do you hate AI generated art? why?
do you hate AI generated art? why?
do you hate AI generated art? why?
In general - yes. There is a flood of shitty and lazy “art” that has infected search results and creative spaces. I’m also deeply uncomfortable with it being trained on artists work without their consent - for all the talk about it being equivalent to human inspiration I’m pretty sure there have been examples where it’s started generating attempts at signatures.
It’s terrible in knitting and crochet spaces (I imagine woodworking and sculpture and architecture too) because there are lots of things generated which are physical impossible and just wrong to anyone who enjoys the crafts. It gives false understandings of what those art forms look like.
I think the entire point of art is the human intentionality aspect. Art is humans using materials to do things that don’t serve an immediate practical purpose. There has to be some element of “desire” on the part of the artist.
So it’s not that it is impossible to use AI tools to generate art (there’s stochastic computer generated pieces from the 70s that are lovely iirc) To me though, the way these tools are used is what is important - if you’re using an AI you’re training and adjusting yourself, if you’re spending hours tweaking prompts and perhaps sifting through hundreds of pictures to combine and really participate in “making” something.
The current trend is really just a bunch of content sludge. I don’t see the appeal in either the process of creation or in what can be appreciated from it. The best stuff is mostly memey topical political jokes, where it rests more on the symbols rather than the art itself.
Like, when I make art - my process is adding layers over weeks and weeks. It’s noticing that I don’t like the way this section looks, so I go back over it, come back to it later… it’s a process - I engage with and shape the work. I’m just a guy who glues trash to things and paints them, my art doesn’t really have external value - but it still feels like art in a way that getting Midjourney to make pictures of Gandolf with big honking naturals isn’t.
It's soulless. A mere imitation.
What I hate about AI art: How it's based on stolen work. How it is purpose built to replace real, talented artists and devalue their labor. How it uses way more energy than it needs to and is pretty wasteful
What I love about AI art: Instant stupid shit for meme madness.
If AI art was all just stupid jokey shit like this that a friend of mine made when we were discussing how people were making Ghibli-fied versions of important moments in history, and we decided to go with "George Bush doesn't care about black people" but make Mike Myers dressed as Austin Powers, I'd be okay with it entirely. It's not for profit by devaluing artists and using this work instead of a real artists work, it's just stupid shit that makes us laugh. Everything else aside, I can get behind stupid shit that makes us laugh. The rest of the issues with AI art suck though.
I'm with you on this one. I have no issues with AI being used for shit posting and memes, other than the ecological impact I guess.
I'm not sure hate is the right word. When you've got someone stabbing you in the back multiple times, is it really hate you're feeling toward them? Or is it anger, fear, and danger?
I "hate" it in the sense that it's built on theft and requires the exploitation of underpaid workers to develop and maintain it. I "hate" it in the sense that we're living on a burning cinder with dwindling fresh water resources and "AI" is adding fuel to the fire. I "hate" it in the sense that it's being used to further undervalue artists and writers. I "hate" it in the sense that it fills our spaces with crap that so often looks like it was cribbed off of Rapunzel, Wreck-It-Ralph, and some other things.
I'm not entirely against LLMs as a tool, but I especially despise the image-based LLMs. They are certainly neat for some fun things. I've used them a little bit here and there for a dumb profile picture or a "I'm kinda thinking about this..." Brainstorm, but even in those cases I noticed the capabilities of the LLM and its tendencies quite literally pidgeon hole my artistic vision and push me in other directions that felt less and less creative. (Sidenote: I feel the same way about coding LLM tools. The longer I use them at any given time, the less creative I feel and it has a noticeable impact on my interest in the code I'm writing. So I don't really use them much. Also I consistently manage to point out coding LLM code in PR reviews because it's always kinda funky)
I've avoided using AI art tools for a while now. I'll consider some limited use if the cost, billionaire ownership, blatant theft of real IP without compensation, and environmental impact problems are solved. (No, an "open source" model doesn't solve all of these problems, especially since nearly all open source models are not truly open source and are almost always benefiting from upstream theft)
You know what I do like about AI art? I like the older Google machine learning art experiments from the mid-2010s. They invoked a strange existential curiosity. But those weren't done with LLM's.
Outside of LLMs, I like that there are some newer tools for editing that can do a better "lasso" select, that can mix and match into brushes as an alternative to something more algorithmic, the audio plugin that uses a RNN to simplify or expand upon an audio technique. Things that are tools that can be chosen or avoided and have nothing to do with LLMs.
I honestly cannot wait for this bubble to burst and for these tools to return to a cost that they'd need to be for these companies to turn a profit. A higher cost would eliminate all this casual use that is making people worse at research, critical thinking, and creativity, as well as make the art tools less competitive to just paying artists, even for scumbags wanting to cut the artists out. And it'd incentivize non-LLM, non-insanely costly ML techniques again instead of the current "LLMs for everything" nonsense right now.
It's pleasant to see such a long post so full of good takes. Nice work!
I don't hate the "art." The AI can't do much about it.
What I strongly dislike is people who manage to draft literally 40 words or less and think they "created" something.
You didn't. You a mathematical model to do something for you. You therw 175 tokens into a whirlpool and got am 87% what you wanted image out. If you even had an idea of what you wanted before hand.
I don’t hate AI art. I hate people who pretend they’re artists when all they do is writing prompts.
Yes, I hate it. I hate that it fills every image platform. It is not art at all.
It’s a fun toy thing and can make decent images but its not art and can never replace actual art. When you compare for example an anime art of someone who actually drew it and the AI image, the drawn art is 9 out of 10 times better.
It’s also petty pretty easy to spot whether an image is AI or drawn made.
It’s also petty pretty easy to spot whether an image is AI or drawn made.
Doubt. Most studies have shown that people are horrible at actually picking out AI art. You suffer from selection bias because you don't realise which ones you didn't spot.
its not art and can never replace actual art. When you compare for example an anime art of someone who actually drew it and the AI image, the drawn art is 9 out of 10 times better.
