5 ms·
What happens when you post a real Monet and say it's AI?
- Invictus0 5mo agoShows the pretentiousness of the twitterati more than anything else
- Nasrudith 5mo agoTrading on pretentiousness in cliques has been a thing in art long before the internet and Twitter.
- deleted 5mo ago[deleted]
- deleted 5mo ago[deleted]
- camillomiller 5mo agoShows nothing about AI, shows a lot about how low the bar has fallen for not taking everything you see on social media at face value. Enticing an easy and predictable knee jerk reaction from a couple dozen users also hardly proves anything.
- Geee 5mo agoBeing able to imitate Monet doesn't make you Monet. AI can't create anything original.
- setopt 5mo agoDefine «original». Under many definitions, where novel composition of existing knowledge or techniques is counted, it certainly can.
- Geee 5mo agoWell, there's the Einstein test: can AI figure out general relativity if it's trained only on knowledge up to 1915 or so, before it was discovered. Similarly, you could do a Monet test: train AI on everything before Monet and try to get it to create paintings similar to Monet. Original is something that is out of the data distribution. AI can't do anything original, because it's job is to imitate the data distribution. Originality in itself is not hard, because pure noise is original. It should be original and beautiful.
- sd9 5mo agoThis is a real Monet.
- Geee 5mo agoI know, but it could be AI-generated as well, because people can't tell them apart. The point was that even if AI could imitate Monet perfectly, it's not Monet. It's a worthless test.
- dormento 5mo agoI loathe the blasted copyright washing machine as much as the next intellectually honest person, but: > AI can't create anything original. Can we? I mean, don't we base our output on experience and reprocess references + memories of things past to create what we deem as "new"?
- Geee 5mo agoMany artists have a distinct, original style. Originality is the ability to create novelty in a way which is aesthetically pleasing. I've yet to see AI create a single distinct style which is beautiful.
- JKCalhoun 5mo agoIn my experience, an artist's original style arrives more or less from the artist having imitated and subsumed bits and pieces from other artists over the course of their artistic pursuit.
- scrumper 5mo agoIt isn't beautiful at all, nauseating uncanny valley stuff in my opinion, but AI images do have a style (or rather one of a number of idiosyncratic styles.) The sort of glossiness and unsettling focus in photorealistic images; the terrifying dreamlike surreality of more impressionist graphics; even the cartoony style used in corporate infographics. They're all quite distinctive to me at least and certainly aren't anything a human would produce. You can see the "influences" (i.e. stolen training data) but it really has come up with something itself. Not that I think it should have. Kill it with fire and EMPs.
- Geee 5mo agoTrue. AI does have a style but it's more of a bug than a feature.
- pixel_popping 5mo agoAI can absolutely create an original book, absurdly false.
- sph 5mo agoAI art enjoyers and missing the point of art: name a better duo. No one has ever claimed AI cannot imitate a Monet, but however good the imitation, it still isn't art any more than a Xerox of a painting is art. This is the exact reason why most people feel bad after discovering that what they felt was work of human ingenuity, is just a fake, a simulacrum of it. The creation of art, arguably the most human of instincts, cannot be separated from the emotions and effort that went into it. All this proves is that most people cannot tell if that picture is a Monet or not.
- skeledrew 5mo ago> All this proves is that most people cannot tell if that picture is a Monet or not. It goes beyond that. It proves that many people have an inherent bias against AI itself that's unrelated to whatever it generates. "This was made by AI, therefore it's bad in every way".
- agos 5mo agothat's because when dealing with art, the "why" something was made can be as important as the "what"
- Antibabelic 5mo ago... I mean, yes? People object to AI art (and generative AI in general) on ethical grounds, not just aesthetic ones. This is something anti-AI people are quite explicit about.
- sph 5mo agoExactly. I'd rather appreciate a bad piece of art made in earnest by a person. That's precisely the difference between art and a commodity.
- _diyar 5mo agoGood points, but consider what this post does prove: people’s arguments against AI art are shallow; they often attack the artifacts themselves instead of making your deeper argument.
- jaharios 5mo agoSeems the poster is the one fooled by the AI more than anything, because most likely the bulk of the replies are bots, so you got AI to criticize AI.
