud.com/djoutcold/i-aint-even-writing-music-anymore-byeeee https://soundcloud.com/djoutcold/i-aint-even-writing-music-a... it's in lojban. That's why you can't understand it. Yes. Lojban. Brings a tear to my eye every time i hear it. fkin AI [0] more my style - hold music for our PBX https://soundcloud.com/djoutcold/bew-hold-music https://soundcloud.com/djoutcold/bew-hold-music also all my stuff is CC licensed, mostly CC0 at this point.
- Garlef 2y ago
  > How many William Shakesmans did we lose with all the war, famine, disease? (Just a small comment out of context of the remaining discussion:) Maybe not many? It could be that "cultural attention" is limited and there's not much space at the top anyways. In other words: It might be that there's always a few famous artists that get remembered and the rest is forgotten. Same as winning the world cup: There's always a team that wins and it says nothing about the quality in a universal way. At best it says something about quality relative to the competition. (Not sure I'd fully get behind the argument i composed here. But I found it interesting.)

nitwit005 2y ago

> For many, many websites this is going to be good enough. It was largely a solved problem though. Companies did not seem to have an issue with using stock photos. My current company's website is full of them. For business use cases, those galleries were already so extensive before AI image generation, that what you wanted was almost always there. They seemingly looked at people's search queries, and added images to match previously failed queries. Even things you wouldn't think would have a photo like "man in business suit jump kicking a guy while screaming", have plenty of results.

dylan604 2y ago
Really? What stock service would have a selection of squirrels in a high school setting doing various math or other subject related things? To think any/all combined stock services would be the end all is just unrealistic. Sure, someone one might have settled on something just because they got tired of scrolling (much like streaming video services), that does not mean they are happy with their selection. Just happy to be done. Now, with generativeAI, they can have squirrels doing anything in any setting they can describe. If they don't like it, they can just tweak the description until they are happy. It's an obvious plus for them. I never drank the kool-aid to be all gung-ho on this boom/fad, but I'm not going to be so obstinate that I refuse to accept some people find it quite useful. May someone make all the squirrel attending highschool generative art they want, but you can't tell me some stock place is good 'nuff for everything.
- nitwit005 2y ago
  I searched Shutterstock for squirrels doing math. Here's a squirrel doing math: https://www.shutterstock.com/image-vector/pensive-squirrel-doing-sums-on-chalkboard-2140718345 https://www.shutterstock.com/image-vector/pensive-squirrel-d... Yes, it's obvious that if your use case is obscure enough, or you need a ton of unique images, they won't work, which is why I said "largely a solved problem".
  - sroussey 2y ago
    But image generation these days is simply image search anyway. Wether or not the image existed before is almost irrelevant.