That implies it's solely about quality? At the inevitable point where AI gen gets better than drawn art, is the AI gen image now art too?
Art is cool cos it’s like holy shit a person did that!?
If it’s just an algorithm it’s not very impressive.
Firstly, it's not art. I already hate that OP called it that. It's AI generated imagery. There is no art involved outside of art theft.
Secondly, it's legal art theft created by those types of people that either never considered artists to have any value, or have a chip on their shoulder against artists.
Thirdly, at no point in history have artists ever been appreciated, despite art being the most important element of everything. Imagine right now what a user interface would look like without artistic design. Or a car. Or your toothbrush. AI gen shafts artists... again... with the absolutely ridiculously, flippant argument that it "democratises art", as if it's some sort of noble privilege rather than a skill literally anyone can practice.
I hate those who call themselves artists when they're just commissioning a computer to make a picture for them. I also hate it when those same people deny the unethical aspects of AI generation.
Edit: to add more, I also hate the AI images themselves. They are filling up the internet with slop. This is very annoying, and the same goes for LLMs. I don't want to get AI generated results when I didn't search for them specifically.
Pretty much sums up my thoughts as well. Don't try to pass it off as your creation. I have zero skill and like using it to make dumb stuff like a Xenomorph twerking for my most recent request. Had a speech to text typo that created what is possibly the best gibberish meme I've ever seen. But again, I am completely honest about it, as if it would've been hard to tell anyways.
Here's a screenshot of the typo prompt and result.
It's ruined art for me. Someone posts something, and I don't know if it's real art or a theft of other people's work.
That's the problem. We can't tell the difference.
No, because I don't have an irrational fear of AI. I don't like when poor or unfitting AI art is used, but it isn't AI who makes that decision to use it.
As an artist who had her art stolen for usage in AI, I hate AI generated images for several reasons. I've personally had my art stolen to be used in a prompt without my permission, and said art got mangled so much that it looked terrible. AI image generators scrape the internet for art so they can amalgamate these pieces of art together to correspond to a prompt, and this art is taken without the permission of the artists. In some AI generated images, the mangled remnants of artists' signatures are still visible. Beyond art theft, it's instant gratification with zero effort. A huge part of why I appreciate art is because someone made it, someone spent potentially hours to create this beautiful picture! When I look at my old art, I can instantly get a feel for what vibes I had going through my mind at the time, like I could almost take a peek into my past self's brain, and this applies to other artist's work too!
Prompting an AI image generator, in my eyes, is like prompting an artist to draw something for you, except that artist turns out to be someone who traces bits of other people’s art without their permission, or copy and pastes it. Sometimes AI generated images aren't immediately recognizable, so me and a lot of other artists have tried to make it a trend to post progress pictures and other receipts along with our art.
I'm an artist / writer and I don't see problem with generative AI when you're at a really early concept stage. Exploring ideas, try to get over creative blocks, that sort of stuff. Maybe the AI hallucinations and fuckups can give you ideas worth exploring.
But using them as a literal basis for artwork you work further on is a fool's errand. It's easier to maybe take ideas from there, but work from scratch anyway. And I do realise that even that is controversial.
Also, could be a legal quagmire. Also not happy about the copyright appropriation situation or the environmental impact.
Art is an attempt to communicate (usually to communicate something of the human condition). Current 'art' AI is too far away from intelligence to have anything to communicate. All it can do is mindlessly try to copy and blend what it's seen before without understanding it.
I don't hate it, but I also don't value it.
Not a fan. It admittedly can be an amusing toy - type something in and wow look what it did! But the costs are high, and our society isn't a utopia where people don't need to labor for survival.
Maybe if we were post scarcity it wouldn't matter that much. But we're not, and this AI stuff is going to hurt labor, benefit the ownership class, and probably be mildly bad for end users too.
AI art is fine being used as a tool. What I have a problem with is it's users calling themselves "artists".
A person who types a prompt into an AI is no different than a person who hires a painter and describes what he wants them to paint.
Just because that "painter" in the first case happens to be a computer, that doesn't mean that by default the title of "artist" defaults back to the person who wrote the prompt. That person is still just someone telling someone (or something) what to draw.
In other words, you don't become the artist just because you eschew paying an actual artist and instead have your computer do it for you.
I see this view a lot and I agree with it, but how can you argue with anyone who says well, that's what they said about synthesizers for music. Or ipads for art. Or computers replacing typewriters. Are you saying anyone who doesn't hand write a book in cursive while solely learning the djembe from a scroll is not a real artist ? (Obvious /s but it's kind of valid). Unfortunately we are the old man yelling at cloud, just 20 years too early. The future will laugh that there were AI detractors (in my opinion).
Everything you've mentioned are tools for an artist to use to express THEIR talent. A typewriter doesn't come up with the words. a Synthesiser doesn't compose the the music that its playing. Comparinging AI (which requires zero talent) is disingenuous.
To put it another way, if you're a carpenter using hammers and saws (tools), and then some engineer creates a robot that can be programmed to do that job and allows them to fire all the carpenters. Does that make the programmers carpenters even though not a single one has used a circular saw.
The line between "tool" and "crutch" is drawn by how much talent and training it takes to use it.
AI is NOT used as a tool in that traditional sense, its a shortcut to fake talent in ways that hammers, paintbrushes, typewriters and even just good old fashioned traditional Photoshop aren't..
You have to have the training and talent to get use out of a real tool. And AI certainly potential for use in that regard; proofreading, background removal, grammar checking etc...
Your comment made me think of DJs. Not "real" musicians? Seems like a similarly-structuree argument.
Hate it? Yes. Respect people who use it? No.
Yes. It's flooding places, and suddenly people decided that "smooth looking" was the absolute end goal of any drawing/music/creation/etc. It's not. Some of the most famous art piece are completely wrong, some aren't. That's not the endgoal. Nobody's gonna care that you can take that very simplified drawing and "generate" an extremely high-detail, fully shaded image that looks like it, as it was never the purpose.