- petcat 5mo ago> Seems the poster is the one fooled by the AI I think this HN commenter is also being fooled by the AI. It's likely that a lot of comments on HN are bots, so here you got an AI to comment about AI criticizing AI.
- mxmilkiib 5mo agoall right, all right, who got a bot to write this comment then? bzzz, clank
- deleted 5mo ago[deleted]
- siliconpotato 5mo agoit was all engagement bait to auction off some NFT nonsense.
- soared 5mo agoTwo interesting replies: It’s not a physical painting made by a well known artist. It’s trying to hard to be a late Monet. How much of our opinions are driven by context, rather than the actual subject? If Monet’s work is not so great without the context, is it still great? Or is context a critical piece of the art itself? Do we need to view a Monet piece within the scope of other Monet pieces, other artists, time periods, blindness, etc?
- Semaphor 5mo ago> How much of our opinions are driven by context I’d say for art, a lot? There’s a ton of art that a halfway decent painter could do now, the art of it was being the one to do it originally. At least that’s how I, as an absolute philistine in that regard, understand it ;)
- capibara13 5mo agoYeah I agree, in art a lot is driven by context: there's so many paintings or songs that are not outstanding in itself, but the full human context around it makes it significant.
- card_zero 5mo agoThat brings up the idea that art can be "outstanding in itself", aesthetic in a vacuum, disconnected from what people are caring about. That's dubious, but anyway the AI art doesn't attempt that. Instead it has access to a lot of freeze-dried human context which it rehydrates and presents like a fresh meal, so it partially succeeds at providing that significance.
- capibara13 5mo agoYou're right. Maybe I should have said 'painting or songs that do not SEEM outstanding in itself". My point is that an AI 'rehydrating' human context that you mentioned, is (usually) not enough to get the same significance as human-made art. At least, for now.
- card_zero 5mo ago
- input_sh 5mo agoThis is like asking people to rate this plate of bugs while serving them chicken. Even if tastes great, of course some people who will have a visceral reaction against it.
- ceejayoz 5mo agoBut they’re confidently asserting a whole bunch of specific made up reasons this is shittier than a real Monet. It’s like the sommeliers who can’t detect red vs. white wine when blindfolded.
- input_sh 5mo agoPeople would come up with very specific made up reasons why they hate that plate of chicken as well, so I don't see your point. As for your red vs. white wine comparison, it'd only make sense if one of those was doing its best to pretend to be the other one.
- ceejayoz 5mo agoThe point is the objections are bullshit. They can’t tell!
- input_sh 5mo agoThen I guess you've completely missed my point. If I hand you a lump of gold and tell you it's actually a piece of shit painted in gold, I'm sure you'll find reasons to hate it.
- ceejayoz 5mo agoBut if I make up reasons, that's bad! "No thanks, I don't like shit" is fine. "Oh yeah, I can definitely tell it's shit!" is not.
- croes 5mo agoThat’s nothing new. That’s just the art scene already ridiculed in the movie Interstate 60 with James Marsden and Gary Oldman and from 2002 https://youtu.be/HHwI37hkWfM?si=iFsWo3M5oSjLgE2F https://youtu.be/HHwI37hkWfM?si=iFsWo3M5oSjLgE2F
- Trasmatta 5mo agoI think the more interesting thing going on here is the growing anti-AI sentiment. (Which I very much feel in myself too.)
- skeledrew 5mo agoVery good. We need more of these experiments in all areas. Hopefully it helps people to at least be more conscious of their bias.
- vld_chk 5mo agoIf we learn anything from all studies in this field, that is barely possible if not impossible at all, to change people’s mind. Even when they face clear evidence of their own mistake.
- engeljohnb 5mo agoI do think this reveals peoples' biases, but not in the way you probably do. I think Monet just wasn't as good as his renown purports. EDIT: I doubt this experiment would go similarly for a Caravaggio or a Michelangelo.
- vanviegen 5mo agoNot GP, but I think that's exactly the kind of bias that needs exposing. People are prone to holding a few experts/artists/objects/products in high regarding, defending/denying any flaws, while pushing down on those with less heritage.
