3 ms·

About the Digital Art

34 points by NaOH 4mo ago

gilleain 3mo ago
Of course, now the question the boy in the article asked - "where does the Tiger come from?" - could be answered with "the prompt". The arguments today are whether a prompt like "draw a Tiger" are the same somehow to someone using a pencil or digital stylus or whatever to draw a tiger. "But I do know that there’s no program that will draw one from scratch, any size or pose or color or style, like I want it, without an artist at the helm. And there’s no magic answer for us artists except that we are each unique. We are the only variable" Not anymore! Now the only variable (for good or bad) is the prompt? Just add "super photorealistic, no bad anatomy" I suppose :)
- dahart 3mo ago
  To be fair, his “like I want it” can be a serious qualification that AI doesn’t yet meet in general. It’s still today pretty hard to control image generation specifics, and even harder to control videos. The times I’ve tried, I found the process completely frustrating. AI generated pictures are the most amazing when you have very low expectations, but when you need super controlled edits, it’s really not yet very good at that. Researchers are working hard on trying to fix it, so AI will undoubtedly become better at drawing the tiger “like I want it”. At that point, if I have to exercise a lot of control and make a lot of edits, I am, to some degree, still the artist at the helm, right?
  - technojamin 3mo ago
    You'll never be able to draw the tiger how you want it unless you draw the tiger. Prompting is not drawing, it's commissioning from another creator.
    - dahart 3mo ago
      I might be able in the future to get the tiger I want, without drawing it myself. There are some famous painters who create works solely in their name but have apprentice artists do the actual painting. Not entirely unlike creative directors in general, I suppose.
  - gilleain 3mo ago
    Interesting point - usually people approach the question "who draws the tiger" from the other end. As in, the assumption is (not unreasonably!) the genAI is doing all the work and the AI 'artist' is doing nothing. Of course, the more control you have - as you say - over the process, the more you are the artist. I have to say, I'm not that interested in whether the output 'really' is art or not. I'm sympathetic to non-AI artists and I personally prefer art made by humans. However ... it is not impossible to make something that looks good or communicates an interesting idea with AI, but not trivially.
    - dahart 3mo ago
      > the assumption is (not unreasonably!) the genAI is doing all the work Yeah. I agree it’s reasonable, but there’s a fun twist I experienced myself. I used to do a type of generative digital art… artificial evolution… long before anything like Dall-E. I wrote the procedural tools, so I was creating the imaging software and doing all the work. Some people still assumed the computer was doing all the work and jumped to the conclusion that it was art of lower value than other kinds. There is another angle about art that can be mechanically and exactly reproduced having lower value, and I think that is also valid and factors into how people see digital art. Personally, I also prefer art made by humans. AI can easily make beautiful and interesting images, but it has little meaning and seems far less interesting. Art is often as much about the narrative or story of the art and/or the artist, about why they’re doing what they do, as it is about the artifacts. I used to think it was somewhat ironic that the art-consuming public behaved this way, but now I realize I very much do the same and value human motivation and original ideas & execution and unique unreproducable art as much as anyone else.
jdw64 3mo ago
>We are none of us much without the others. It can be summed up as: "An artist struggles without tools, and a toolmaker is meaningless without an artist." It's still a valid answer in the modern era, but with AI added to the mix, confusion sets in. But if that's the case, where does AI fit in? I am a toolmaker, but I actively use AI. So what am I? A toolmaker who makes tools for making tools? But agents, at least when it comes to CRUD apps, work quite perfectly once I've given them a short command. So what am I, then?
- cwmoore 3mo ago
  temporary
- dfxm12 3mo ago
  If you think, at least, you are.
- dahart 3mo ago
  > where does AI fit in? […] what am I, then? One of many. Personally I’ve never seen this as a particularly confusing or mysterious question, as long as you don’t anthropomorphize the computer. The computer isn’t writing your apps out of thin air, people made all the training data, and people wrote the tools that can turn prompts into code & images. You are just choosing to use the work of other people, and tools made by other people. In a very real way, your situation supports the article’s notion that we are nothing without the others. Art, and especially digital art, has always had the ability to use/borrow/steal/remix the work & tools of others. AI is just the newest tool other people made that can do faster borrowing of other people’s work than before. After MacPaint, we had Photoshop and that was used to do a lot of borrowing & remixing too (as well as plenty of original & creative digital work). I’m guessing that use of AI will mirror the other tools in the sense that the people who will be celebrated for their creativity, for the most part, will be the people who limit their use of borrowing from others and bring new ideas to the work, and/or the people who can tell the best story about what they did.
  - jdw64 3mo ago
    Your reply has some comforting points, but there are also a few difficult ones. Because the premise of all this is basically that there's originality based on ideas, right? But realistically, the apps I deliver aren't original. They're more like, 'There's this app, could you migrate this feature for us?' or 'Could you implement X site's functionality for us too?' In that sense, the tool creators in the original post are tool makers. They're like mold makers for tools. But I'm more like mass production, so there's a bit of a difficult point there. The problem is that I sometimes wonder whether my mass-production identity is actually better than AI.
rf15 3mo ago
The author sadly skips showing off the much more interesting claimed Etch-a-Sketch art.