Creative direction, intent, consistency (or absolute lack of consistency), execution, style, and a lot more goes into any creation, art or not. That's what make a piece feel interesting. There's a reason even now, with generated content being plausible as far as glaring mistakes go, we can still point out which image "feels" AI across a lot of different styles. At best, to remove that feeling of it being wrong, you'd have to spent a lot of time on the output of a model to touch it up everywhere and change details, which requires time and proficiency, which a lot of people jumping on that trend definitely lacks. Some of the worst results I've seen have been from people trying to make other "pay" for their output.
There's also the issue of how these works. For decades, creative people (among other) have been sued by big companies, some very harshly, to protect IP from such overexploitation as "using a three second excerpt in a video" or "using the vague likeness of a character". And now, these same targets are getting fleeced of their work by more big companies under the cheer of the people. That's a gut feeling of disgust right there. Combined with the utter lack of creativity in these, we're really watching the potential death of an activity (artistic creation), and that's not a good place to be. If one wants to argue that "generated art" is also a form of creation, keep in mind that these models can't be trained on generated pieces without extreme prejudice. Killing the very source they need to operate does not seem like a good long-term plan. But who cares about long-term when you can make a quick buck, right?
I'd also like to point out that all this rambling is about generated content that goes from "output of a model" to "final piece" with little to no afterthought. The "common" piece, where people will be happy to see twenty broken pieces because "well, there's a lot of them, so it's good". AI and LLM models, as a tool, may or may not be useful in the long term, but I can see smaller applications, even for art. A lot of menial tasks can be improved, general posing, references, simple background that are marginally considered part of the product, guides, etc. Taking something you've drawn/created, and locally use an AI "filter" to remove an extra line cleanly or touch up a mistake you want out? Great. The tool carries the intent of the artist, the same way a pen do.
But AI generated content? Make a prompt, a stick-figure sketch, and call it a day? These, IMO, will always look and taste like garbage, no matter how pretty they look. Because it was never "pretty" we were looking for.
As an art appreciator it just looks bad
As an artist I'm conflicted. I like new technology and methods and mediums, but it's entirely unethical to make models on unconsenting artists with no compensation or recognition.
i feel you
I don't hate AI art. I hate AI art being passed off as "traditional" art.
Almost all of the images generated by AI models are just eye candy and not art. It can be eye candy based on a bunch of art, but it still isn’t artistic. It’s often just an image aimed at farming engagement. “Here’s a picture so that your algorithms don’t ignore my post. Do I have your attention now?”
I don't hate it, some of the images generated look awesome. But that's just an image that "literally anyone could do". It's the equivalent of instant lamen or cup noodles.
Afaik, it can't come up with new styles and most of the stuff pumped out just wholesale copies existing stuff: the majority either looks like a Disney 3d animation, or fancy anime-esque render. Some try to look like realistic oil paintings, those look cool and pretty, but nothing worth making a poster.
I think the only people, besides tech bros, who are happy with this are those that hate giving art any value.
I feel old because I remember when this conversation was happening with airbrushing photographs and then Photoshop.
And now these days, really good Photoshop is invisible. We can remove people from backgrounds. We can improve the lighting. Movie CGI is just photoshooting stills.
AI will reach that stage too, where it will be so good, it's scary that you can't tell.
Lol, removing things from backgrounds and stuff is also AI
That's a task that probably would be better served by purpose-built machine learning. Using "AI" for that isn't what anyone means by "AI art" though.
It's fun to play around with but it has zero value and wherever I see it used anywhere I cringe
i feel you lol
It's got some value. It can help an actual artist with establishing stuff like composition or poses and the like.
If you try, you'll find it very difficult to actively tell the ai to generate anything specific
It's just generate a bunch and see if you get lucky and get what you wanted
It is not art.
Ai is capitalism maximizing productivity and minimizing labour costs.
Ai isn’t targeting tedious labour, the people building these systems are going after art, music and the creative process. They want to take the human out of the equation and pump out more content to monetize at ever increasing rates.
It’s an insult to life itself.
Yes, because It's not art. I have a very liberal definition of art. I'd call John Cage's 4′33″ art. Art requires concious effort, an AI has no conciousness.
Edit: I thought the question was do you like AI art? I can't read apparently. I wouldn't say hate. I just don't respect it from an artstic standpoint.
Yes, as it conveys nothing more than the prompt it was given. Art is a means of communication, but when all it does is chop up pictures it’s seen to match a prompt there just isn’t anything to analyze.
It may look pretty in the moment, but lacks all substance and will be forgotten as quickly as it was generated.
Just playing devil's advocate here. Let me lay out some counter points .. (it'll take me an edit or two to format this right, btw.)
Journey -- "Don't Stop Believing"
James Blunt -- "You're Beautiful"
Black Eyed Peas -- "Where Is the Love"
Alphaville -- "Forever Young"
Jason Mraz -- "I'm Yours"
Train -- "Hey Soul Sister"
The Calling -- "Wherever You Will Go"
Elton John -- "Can You Feel The Love Tonight" (from The Lion King)
I assert that given the correct instructions, you can still give someone plenty to analyze, via prompt, that has enough detail to extract a deeper meaning:
FWIW, I am extremely fed up with this AI hype now. "AI" is just a tool, and that is it. I could go on for hours about this mess, but I am trying to make a valid point: Regardless of how you interpret copyright, art is just self-expression.
There are endless examples I could give about technique re-use when it comes to creating art with machines. From my perspective, a particular brush stroke might be the same as using a specific bit at a particular depth of cut on a CNC. The art theft for AI training is one aspect, for sure. The biggest issue I see is that many people don't understand how to create original art and the AI just spits out a copy of something it was trained on and something the user already saw.