- dxdm 5mo agoI think it shows that art and how people relate to it is more complicated than you think. If the existence of a bunch of handpicked comments can lead you to your conclusion, then you will struggle to find any "good" art at all. Which may be an entirely coherent interpretation of the state of things; just not a very interesting one.
- engeljohnb 5mo agoIt's a good thing then that I'm not concerned about how interesting my perspective is to you.
- 5mo ago
- functionmouse 5mo agoCherry picked, contrived, biased; in a word, slop.
- drcongo 5mo agohttps://xcancel.com/jediwolf/status/2054776716770320631 https://xcancel.com/jediwolf/status/2054776716770320631
- croisillon 5mo ago1: the answers posted are cherrypicked to prove a specific point 2: some of the (albeit mislead) answers basically say "it's nice but it's not something a person willingly outlined and drew" and they are not wrong 3: some answers complain on the lack of depth and detail, color blurbs, and we have to agree the tested version is of very low resolution so in the end we are left with: "some people who were told it was AI knee-jerked negatively" and i can't even start to see what's surprising about it
- whattheheckheck 5mo agoYou're not surprised that people's judgement seems to be worthless?
- croisillon 5mo agothe world is big, a given proportion of people will always behave strangely to the others
- capibara13 5mo agoAnother sign that the context and the human factor will always play a huge role in how we experience art. For example, AI generated music can sound perfect, but still we value it less if we don't know anything about the musician's life.
- pixel_popping 5mo agoIt just proves serious bias and weakness of humans. We really "want" to believe we are special but in the end, you will soon never know if something is made by AI (autonomously or not) and it will trigger the same exact set of emotion as any human would, because in the end it changes nothing, we just want to believe it does (sadly).
- helsinkiandrew 5mo agoIt's important to remember that there are many Monet paintings that critics don't like, or that aren't 'monet enough'. He painted fast to sell and make money and many think some paintings aren't as finished as they could be. He himself destroyed a number of water lily paintings before an exhibition [1], and again a lot of the work he did when he was partly blind due to cataracts. [1] https://content.time.com/time/specials/packages/article/0,28804,1956922_1956921_1956949,00.html https://content.time.com/time/specials/packages/article/0,28...
- whattheheckheck 5mo agoLet this be an example of when you present your own work in real life. Context and framing is everything and does influence its interpretation and how people perceive your work. This has material effects on your life despite nothing objectively changing about the quality of your work.
- mcteamster 5mo ago“Made by Claude”
- 0x_rs 5mo agoNFTbro discovers expectancy effect. This has nothing to do with art or social experiments, so much so it's actually insulting to one's intelligence.
- danielbln 5mo agoSeems like that NFTBro hit a nerve with this art lover.
- nailer 5mo agoSo odd this is flagged. Not complaining about moderation, but why would I bother submitting stimulating articles in future? dang it would to use the flags as a way to prune recent HN users.
- Jordan-117 5mo agoMy guess is that the "experiment" isn't very rigorous -- just a direct link to some Twitter rando posting low-res image bait and cherry-picking answers (plus some trolly follow-ups).
- robertclaus 5mo agoInteresting how much the post sounds like an AI prompt itself. Are we all going to start talking like that? Think hard, make a plan, and only reply after deep consideration.
- phyzix5761 5mo agoI did a similar test back around 2007 on a famous photography website and shared real Edward Weston photographs of landscapes/buildings and people critiqued it quite negatively. This proved to me that popularity, context, and foreknowledge wins when it comes to art.
- Jordan-117 5mo agoThe same thing in reverse: https://i.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/newsfeed/003/240/678/2b9.jpeg https://i.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/newsfeed/003/240/678/2b9...
- mac3n 5mo agothe story goes, when the first Edison wax cylinder recording came out, they were indistinguishable from a live performance. these days we can hear the noise, crackles, and lack of dynamic range.
- skygazer 5mo agoPeople confabulate. The setup further invites it. We mindlessly fill voids and call it opinion, and occassionally even believe ourselves. "Plausibility" is a really low bar. Rigor is tiring and we'd rather not invest as no one demands it, anyway.