34 points by NaOH 4mo ago

Of course, now the question the boy in the article asked - "where does the Tiger come from?" - could be answered with "the prompt". The arguments today are whether a prompt like "draw a Tiger" are the same somehow to someone using a pencil or digital stylus or whatever to draw a tiger. "But I do know that there’s no program that will draw one from scratch, any size or pose or color or style, like I want it, without an artist at the helm. And there’s no magic answer for us artists except that we are each unique. We are the only variable" Not anymore! Now the only variable (for good or bad) is the prompt? Just add "super photorealistic, no bad anatomy" I suppose :)

dahart 3mo ago
To be fair, his “like I want it” can be a serious qualification that AI doesn’t yet meet in general. It’s still today pretty hard to control image generation specifics, and even harder to control videos. The times I’ve tried, I found the process completely frustrating. AI generated pictures are the most amazing when you have very low expectations, but when you need super controlled edits, it’s really not yet very good at that. Researchers are working hard on trying to fix it, so AI will undoubtedly become better at drawing the tiger “like I want it”. At that point, if I have to exercise a lot of control and make a lot of edits, I am, to some degree, still the artist at the helm, right?
- technojamin 3mo ago
  You'll never be able to draw the tiger how you want it unless you draw the tiger. Prompting is not drawing, it's commissioning from another creator.
  - dahart 3mo ago
    I might be able in the future to get the tiger I want, without drawing it myself. There are some famous painters who create works solely in their name but have apprentice artists do the actual painting. Not entirely unlike creative directors in general, I suppose.
- gilleain 3mo ago
  Interesting point - usually people approach the question "who draws the tiger" from the other end. As in, the assumption is (not unreasonably!) the genAI is doing all the work and the AI 'artist' is doing nothing. Of course, the more control you have - as you say - over the process, the more you are the artist. I have to say, I'm not that interested in whether the output 'really' is art or not. I'm sympathetic to non-AI artists and I personally prefer art made by humans. However ... it is not impossible to make something that looks good or communicates an interesting idea with AI, but not trivially.
  - dahart 3mo ago
    > the assumption is (not unreasonably!) the genAI is doing all the work Yeah. I agree it’s reasonable, but there’s a fun twist I experienced myself. I used to do a type of generative digital art… artificial evolution… long before anything like Dall-E. I wrote the procedural tools, so I was creating the imaging software and doing all the work. Some people still assumed the computer was doing all the work and jumped to the conclusion that it was art of lower value than other kinds. There is another angle about art that can be mechanically and exactly reproduced having lower value, and I think that is also valid and factors into how people see digital art. Personally, I also prefer art made by humans. AI can easily make beautiful and interesting images, but it has little meaning and seems far less interesting. Art is often as much about the narrative or story of the art and/or the artist, about why they’re doing what they do, as it is about the artifacts. I used to think it was somewhat ironic that the art-consuming public behaved this way, but now I realize I very much do the same and value human motivation and original ideas & execution and unique unreproducable art as much as anyone else.

jdw64 3mo ago

>We are none of us much without the others. It can be summed up as: "An artist struggles without tools, and a toolmaker is meaningless without an artist." It's still a valid answer in the modern era, but with AI added to the mix, confusion sets in. But if that's the case, where does AI fit in? I am a toolmaker, but I actively use AI. So what am I? A toolmaker who makes tools for making tools? But agents, at least when it comes to CRUD apps, work quite perfectly once I've given them a short command. So what am I, then?

cwmoore 3mo ago
temporary
dfxm12 3mo ago
If you think, at least, you are.
dahart 3mo ago
> where does AI fit in? […] what am I, then? One of many. Personally I’ve never seen this as a particularly confusing or mysterious question, as long as you don’t anthropomorphize the computer. The computer isn’t writing your apps out of thin air, people made all the training data, and people wrote the tools that can turn prompts into code & images. You are just choosing to use the work of other people, and tools made by other people. In a very real way, your situation supports the article’s notion that we are nothing without the others. Art, and especially digital art, has always had the ability to use/borrow/steal/remix the work & tools of others. AI is just the newest tool other people made that can do faster borrowing of other people’s work than before. After MacPaint, we had Photoshop and that was used to do a lot of borrowing & remixing too (as well as plenty of original & creative digital work). I’m guessing that use of AI will mirror the other tools in the sense that the people who will be celebrated for their creativity, for the most part, will be the people who limit their use of borrowing from others and bring new ideas to the work, and/or the people who can tell the best story about what they did.
- jdw64 3mo ago
  Your reply has some comforting points, but there are also a few difficult ones. Because the premise of all this is basically that there's originality based on ideas, right? But realistically, the apps I deliver aren't original. They're more like, 'There's this app, could you migrate this feature for us?' or 'Could you implement X site's functionality for us too?' In that sense, the tool creators in the original post are tool makers. They're like mold makers for tools. But I'm more like mass production, so there's a bit of a difficult point there. The problem is that I sometimes wonder whether my mass-production identity is actually better than AI.

rf15 3mo ago

The author sadly skips showing off the much more interesting claimed Etch-a-Sketch art.