Edit: After reading many of the other comments here, many people have a strange definition of "art". Yes, art can be about communication, it can be about sending a message, it can express a style of creativity or hundreds of other things.
Art is just.. art. It's something a person sketches, composes, speaks, signs or farts. You don't have to like it or agree with it. Hell, you don't even need to recognize something as art for it to be art. Art is just self-expression. It's a feeling that is converted into some kind of other medium that others might happen to see, feel or hear, smell, taste or a combination of all of those things.
As much as I hate to admit it, a banana taped to a wall is art. Someone eating said banana is also art. I think it's fucking stupid, but who am I to not call it someone's self-expression?
That some, most or all art is partly or wholly derivative of other art is not relevant because the process used by 'AI' does not resemble the artistic process. When Shakespeare wrote Hamlet (a work derived from an older play, itself derived from an older myth which itself had been through countless retellings, variations and translations), he did not do what an LLM does, which is approximately to say: 'It's statistically likely that the phrase "to be" will be followed by the phrase "or not to be"'. Putting together statistical likelihoods is not creativity. This alone shows that AI 'art' is not creative and therefore not art at all.
Additionally, instructing a machine to make things from prompts does not require creativity. Creativity is not 'having ideas'; it's an ongoing process. When you tell an image generator to make an image, you're not asking it to create something, because it cannot do it. You're saying 'Show me the statistically likely output for this input'. Again, this statistical generator is not the same as, nor is it comparable to, the human imaginative process.
based on your points (2 and 3), do you think there are no more "original art" in this world?
it's fucking annoying. it looks like shit. it's boring the hell out of me
When dalle came out first, it was fun to make like 10 stupid pictures and i literally never touched it again. Now every ai picture i see is like visual garbage to me. It's the plastic we can't get rid off, and it slowly replaces real pictures.
plastic is a really good analogy actually. it's just too cheap and convenient
of course! aside from detracting from artists with actual talent and creativity, there is one example i’ve seen in my school that makes me hate it even more: teachers deciding to print out posters, flyers, etc. with obviously ai generated images, despite the fact that we have an entire art department in the school, full of students who’d be very much interested in making something up for them. even then, tools like canva and the sort are always available, hell, even mspaint could work! i’d rather see 10 poorly made posters than have to see one more ai image used in the school.
I think it's fascinating. I don't think it holds the same reverence as man-made art by any means, but I still find it impressive.
It's absolutely fascinating. I was really enjoying watching it evolve. That's tapered off a lot now.
But I also find it really off-putting when people use it for meaningless illustrations that just reek of laziness. Especially so when the images are supposed to represent something meaningful, but are full of errors and nonsense. This is particularly the case when the illustrations accompany academic texts. Fucking gross.
Probably if we lived in a society that didn't inventivise doing meaningless, environmentally destructive shit for profit, then I might be more into it now.
Environmental impacts 🤷
I don't consider it Art, but the specific reason I hate it is because it is meant to be an illusion of something that it's not, and it's crafted that illusion off the blood sweat and tears of people whom it treats as a line item in a database by people who don't respect it. It is fundamentally a bastardizarion of the creative soul and rather purposefully at that.
I mean, every highly contrasted media we've ever watched, just about, is about someone with a modicum of empathy struggling against a fascist with no empathy to their cause, and what is more fascist than diminishing or dilluting the perceived value of art to the public? Art is the only language allowed to those who are repressed.
But look at it this way. In 5 years nobody will be able to tell the difference between an AI image or AI music (boomers already can't). So then what? When an art gallery prints a 30 ft tall AI image and people come look at it and how amazing it is, all while having no idea it was AI, what will be the point? The only art left will be live performance art, which could actually be a good thing in it's own way. But the "at home" artist who only publishes works online will be dead, because there will be no way to tell the difference.
I hate it because of the theft.
It's possible AI could be interesting but the current iteration is garbage.
I prefer real people and real artwork hand painted or hand drawn. Yes, doing it digital with your hand and mouse count as hand made.
Art is about expressing one emotion from one person to another.
We have a word for fake pictures: advertising.
The first phrase is true.
The second, I'm not sure. Some really talented artists have worked in advertisements for a long time, and many of their works are celebrated internationally. Alphonse Mucha is one name that quickly comes to mind - tell me his advertisement work isn't art. You have probably seen more amateur ripoffs of his style in your life than the real deal.
Depends on what it's used for. Looks tacky when used by big businesses, but looks fine if used by small independent people. Like dbzer0.com just uses them for blog thumbnails. But coca cola AI adverts? Ai bots spouting stuff on Facebook? Entirely AI generated websites (although that's moreso text)? Awful.
I can't say that I am a fan.
AI siphons the end result from the process involved to get there - a very human process. Scraping loads of work from artists to mimic a signature style or pop culture trends in art doesn't exactly scream innovation. Using AI to aide a creative process is one thing, but using it to generate imagery, claiming originality, and using it for internet clout is farcical, lazy, and an insult to artists.
Art is a skill honed over time and given life through the human experience - and the beautiful part is that when others interact with it, it connects them through their own experiences. I really do think AI cheapens that.
I hate that it’s built on theft. The idea of AI art is fine, but so much of it is just art theft. “Picture of A in the style of artist B.” That kind of shit really makes me hate AI art.
Does anyone else feel ill when seeing some AI images? It's like an out of tune piano for me
Yeah but only if it's professionally used. In a meme or something it's fine but it's gross when used in ads, logos, games, etc. It's so weird in profile pictures and wallpapers as well.
some times i do :)
Huh. AI pics don't bother me but I get that exact feeling looking at most optical illusions.
Hate is too strong of a word. AI art is sometimes freaky to look at, sometimes it's pretty. It is usually devoid of a certain intangible thing that you can get from human art, even shitty human art. But it's occasionally a fun toy too? I can't conjure up any strong feelings for AI images unto themselves.
I do have intense loathing for the capitalists who want to use that AI art to replace human work. And for the AI "Artists" who are enabling them by acting like this is the next evolution of art and anyone with concerns is just holding back "DA FUTER".
I also have concerns about the environmental/energy costs of AI -- Just in general. Not just AI Images or Chatbots or whatever. AI can be a good thing, a tool to help us. And even when it's useless, it's kinda fun to mess about with. But the energy and environmental costs of all that computing, especially the amount of it that is wasted because even if AI ultimately becomes a part of our lives, it is DEFINITELY a wasteful investment bubble right now -- THAT sucks. And THAT seems to have no obvious solution.
I think it substracts from everything but itself. That is on its own, its pretty cool. But it's gross when it's used as part of a bigger project.
No. It’s useful when you need a quick picture for something or help visualizing something. A huge timesaver. I haven’t seen it generate anything good enough to be hung in an art museum, so I don’t really understand why anyone would hate it. It’s not really competition for actual art. Also, I want to say that I don’t think anyone’s art was “stolen”. That’s the same ludicrous argument the RIAA uses against online file sharing. Any images used in the training was downloaded, mathematically analyzed, and deconstructed. “Stolen” would require a heist at the museum.
I do, but not for the reasons you think.
What makes a Jackson Pollock painting so valuable? I've heard time and again people saying "I could do that too", "it's just paint thrown at canvas" etc. But it's not the actual paint on the canvas that makes the painting. It's Pollock's aesthetic sense that chose that color, that pattern, and that's what you get to see when you look at his paintings. It's an image that said something to him, and we have decided to put value on that.
The vast majority of AI generated imagery is not art just like the vast majority of people throwing paint at canvas won't get a Jackson Pollock painting. It might become art if used by an artist with purpose and intention. Which at the moment is pretty hard, given that small, iterative adjustments are really hard to do with AI. But in the end, AI is yet another tool that would allow humans a bit more freedom of expression.
It used to be that a painter had to literally prepare his palette from raw ingredients. Then he could buy pre-made paints. When digital art came along, we gave up paints entirely. Now we skip the painting part. The one common thread though is the honest expression of intent, and the feedback loop given by the artist's aesthetic sense. If either is missing, you get kitschy garbage. And that's most AI generated imagery these days.
Different strokes for different folks. In a hypothetical scenario where I'm a billionaire and buying a Pollock or an AI image in print and choosing what to hang in my bedroom, it for sure won't be someone throwing random splashes of colour. It's extremely boring and awkward.
No judgement, mate, art is a matter of taste. Always has been.
My point was more along these lines: every single piece of AI imagery in the public space has been selected and put there by a human. We are the feedback loop in this space. And if the vast majority of it sucks, well, that's saying something about the people doing the selection, doesn't it?
I read an article recently about the difficulties of using AI by artists in animation studios, which partly inspired my original reply. Sure, AI is great at, say, generating a magical fairy forest. But if it's almost good enough and you want it to do small, incremental improvements to an existing image, that's where it fails. Sure, it will generate another magical forest, but even using almost the same prompt can lead to wildly different results.
To wit: for me and you, almost is probably good enough. But that's not the case for a professional.
I remember reading something about Pollock way back on the early 2000s and finding a new appreciation for the work. His pour paintings followed a fractal pattern, Pollock distilled an essence of nature and expressed it with mastery. One can do it these days on a computer, if you know what to do, but he made it out of sense of art alone further cementing his genius. Here is some more info: https://blogs.uoregon.edu/richardtaylor/2017/01/04/the-facts-about-pollocks-fractals/
The man is a genius, no doubt about it. I didn't know about the mathematical analysis of his paintings though, that's really cool. Thanks for the link.
We categorically did not gave up paints entirely. That's an ignorant and naive statement.
Pollock stole the whole idea from an east bloc woman who did "pouring" already.
Also, the art world in the USA was heavily CIA sponsored in the 50/60 to counter USSR cultural influence.
In my personal opinion, pollocks work isn't worth the paint he poured. It's just based on the idea that if you're the first to do it, it's "revolutionary", which it was for the impressionists and before, but not very much beyond, IMO.
It also lead to money laundring, and eventually selling a banana scotched to a wall for hundreds of thousands of dollars. That is not art.
Rant off/ 😱
Hey, I have that banana duct taped in my living room! 🤣
Art is subjective, always has been. I remember visiting a modern art museum in Germany years ago, and seeing a weed growing at the base of the wall in one of the rooms. Looking closer, I could see the weed was a very lifelike bronze cast, but in that moment the juxtaposition was jarring enough to make me question what art really is. I doubt it will have the same effect on everyone, but for me that was significant. And memorable, as you can see.
I don't hate it, in fact I use it a lot for my D&D game nights - not being an artist myself.
...this is its best use case: something very specific but with waaaay too niche to justify its production cost, like an image for one scene of one session of one group of four players...
...if you have the economy of scale for publication, real art by real artists is often (but not always) definitively stronger...
Good for memes, bad for the environment.
it's extremely obvious and always seems as if they could do it with a real artist, 3d modeller and or an actor for less than 1% their budget, so it's extremely trashy
On the other hand, because it's so low effort me being able to realise it is AI also makes me feel disgusted, Atleast spend effort prompting it so it doesn't look like shit, I swear, lazy bastards
For solo developers that use it for games or backgrounds, it's not that bad, and it's usually temporary.
I art. I do love ai for the lulz, however, actual commercial art? Absolutely not. It's not an end product. It's fun, it's inspiring.
If I don't like a piece of art it's not because it was made using AI but because it's bad art. If it's good it's good no matter who or what made it.
i'm utterly bored by it and annoyed that it mucks up all the places I'd usually steal images for my TTRPG games.
Don't know about "art", but I use it sometimes to generate contextual imagery for blog posts and videos. I would've never hired an artist so the only real difference is that it looks a lot better than when I used to try to draw something myself.
I'm not a fan of AI generated stills, but I've seen a number of AI generated music videos that are kind of fun to watch. It's not so much the art itself, but the way it collapses from hallucination to hallucination repeatedly that just goes well with some music I guess. Theres obviously still a lot of work from actual artists to make it into a video and time it with music, and the music itself of course is still human (afaik). Here's a few examples I've seen, I'd love to know what people think of this style specifically, as opposed to the AI slop photos we are getting bombarded with. Especially if you hate it, I want to hear about why!
damn i haven't heard die antwoord for a long time
I'm not a fan of it as their are just certain details an AI can never do. A color here, a twist or turn there, a stroke this way, a drip in that place. It is something that one can't program to have AI even think to do. I do think AI has its place and is a good tool.
I am fine with AI art as long as its properly credited to its creato. Not the person who wrote a prompt to generate the image, not the company that created the program. The AI should be credited in a way that no person could confuse it for something someone made
If thats too hard, banning AI art is also fine. I havent seen any real use for it
AI “art” has made me realize how important part human behind art is to the point where I will never pay for any AI “art”. AI “art” is worthless and I would even say it devalues rest of the thing, if its part of some bigger whole like game for example. I do not want to see it, I dont want even glimpse. When I see AI “art”, its only a reminder to me of theft that has been done to make it happen and of some smarmy slimy techbro behind it. Whenever I see AI “art” only thing I feel is either sad or angry depending on day.
If I was religious type, Id even go as far as say I believe in soul now because how soulless AI “art” is.
I am fucking sick of it and deeply despise AI “art” in its entirety with every fiber of my being.
I am sure I will get downvoted to deepest depths by techbros and people who dont care and simply consume whatevers brought in front of them, use every AI filter they get their hands on. But hey, I was asked, I gave my answer.
They say imitation is the sincerest form of flattery.
I'm not exactly a visual artist who stands to lose something in this armsrace, but that's how I tend to look at it. As a software engineer I'm fascinated by the possibilities. There were people who despised the camera when it came to be. I firmly believe that once the AI hype dies down "real" human-made art will not have suffered any setback. At the end of the day this is still people building tools to imitate something worth imitating. Nothing is ever fully original.
If someone can't see the value in art that took actual human effort to make then that is on them. If a tool is built upon millions of existing pieces of human artistic effort to make it available to the general public I'd see this as less deplorable than copying a CD to a cassette tape in the 80s. If someone tried to make money by selling what is essentially other people's work then that is obviously a different story, no matter what is being misappropriated.
thanks for your response!
low effort crap is low effort crap no matter how it's made, that said, there is plenty of high quality, high effort AI art out there that has a lot of prompt engineering put into it; it is merely drowned out in a sea of sludge. It's just about as easy for someone to put in zero effort and churn out AI sludge as it is for them to scribble in MSPaint, the difference being scribbling in MSPaint usually has some level of charm to it for its simplicity. That doesn't mean the guy who spends a lot of time tweaking their prompt to get it exactly right isn't an artist, it means they create art with different tools. Whether you use a rattlecan and stencils, or pencils and paper, or paint and canvas, or a wacom tablet and stylus, or type in carefully crafted prompts, art is art is art is art. But if you don't spend the time required to get good at it, your art will be shit.
Also, watching the artist crowd melt down again saying "that's not real art!" is absolutely hilarious. Those who weren't around at the time may not remember, but when digital art was starting to become a thing, there were plenty of people who firmly attested that if it was digital, it wasn't "real" art. Watching the same set of creatives having the same meltdown ~30 years later, "REEEEE YOU CAN'T JUST USE TECHNOLOGY TO MAKE THE PROCESS EASIER", is extremely funny.
It's not art. Expanding the sense of the word to all kinds of nonsensical phenomena is both damaging art and artists as well.
I take the liberty of a personal definition of art, or if not definition, at least prerequisites for something to be considered art, and that is that art must be made by the hand of the artist and that it's conception must include deliberate thought/mental process of the artist. It may not be the best definition, but I consider it to be good enough to draw a definite line between Michelangelo and the internet lady who vlogs about the art of tying your shoelaces or some similar shit.
Not really, if they actually look good and doesn't have the uncanny valley stuff to it. But there should be rules on Lemmy (and hopefully other platforms too) to required images to be marked as AI.
thanks for your response!
For me it's on the same level as memes - not intended to be consumed as art, but merely as a form of posting. It's trash and that's fine.
But it shouldn't be elevated above that. It's derivative and stilted and lacks character, and worse, it might be depriving amateur artists the chance to flex their creative muscles and actually create art themselves.
Also draining cities dry of municipal water to generate a picture of a bored ape is probably a bad use of resources.
No, quite the opposite.
Honestly, I find the vast majority of the arguments against it to be be made from a point of ignorance, propagated by a rabid sub-set of artists looking to generate clicks for their sensationalist YouTube videos.
Some pertinent reading/watching:
https://epoch.ai/gradient-updates/how-much-energy-does-chatgpt-use
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-024-54271-x
https://craigboehman.com/blog/in-defense-of-ai-art
https://www.fxhash.xyz/article/in-defense-of-ai-art
https://andymasley.substack.com/p/a-defense-of-ai-art
https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/how-did-you-do-on-the-ai-art-turing
thanks for your opinion.
Like anything art generators are a tool. One that can be very useful in a creative process, to convey an idea that is hard to present in text, to explore variations on a concept without having to draw something a hundred times, etc. It would be very difficult to argue that something like that has no valid uses.
However, as it stands the majority of the tools in place cost a fair bit of money to set up and run and so there is a high barrier to entry, and so the profits made from running them end up going primarily to those who are rich enough to set them up in the first place. Wealth inequality is a massive issue right now and so this sours a lot of people against these tools.
Many people also subjectively dislike AI art, which is a fair comment, as all art is subjective, but I don't think it necessarily helps anyone to debate over whether it looks good or not, that shouldn't be the issue here.
You could argue that the root of the problem is that most users of these tools will never consider the repercussions of paying for them, the people they are supporting are obscured behind many layers and it is impossible for the average consumer to know what the recipient will do with those funds.
Like any tool, these machines have created a new way for the already powerful to exploit the weak, it may be abstracted away behind closed doors but it is happening.
yes, the answer would be subjective since art itself is subjective. thanks for your neutral point of views :)
However, as it stands the majority of the tools in place cost a fair bit of money to set up and run
You can get by with 4G of VRAM if all you want is to generate some pictures, or differently put every PC capable of 1080p gaming should do the trick. With good software (comfyui) you can do SDXL just fine, and almost crush SD1.
It's fine-tuning much less training models where things get expensive but there's other ways to get creative with those models. Training is only ever barely possible on gaming GPUs because those cap out at about 16G VRAM.
(Just for completeness' sake, for anyone wondering "why don't I just use my 32G worth of CPU RAM to supplement the VRAM?" -- that's already happening anyways. You need a minimum amount of VRAM or your box will be busier shuffling data from and to the GPU than it is actually doing calculations: Your GPU is going to thrash. If that happens it's probably faster to run the AI on the CPU and, well, it's just not build to run that kind of code).
Most of it reminds me of that tacky clip art that got bundled with word processors and Corel Draw in the 90s. It’s just all got this “uncanny valley” sheen to it.
Nice try. I'm not helping you improve your art algorithms for free. You need to pay some art teachers for feedback like that.
haha, i don't developing an algorithm related to AI. i was just asking because now, my people in my country are using AI to convert their pictures to Ghibli Studio's art style. just asking here people on Fedi about that.
I was playing. Thanks for your sincere response, though.
I don't hate it. I think it's fun as a sort of moment by moment ( I want to see this ) and just generate it and enjoy the wackyness. It does leave a lot to be desired in terms of composition and polish. I also absolutely hate people representing it as their own work. I also really enjoy art produced by people. I think what people produce is still superior in lots of ways. People are often telling a story with their art, and that really comes through. Also I love knowing the amount of thought and effort has gone into a work it makes it that much more impressive. The art people produce is often strongly influenced by art trends, culture, and life experience which we connect to as humans and AI can't produce that because it has no concept of these things. Sure AI can replicate that but it's not the same as the interaction and conversation I have with a piece of art produced by a person that I know must have felt certain ways about their work when producing it.
The easy answer is: Yes, because it's mostly bad.
The Long answer is: Like everything in art and life, If you can set it in right context it could also work. If you cannot, it's just bland and bad in the classic artistic craftmanship standard and modern art and Action Art.
Same short answer but adding a bit to the long, it seems that they have a feel to it that I just do not enjoy.
Also art is transgresive and AI generated images are usually not.
It looks so detached from reality.
Bad for artists, but for the environment, low quality, low effort, and the most annoying people in the world love it.
I like playing around with it myself but I never upload it I just keep it on my computer cuz it's neat so I don't get why anyone else would upload AI generated stuff online
No, I enjoy how it democratises image creation and allows me to create a vision in my head without training at art for years.
You're lazy and talentless, and you like how it allows you to steal the hard work and talent of others.
If I see a obviously AI generated picture as a thumbnail on youtube, I immediately block that creator. If I hear those awful AI voices reading text, same. If you want to share something with the world, put some effort into it.
Use case seems to just be dicking around, and that is just not worth the resources we pour into it.
I don't hate it, I think it has its uses, just like text generation. They're great for brainstorming ideas or quick unimportant stuff like RPG campaigns, so for example an in-game fake company logo or a poem to contain hints for the players.
However trying to use it for anything serious and final is stupid and dangerous. IMO any artist that had their art used to train a model should be able to claim royalties on anything created with that model, regardless of whether they can prove their art was used for the piece. And if the data used to train the model is not made public or can't be verified, then ANY artist can. Maybe just 1% of the profits direct or indirect of that art, so for example you used AI to generate part of an invitation for a party, 100 artists could start a lawsuit and take every single cent you earned from the party. After all you indirectly hired them, it's only fair they get paid, had you hired a single artist you could negotiate the price with them.
As someone pointed out, do you like ads ? Because AI content feel the same, it's annoying stuff I need to skip to access real content and on top of that it's an ecological disaster.
When I open an image or a page and realise it's AI, I feel the same as when I download a movie and it turns out I got a dot exe.
No, just see it as another medium . Extremely overhated
Tbf tho lotsa popular styles that show in AI art am indifferent towards (even dislike outright . Example : this's somehow even greater assault on the eyes than Alegria illustrations) , but that's bcus it's really hard to create (unique|distinctive) styles with current tech (source : tried developing style for >1 yr (find|combin)ing artist tags in furry models → (genn|tweak)ing ~20-30 training imgs Once satisfied → testing outputs of style LoRA trained with PixAI and result on merge models don't lꝏk like the training data at all . PAINFUL) and not criticism of genAI itself
If it came from stealing actual artists' work then I hate it. If they somehow generated it using all fairly sourced data then I don't care. Still would prefer an actual artists work and I'd certainly never knowingly pay for something generated by AI.
Hate is such a strong word. Some bad, some good.
Bad:
Good:
cool!
In my understanding, art is made of
If one of them is lacking, then the outcome is either just a copy, or even a bad copy.
Current AI is lacking both.
So whenever anyone calls generated pictures "art", then you know something about that one.
Current AI is lacking both.
Only word wrong here is 'current'. AI will never have creativity or craftmanship. It's impossible.
I like it for fun, memes, silly stuff, and inspiration to create something original.
I hate it for professional use. It all looks the same. And the kind of person using it professionally is 100% insufferably annoying and also so uncreative that whatever literal slop they put on marketplaces for Easy Money just falls flat and only makes pocket change from kids who don't know any better. And the kids deserve better, actual media with nuance and depth, things they can learn from and remember later on in life, not shallow meaningless slop to get them to look at car and phone ads while exposing them to sex, gore, pregnancy, and other things they aren't ready for.
i personally second this. thanks.
I'm going to take a wide definition of the word 'art' here and apply it to all artistic methods.
Its not art. Art, almost by definition, partly reflects an emotional state the artist was in when creating the work. AI merely apes the output, not the necessary emotional connection. Its like the shitty music that used to play in lifts (elevators) in that it uses the output but is utterly soulless.
Its ethically way worse than piracy. If you pirate (for example) an ebook or music its more than likely because you want to escape DRM or some other type of controlling software designed to prevent you from actually having control over what you would otherwise have bought. LLM's steal not just that but the whole creative process. Its more than pirating a movie or track or book, its more akin to stealing the thought process from an artists mind and trying to replicate the process automatically.
It is, to me, just another example of making the whole of our international artistic culture a bland homogenized cesspit of crapness. Its capitalism's best way to profit from art as there's no one to pay. But we end of with ever decreasing quality. AI based art becomes like humanity in the matrix - used then liquidised to feed the next iteration.
And then there's also the environmental impact. The last thing the word needs right now is something else gobbling resources - especially when the end result is utter shit.
I like it quite a bit. Le chat mistral does a good job
I don't consider it art either but not hating it since it offers you a different view on realism while trying to be realism. With silly results like pouring a mug of hot coffee out of the fingers 🤌, or carrying a shield backwards.
There's nothing interesting about it. It's a waste of storage space and computational power. It makes the world worse
It is scary the amount of people in this thread that actually think art is defined by how it is made, and not the emotions and thoughts it elicits.
AI is just a fun toy. It can't make "art." There are CEOs out there fucking thirsty at the idea of a 59% unemployment rate because everyone else is cut out of their business, but AI can't do the job and they will learn that the hard way after fucking over a bunch of people.
Even the success stories seem skeptical. I use AI all the time at work to assist with coding, and beyond that I use it all the time for fun—my job is safe because AI is fucking awful at it.
So anyway I don't hate it per se, but I don't like it other than jokey shit. But I don't want to see it everywhere, either.
No problem with AI generated art itself. Mostly an issue with "AI artists"
Yes. It can only exist through stealing the creative work of others.
Also, it looks terrible.
I don't hate AI-created images. I hate the insane amounts of energy required for current AI models. I hate that it's the same rich assholes who control everything also controlling AI. I hate that they monopolize access to models trained on all our work. And I hate that it will be these rich assholes benefiting from humans being put out of work by AI. Because this will happen on some scale.
If it were free, I'd love AI. Because it allows people who aren't artists to create stuff. And lowering the barrier of entry on art is always good, in my opinion.
Have you heard about AI Horde? It's a cluster of volunteer workers generating text and images for everyone for free.
You get credits by contributing your GPU to generate for others, but you can use the service without credits (or even an account), credits are there just to determine your position in the queue.
You can try it out for example on HordeNG (disclaimer: I created the HordeNG frontend).
I don't even consider AI generated images to be art since there is no expression of skill, imagination, or feeling in them.
I agree.To me art is an expression of the soul; it's an expression of one's perception of the world. It has spiritual qualities (in an atheist sense). There is an inner world that puts out together a piece of art that LLMs do not possess and that's why they need to train on existing material that comes from human expression.
I highly doubt an LLM suffers, loves, hopes, hates and cries like us. Art is an expression of who we are individualy and collectively. LLMs only hallucinate with art made by humans. While we humans can find inspiration from other artists, it is not a necessity to train on vast databases of art pieces to put something together. They say that while it's hard to define what art is, you know it when you see it. To me when I get that feeling from something made by AI, all I really see is a piece of an other artist's soul trapped in some sort of simulacrum put together by an algorithm.
Cut the training material and AI "art" will stagnate. We, on the other hand, won't.
That's why I think AI art will never really be art... unless if one day they somehow develop a "soul" themselves and start to express an inner world of their own.
Gaius Baltar enters the chat.
Exactly this.
It reminds me to those hyper-realistic paintings that were trendy 15 years ago, they were impresive feats of skill but by the fifth in a row they became boring. AI is the same but without the skill.
AI generation is a gradient from clean up to controlling every pixel.
If an artist draws the line art, does basic coloring, but has a network do the sharing, that's art. How far does that carry?
Surely, anything that had heart and soul poured into it is art, right? Text prompt, or otherwise. You don't have to resonate with it. You can be scared of it.
But you said imagination, feeling, skill make up art. It is bold, or naive, to think those who create AI works doesn't have these traits, like to say the hobbies, programmers, and the curious, aren't artists.
I tend to agree with that. I also hate that of all the great uses for generative AI, this is the direction they took the tech. It's not a replacement for whole jobs, and I knew that at the onset, but so many dumb business types thought it could replace entire departments, customer service, etc.
Even if the image was regenerated with tweaked prompts until the generated image expressed what the prompter wanted to convey?
I don't think we're at the level AI prompting can be used to reflect the subtlety needed to make art. It's like chainsaw art, cool and mebbe art but it's not art like the old masters art.
Also everyone thinking that shitting out a Rembrandt liking image is fantastic does not understand what art really is.
The person inputting prompt modifications may have controlled the larger assets as a whole, but they did not curate the Gestalt of the image. If the input is text that a computer is to output as a literal estimation, then it is data, not art; if the input is data curated by a person who means for a computer to output it as plotted data, such as with a complex lineplot or 3D model or even text as ASCII images, then that can be art.
Yes even then. Writing a prompt is no more an artistic skill than describing your idea to an artist you're commissioning. You didn't create a damn thing. You will not be called an artist for commissioning a work.
Then it's still just a commissioned work
to be honest, i'm not only referring to images. any kind of what so called "art" since it's possible now to make "music" with AI. thanks for the response anyway.